2012-08-31 22:45:00
Thanks to the combined efforts of my dear Marli and our awesome buddy Kaijuu my study in the attic now has a nifty hifi setup. You may recall that Marli brought home a record player, an amp and boxes full of records. Well, recently Kaijuu set me up with two of his old Technics speakers which, despite being huge and looking worse for wear, still provide excellent sound. So thanks to them, tonight's volunteer work is accompanied by Back, Dvorak and a selection of operetta. Sadly, both the record player and the amp are showing their age: on some records the audio sounds rather fuzzy and the needle picks up plenty of pops and ticks. Hopefully that's something we can work on the next few months.
I'm hard at work this Friday night, working on the new Renshinjuku website! I'm putting the final touches to the set of plugins and am translating all content to dutch as well. I was very happy to learn about qTranslate, a Wordpress plugin which makes multi-lingual websites a snap! Couldn't have done it without qTranslate!
Once I'm done, there's admin-work to be done: write a manual for our dojo officials, provide documentation and then hopefully we can quickly migrate the site to production.
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2012-08-22 11:14:00
As I wrote last week I've been lazy. So to get back into the game I'm teaming up with my sempai Jeroen and Martijn.
Last night, Jeroen visited for an hour of kendo and muscle training (followed by some geekery). Aside from the basic stretching and suburi, he taught me some things about pushups, in order to improve the muscles in my shoulders and arms. The basic regimen to start me off is X reps of 5x normal, 5x wide, 5x narrow, which ought to get me started. Many thanks for that! Now all I need to do is follow through and actually DO this stuff.
My form and breathing in kendo are improving again, back towards their old state, but it requires constant reminding. I need to actively think of every step, to ensure I'm doing it right. After going for 100 hayasuburi (which Martijn achieved last week) my blistered left hand blistered some more and drew blood. Jeroen sempai made it to 130/140, while I caved around 70 :| That was down to my technique, because I started really shoving and yanking my shinai after 50, when my arms got tired. Form, form, form!
Three more weeks until class starts again in Almere (or two until Amstelveen). Need to get cracking!
kilala.nl tags: sports, kendo,
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2012-08-18 20:08:00
Last thursday, I picked up my shinai for the first time since our last class in early July. I suck. A month and a half without sports has messed up my form, my condition and my perseverence. It was weird feeling a hurdle to start again and I didn't like it because kendo is something I want to do!
Practicing suburi with Martijn, I noticed that I've lost everything I've learned in the past few months: I was holding my breath, I was blocking my neck and shoulders and I was pulling/pushing with my right hand.
I felt so frustrated and disappointed with myself. Because they only reason this happened is because I let it. So the only thing to do is to pick everything up again and get back to training! And instead of training with anger in my mind, I will use mokuso and relaxation practices (from my anxiety training) to get rid of it first.
I will pick up the Couch to 5k program again. Last tuesday my sempai Jeroen (middle in the picture above) went for a run with me, which I really appreciated! At seventeen he's über-sporty and I enjoy training with him as he's gently supportive :) This morning I went for another run, using week 3 from Easy into 5k (instead of week 2 which I did on tuesday). Tuesday I was knackered, but this morning went fine.
Time to get going!!! /o/
kilala.nl tags: kendo, sports, meh, running,
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All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Tess Sluijter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.