Second day of getting hit: still liking it!

2012-01-21 22:04:00

I don't know why, but today's class was a rather small group! Ton-sensei and Kris-fukushou led the training. Hugo and two newbies were doing basics and there were six of us in full armor: Tiamat, Aaron, Sander, Houdaifa, Charl and me. I guess we owe it to the smaller group that our rhythm.

0900-0930 was filled with kata as usual. Warming up included the stretching and the usual suburi, but then we switched to pairs to do contact haya-suburi. No running or footwork this time, we immediately got into armor. We practice kirikaeshi, men-uchi and kote-men as a group and then split up. Don't know what the armor-less folks were doing, but Kris took us through many interesting techniques, including suriage waza (parry on kote, then hit men) and maki waza (spiral the opponent's shinai to open a strike).

For fun and learning, the kendoka in bogu then all lined up for shiai with Charl (our only 1-dan student) who beat every single one of them. Class was then closed with uchikomi geiko, where all students had passes at Ton-sensei, Kris and Charl. During our debriefing Kris did impress upon us that he wasn't very pleased with the progress we're making... or actually, the lack thereof. All of us really need to step up to the challenge and push ourselves harder if we want to reach the next level as a group!

Notable flaws in my work today:

In closing, let me just say that I enjoy the hell out of participating in full! I'm so glad that I finally get to do real fights! I'm so grateful to Martijn, for lending me his helmet! _/-o_


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