2012-09-15 16:38:00
So far, I'm loving this season!
This morning both Ton-sensei and Kris-fukushou returned to teach class. Kris joined the in-bogu group, while Ton-sensei trained the beginners. Kris, knowing that two or three of us want to actively participate in more tournaments this year, decided to start pushing us more. And what a great class it was!
We started on a bit of an embarassing down-note though. A show of hands by Kris proved that roughly five out of the nineteen kendoka present have actually performed shinai maintenance over the summer holiday. We were all warned to do our upkeep as it's for everybody's safety!
First up, our usual warming-up routine was followed by more men suburi. Every single kendoka was told to sound off ten strikes, meaning that we were to do 190 men strikes in a row! Wow! Sadly, I was the only one who couldn't keep up. I had to stop for a very short breather after 60, 100 and 150 strikes. It's awesome that the rest of the group managed to finish the exercise!
After that, footwork! Suriashi, variable suriashi, suriashi with hiki-fumikomi and finally "snaking" along the lines on the floor, practicing forward and sideways suriashi. It's during the snaking that I slightly twisted my ankle :)
Then, onwards to the rest of practice! Kirikaeshi, oki-men, oki-kote-men, hayai-kote-men, ai-men, maki-waza, maki-tsuki, hayai-kote with sidestep, debana-kote, all interspersed with five bouts of jigeiko. Afterwards, three rounds of uchikomi-geiko. So while last class in Amstelveen allowed for some breathers, today's class in Almere was killer.
One important thing that Kris pointed out to both Martijn and myself: in keiko, we tend to "dance" around each other after strikes, instead of striking and rushing through the opponent. That's really bad and shows zero zanshin.
Unfortunately I had to bow out from one jigeiko and halfway through another one, but still I'm pretty happy with how things turned out. Onwards to the Fumetsu Cup in two weeks' time!
kilala.nl tags: kendo, sports,
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