Kicking my own ass and then getting it kicked as well

2012-04-18 10:34:00

Over the past few days my mood had been getting increasingly bad. I was on edge, tired and just not relaxing. I think that a lot of that can be attributed to my recent interest in CC:TA. In my earlier blog post I wrote the game was addictive and it is: it'd become too easy to just waste a whole evening staring at that screen. "Let's raid a camp or two. Okay, I'm through my CP, so let's do base maintenance. Okay, now what? 45 minutes before I can anything else. Okay, let's read the forum and do some diplomacy!" And so on. All the reasons why I never got into WoW.

Then, last night I was this -> <- close to skipping kendo practice again, because of my foul mood. And as I sat there, watching the CC:TA screen, already five minutes late for leaving, I decided to quit the game. I'll set up my base so my alliance mates can raid it and then I'm out. Fsck that, I've got plenty of better things to do.It's a fun game, but nothing more than that.

Marli helped me greatly! "Do I need to push you to go?" And so she did. She quickly helped me pack all my gear and sent me on my way to Amstelveen. Gotta love that girl! ( ^_^)

Luckily I was only a few minutes late and I was just in time to join in with the warming up. After that followed kihon, followed by geiko and more geiko. The group was smaller than usual, but there were many high-level kendoka, including three from the dutch national team! I bowed out from the second round of geiko (the last twenty minutes of class) as I was feeling exhausted and was afraid I wouldn't make it back home.

Pointers I received from several of my sempai:

• RELAX! I may think my body is relaxed, but it's still tense. And because I'm so tense I'm wearing out my body too quickly, which leads to my early exhaustion. 
• When doing tsuki, step in slightly, then move forward a lot from the hips and only at the last point do a thrust to the throat.
• When sliding in for seme, I push my shinai way to much to the left or right. It's enough to keep my own kensen aimed at my opponent's throat. That alone will push his/her shinai out of center enough for me to strike. 
• When receiving practice strikes to kote and kote-men, do not move my shinai to the lower left. It should aim slightly upwards, else my opponent cannot properly strike kote. 

Thanks to Chung-sempai I now also know what a mouse feels like, when toyed with by a cat. During geiko, with every strike of mine, she darted aside and retaliated with two quick strikes and a giggle. I couldn't help but smile, while getting my ass handed to me.

Also, I don't think we've ever introduced ourselves so I don't know his name. One of the young guys who started in bogu only three weeks ago. He clocked me on my elbow with his tsuba. Twice. Hard. Man that hurt! ( ^_^) Arm's fine today, no worries.

kilala.nl tags: kendo, life, sports, meh, games,

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