More Kendo Practice stuffs

I should have posted this a long time ago, but I guess it's best to have it up here now than not to have it up at all.

Well, Kendo practice is in full swing this year. There are a LOT more people around this year than there was last year. At last week's practice, there were 11 people, 10 of us in bogu. The only person who didn't have bogu with him left his at home in Germany. I hope he is able to get a set soon so we can have a full on practice with little restriction.

For the suburi exercises, since none of us have suburito, we had to do haya-suburi 100 times with 2 shinais in our hands. After that, we did 50 more with only one. I must say, it sure took a lot out of me. It's really hard to keep up since I get tired around the 10th suburi. I have never had to swing so much weight around before in my life and here I am doing my best to keep up. After finishing the 100, and did the 50 the normal way, the shinai felt much lighter. But I was so tired from the previous 100 that it was still hard to keep up. It goes to show you that new variations on exercises can show you just how far you have to go until you can become really great at Kendo!

After the suburi, we all put on our bogu. We did exercises like kirikaeshi, kakari-geiko and variations on different hitting techniques. I am quite rusty from not doing them over the past 3 months, but I am getting better as time goes on. These exercises were done with great intensity and really forced me to keep my spirits up as I tried my best.

Then we ended in jigeiko. Due to the lack of time, I only got to fight once, but I think I did better than I have done before. The evidence in this is that I didn't get so tired all the time and I didn't stay too long in taiatari so much. I hope that I can go to practice this Thursday or I will have to skip the next two thursday practices due to classes :(.

Overall, the practice was nothing but greatness. It actually felt more like a Kendo practice since I was giving it my all the whole time and there were so many new faces there. I hope that they all stay cause it is nice to get a different experience in jigeiko (whenever I get the chance to fight against them).

Now, I just need to make sure I am ready to make ikkyu this fall...