A great session in Amstelveen

2013-01-09 08:50:00

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but last sunday's Central Training did wonders for my confidence. Last night was the first time I can recall that I went to Amstelveen without feeling nervous. I was aching to practice with my sempai and I'd prepared to answer any questions I might get about what we learned during the CT.

I reckon that attending the CT was a good step in my continued 'exposure', trying to alleviate my anxiety issues. The CT was outside my comfort zone and because it went so well, it seems my boundaries have shifted a bit. Nice!

Class was started, as has become custom, with half an hour of kata training. I again partnered with Nienke and we did many repeats of kata #1 (and a bit of #2 and #3). Why focus so much on kata #1? Because of some contention we ran into! I'd been taught by Ton-sensei and Kris-fukushou that after being struck by shidachi (and after letting the bokken sink to eye level), uchidachi would be "pushed back" by shidachi. Shidachi would "threaten you away". Instead, Kiwa-sempai and Ran-sempai informed us that "uchidachi always moves first", so the new analogy would be that uchidachi attempts to flee, with shidachi preventing this by assuming a threatening pose. Interesting!

After kata a shinai check was performed, which has also become customary. I heard that last Saturday ~70% of the students' shinai were rejected during the check, leading to an impromptu lesson in maintenance. Hence Renshinjuku kendo dojo have instated the rule that, if your shinai is rejected, you will now spend the training repairing the big collection of dojo-shinai. Both of my shinai were in an "okay" state, though not very good. After tightening the tsuru of my second one, I was allowed to join class. So, time for another evening filled with maintenance!

After warming up, we moved to waza practice. A few rounds of kirikaeshi variations, followed by oki-men, oki-kote, hiki-waza from tsubazeriai and men-oji-waza. There wasn't any explanation of techniques, just the chance to practice a lot.

I had jigeiko with Onno-sempai, (I think) Tsuyuguchi-sensei and with Raoul-sempai.

• Onno-sempai's feedback matched one of my resolutions for this year: cue-ing. There are at least four different ways in which I 'announce' an attack and all of them need to be eliminated. Sometimes I lift my right foot, often I shuffle my left foot, at times I lower my shinai a bit and often I start leaning forward.
• Unfortunately I didn't get part of Tsuyuguchi-sensei's feedback, though one of them was that my hayai-men was lacking ki-ken-tai-ichi. Also, I believe he warns me I was hitting the mengane, instead of the top of his men.
• Raoul-sempai's feedback matches what Donatella-sensei told me last sunday: "be hungry!". Or as Raoul put it in the dressing room: "When you're in kamae, I see you lost in thought, thinking thinking thinking.". He reminded me that I need to want to win! And before a jigeiko, decide what it is that you want to focus on, so you can discuss this with your partner.

kilala.nl tags: sports, kendo,

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