Endurance Training and Thanksgiving

Sunday's practice went a little better than on Thursday. If you read the previous entry, you already know of the problems associated with that so I won't go into detail.

The main thing that was special about this practice was that there were several tests of endurance for the beginners (and the armored people as well to an extent). I didn't get to indulge in the extra 100-200 haya suburi that everyone else did for some reason. I think it's mostly because a lot of the things being done with the club are for the people that will be continuing it and I will be graduating next month (YAY!!!).

Anyways, the purpose was to do as many haya suburi as possible in one session. The beginners were allowed to stop whenever they felt too tired to go on, but us advanced people needed to go up to 10 more than the final beginner. Well, the results were pretty nice. After about 100 people slowly dropped out, though there were people that lasted to the 200s or so. Then there were a couple that lasted all the way to 400 where everyone just stopped at that point. Two things about that. First, I've never done anything like that before so it was a nice achievement on my part. Second, I was really impressed with the beginners that tried so hard to stay in as much as possible. I've never seen such a dedicated group of beginners before so I was happy about that.

There were two more endurance rounds for the beginners later on with the practice, but to a lesser extent. This one was the continuous men exercises for as long as they could within a certain time frame. They were all pretty tired, but hanged in there for the most part.

I feel that endurance is something that should be tested more often. One thing that I have noticed coming back to school in August is that the practices can sometimes be a bit too easy at times compared to where I practiced over the summer. You can get the best mens possible, but if you haven't trained enough in spending your energy and increasing your reserves, then all attempts will be for naught. In the context of beginners, it will only make getting into armor easier since they'll have the strength, for the most part, to go on longer. This feeling pretty much stems from my last shiai where all my matches went into encho with me having a hard time impressing the judges with my attacks because I was getting VERY weak. I really suffered in the end since I nearly passed out after I lost that last match.

On a completely different note, this was the last practice before Thanksgiving break. That means that there will be a week's time before I can practice Kendo again. I most likely could bring my stuff home with me and practice at GKA, but that is too much to carry with me on the airplane at this point in time. If there is any consolation, I do have an extra shinai sitting at home so I can do suburi and footwork at the most. I really need to work on the basics some more to solidify my balance and technique so this can be a good thing for this case.