Falling down

We're back at QE II Stadium. A great job they've done to the bright lightings, freezing air conditioning with the new wall of mirrors that makes the same gym room looks so much larger.

The down side of it - they've also redo the flooring, which is now SOLID. Oops.

Being back on the freelance front, I am lucky enough to attend all of the Sat practices for the past month or so. Then there's also rather regular jogging, cycling or swimming in my neighbourhood. So my stamina is going up and I'm having a nice tan.

Our ninja yondan friend Minejima-san is constantly picking on me recently. I reckon it's mainly because I'm "younger" and do more of a shiai-oriented style than the rest of the dojo population. He was away for a while, but now stays a bit more often, and so he's trying to practice more seriously. We do notice that he ain't all that sharp comparing to before, and were plotting against him secretly on his weaknesses (easy to say, hard to do. Argh).

What happened was, twice, that I launched for men desparately during jikeiko. He's tall and I tended to jump more. Little that I know I was actually jumping up. That messed up with my centre of gravity, and by the time he pushed a tiny little bit, my a$$ was landing on the floor.

I got the same treatment for the past 2 consecutive weeks. The problem is, I *KNEW* I was going to fall down during my fight, because everytime at tsubazeriai I was all over the place. I was so off whenever he moved his hands and turned to the other side to get a hikimen. More often I had to tell myself to please stand properly before worrying about cutting.

At the food joint, he and Oda-san were talking about this and put on this advice: I seem to be too concerned with hitting on top of the men, because I jump on there and cut at an angle (weak left wrist doesn't help either). Perhaps I should stay to cutting in front of what I see, and it's okay to cut men-gane because of the height difference. Yeah, speaking of disadvantages of being short...

Task of the month: Cut straight, centre and in front of me.