Back in the Game

Because of being sick, license plate issues and recent weather problems, my Kendo/Iaido attendance has been a little sparse. But I was able to get some good practices in once everything calmed down and the city stopped panicking.

Thursday's practice was really nice. Lately, we have been incorporating shiai geiko into the practices due to the Detroit tournament in about 2 weeks. I have been doing all I can to follow Takano sensei's instructions over the past few weeks by lowering my heel, opening up my stance and moving around to make sure I have the advantage as much as possible. The two main issues I saw was that there were times that I felt I was attacking too much with little zanshin and that I was waiting at times instead of reacting or creating the situation.

Saturday was the first time back at Miami Valley for the past few weeks, and what a practice that was. Other than the kata work at the beginning and end, it was the general practice that we always had. But each practice is extremely tough and it really exhausted me when I got home later that evening. The main thing i was working on during jigeiko was making sure I can stay on a person and trying out various waza to see how they work. Of course, going against Morikawa sensei's speed and Koizumi sensei's unreadability, that was kinda hard.

Sunday was the Iaido day. That practice, we worked a bit on basic swinging which is much different than doing kendo suburi. That is something that I have been trying to work with for a while now as I notice I always revert back to the Kendo swings. I think the only way I can really take care of that is by putting in some extra time to slowly go over things myself. Then we also spent some time working on the first part of Shi O-giri and getting that one section down. There really is a lot more than meets the eye to even the seitei kata (the only ones I've done thus far). While I would really like to experience the Shinden Ryu kata, I do realize there is a lot more for me to work on with the seitei and I'll just wait till the sensei is ready to instruct me on that.