Training Notes: 5/31/08

This has been one hell of a week. Work has been pretty hectic, though Kendo really helped take me away from the stresses of it. Unfortunately, it kept me away from practice on Thursday as I pulled a 16 hour day.

But it didn't keep me away for long since I was ready to practice again at Miami Valley today. As the weather warms up, my body has to acclimate itself to a new set of temperatures. This was only heightened by the training conditions since Ariga sensei only allows the ceiling fans and open doors to provide ventilation. I really had to fight exhaustion due to the heat, but I think things went well overall.

There wasn't much that was different from the normal practices there. We had warmups, kirikaeshi, waza and then mawari geiko. The only difference was that I didn't go to second dojo due to some work issues that I couldn't solve anyways due to the files not being sent till um...two hours ago...Yeah, I'm not happy about this.

As usual, I will leave some words of wisdom that was left for me by the sensei and sempai in attendance.

1) I need to try to feel out my opponent instead of just blindly attacking. This seems like a somewhat difficult concept to understand since there seems to be the necessity of balance between blindly attacking and waiting around for the opponent to hit me.

2) I have the tendancy to hesitate before attacking. If I move forward, then I need to become committed to the attack since I am so close to the other person. Being closer than issoku-ittou no maai puts me at an advantage since I don't have to move so much, but it also gives the opponent that same advantage. And if the person I'm going against is much faster or more experienced than I, then that can only spell trouble for me.

3) Gotta work on that distancing. It's harder than you think to guage how far you need to be since there's only a certain part of the shinai that will count as a point. On that note, I should fix my shinai since my nakayui seemed to slide down a bit.

Now it's time for me to wait until tomorrow to try my hand at Kendo and Iaido again with my tattered body.

One final note before I go. I am going to pursue the fansubbing of the anime Musashi no Ken to see how well it does with the general public. Bamboo Blade seemed to have some sort of popularity as of a few months ago, so it would be interesting to see how things go when it's accessible to the English speaking world for the first time (to my knowledge anyways). Plus, I think it would be better if the person translating the anime actually knows a bit about the subject matter at hand, which is Kendo in this case.

If you would like to help me out on this, feel free to holler at me. The only requirements are that you have some knowledge of the Japanese language and the desire to translate something. The Kendo knowledge can be proofread by me if you have no knowledge about it.