Practice Problems

Today's practice was okay. I was put in the intermediate section for a bit for some reason for a while. While there, I just made the best of my time there by concentrating on my basics and making clear strikes and not bending forward. After a while, I was able to join the advanced section but it didn't make the experience that much better. There were a lot of bad habits that surfaced today, such as gravitating towards the other person after each strike instead of going through. Then, there's the issue of waza usage...

I sometimes feel like I am a one-trick pony when it comes to sparring only doing men and kote. There are other techniques that I can use to make openings like harai-waza, suriage-waza and nuki-waza that I don't take enough advantage of. During shiai, I always go for the men, kote and kote men and sometimes dou, but it's usually executed the same way. I feel like I need to begin moving away from just whacking away and using other Kendo elements to subdue and win against the opponent. I guess, just like all the men strikes I've been doing to get that down, I need to just do more of these to get used to the movements to learn the timing and everything.

As far as the gravitating towards the opponent issue, looks like I have something else to concentrate on for the next practice or two!