Saturday, January 27, 2007

Today's Practice

This morning, I finally decided to get off my lazy ass and start up the practicing. I had to miss this Thursday's practice because I wasn't feeling in tip top shape, unfortunately. This was something that I have wanted to do for a while, and the details are written below.

Right now, I'm living in a tiny apartment on Purdue's campus complete with low ceilings and cramped quarters. I could just sit in seiza and do suburi for a bit, but I felt that it wasn't enough. So I woke up this morning and went to breakfast and headed out to the corec for some Kendo fun.

I decided to do it in my uniform, sans bogu, since I just feel better about doing it that way. But I put the uniform on and did some stretches to start out. After feeling a bit more limber, I started out with the shinai for a set of 10 to get my body warmed up to moving. After that, I picked up my suburito (large bokken for weighted suburi practice) and did 50 each of zengou-sayumen, naname-suburi, zengou-shomen-uchi, suri-monogiri and haya-suburi. For the katate suburi, I just used the normal shinai. By the way, the shinai is a Bio one, which is noticably hevier than plain bamboo.

This is where the training got a little weird. I started off with footwork for a bit and moved on to various waza. The problem that I was having was that I wasn't focusing enough so I would do a few and move on to another one. That portion of the training was more of a waste of time since I didn't really get to focus on my mistakes.

After that, I went through the first 4 kata, doing my best to imagine an opponent in front of me. Sometimes, it worked out well and other times, it didn't work out the way I wanted it to. Sometimes, my mind moves around a bit and the focus gets lost yet again.

After that bit, I stretched out some more and left. I did talk to some people who were wondering what martial art I was doing which was nice. I doubt that they will be future members of the Kendo universe, but at least the knowledge of it existing is out there.

One thing that I would like to fix when I go out there the next time is to go with a plan. I was fine with the suburi and the kata since those are pretty much set in stone as to the accomplishments of that. But for the waza, I need to have a better plan as to what I feel I need to work on. That way, it becomes more productive. I really hope that I can make it out there tomorrow and the following weekends. If I can fill the rest of the week with just plain suburi in here, then I should be all set. I really need to increase my practice time so I can actually get better!

On an unrelated note, I finally got a Wii classic controller. I really wasn't looking for one though. I just went to the gaming section at walmart to look around like I always do and saw one there and just picked it up. I was mainly there to pick up my glasses and contacts though.

Well, later days!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey mate, its Solo

I recently took a Ninjutsu class to see what power the ninjas had, and was very impressed.

Kenjutsu and Kendo trains you to fight with the sword, and only with the sword, with very little leg/arm work without the sword. In this case, kenjutsu mimic’s Mitsurugi from SCII if you want a nice understanding.

Ninjutsu on the other hand is a highly powerful arm-arm combat system also incorporating weapons use (including the katana), think Assassin from SCII with and without that sword. However it should be noted that weapons skills of Ninjutsu is about 40% as good as Kenjutsu.

I was mainly very impressed at the power and counter attacks encompassed by using simple arm-lock, arm-punch, and leg-lock systems. I surely want to continue this, but my style of Suio Ryu is still not perfect.

I have done Suio Ryu for 10 years now, and my philosophy of “Knowing all martial arts to become the best fighter, is actually null” holds true in the class, because the sensei I was talking to said “Ninjas learn from all martial arts, they make friends with anyone with a completely different martial artist, like [myself]”, so I said “Well for me to do this is not my style of art, because no one can fully master the first art fully”, “Even after 10 years, I have a lot more techniques to learn, or fine tuning of Suio Ryu itself.”. It will surely logically help me a lot when there is no sword available, which I will use Ninjutsu for that reason only, but not in the case of learning every single form of martial art that Ninjutsu has incorporated so far.

The sensei had a thought and was impressed at that philosophy of mine, but said in return, “Well this is my style, and since it’s my style, it’s my way of perfecting it.”

But anyways, if any of you are looking for a really good hand to hand combat art, Ninjutsu is surely the one to go for.

Han Solo from G4

Anonymous said...

Considering you are NOT a recognized student of Suio Ryu, how can you claim to have been a student for 10 years? According to their Web site it has only been in the U.S.A. since 2002. Ever been to the Honbu? Didn't tjink so.

Anonymous said...

Han Solo is just a wannabe. He has never studied Suio and ther eare not recognized Suio groups or practitioners in Australia. He must have thought noone would notice. In a word.. "Fraud!".

Post a Comment

 
Powered by Blogger