Tonight was another Monday night pickup practice. It was pretty good. Work did not let me out until eight in the evening so I was not there for the very start but I caught up quickly enough. Started with fifty men suburi and fifty do suburi followed by fifty more suburi and then we worked on our kirikaeshi and our testing preparations. Werden Senpai smooshed my toe again. Which means I need to work harder at keeping my left foot behind me. Our test and the Ito Cup are both coming up in just a few months and - unlike the tournament in Dallas which I wound up not attending - the upcoming tournament is a team tournament (with no individuals divisions) and so I really need to step up my game more than I have been! Practice was exhausting tonight as well! Normally, my EIA (exercise induced asthma) is not that bad because our warm-ups help me into my refractory period. But tonight I really jumped right into it from the beginning and so I wound up feeling a little wiped. But I still felt great too! It was like a steam room in my men! So much sweat! Fantastic! Unrelated to our actual practice, both Werden Senpai and I had relatively rough days today and so I invited myself over to his place after practice for some nigori and a few Bamboo Blade episodes. I definitely enjoy social time after practice, whenever it happens, and Werden Senpai also seemed much more cheerful by the time the night was done. So mission accomplished! Hopefully we will be able to get more people from the dojo in on the social time as well. That would be really nice.
Monday, December 5, 2011 - Session 46
How wild! Writing on a Monday evening! We at Yamakage Dojo have begun practicing on Tuesday nights once we realized that the YMCA has the room open in the evenings, and my work did not have enough hours to schedule me for either tonight or tomorrow night, so we had a pickup practice that lasted just under two hours. Werden Senpai led the practice and Chelsea was present as well. We also had a new person. He seemed to be into it and - as I do with all the new people - I will be rooting for him to stick with it! Mostly the practice was super informal. We opened with some suburi and that was when I knew that I was having an off night. I felt much sloppier than normal. But I got into the swing of things (my favorite pun) after awhile and mostly helped Chelsea with her tobikomi-men and her tobikomi-do technique. I wanted to impress upon her how useful it is to practice striking do because no one really seems to do it and it seems to me that many people consider do waza to be their weakest waza. We also ran through suriage-men a few times and then did some kirikaeshi. I was very impressed with the progress that Chelsea has made as far as her spirit is concerned. Actually got her to do a proper kiai to open kirikaeshi with! Much better than I had expected.
Then came the keiko! Werden Senpai and I both decided to use the informal pickup practice as an opportunity to keiko with techniques we do not otherwise get to play with. He went in with nito and I committed the keiko to (judge me not!) hidari-gedan. And I felt super slow right from the start. But I think I did a decent job on judging the waza that were worth attempting and the waza that were not. I mostly focused on going after the kote and the do with a little mune-tsuki as well. Taking a hidari kamae rather than a more standard kamae made it easier to propel forward but I believe that is only because I am more comfortable on that side. I should start working on taking what I was doing with my left foot forward and reversing it so that I can really improve on my footwork. Werden Senpai negated almost everything that I threw at him but afterward he said that I was actually throwing some pretty good strikes. Using the stance felt good. I think it really made me emphasize a more direct approach in my waza because I could not rely so much on the nuki and hiki waza I tend to focus on when I am in chudan. It was a good learning experience and one that I should be able to apply to my chudan in our normal practices. But enough writing for now, since tomorrow night is another practice!
Thursday, November 18, 2011 - Session 44
Had an easily paced class again this evening. Maestas Sensei had us run through the first four kihon kata. Men-nuki-men, kote-nuki-kote, et cetera. It was my first time really running through the third kata as uchidachi and it really helped me realize just how intense that particular kata is meant to feel. Considering the fact that it begins in gedan-no-kamae, and everyone always says that gedan is the least aggressive stance, the actual aggression displayed once things get moving is pretty intense! I think I am actually beginning to finally commit those kata to memory as well. Focus and memory are both difficult for me but personal obstacles like that can be overcome with more discipline. I just need to figure out how to be more disciplined. Sensei made a joke about me being unfocused tonight so I am going to work more on that. I definitely appreciate the fact that he approaches things like that with humor and jokes, since humor is the language I understand best! I admit to being a clown! It also looks as though Werden Senpai has actually started up the Tuesday night practices at the YMCA that he had been thinking about. So now all I need to do is talk with my supervisors at work about starting my Tuesday night shifts a little earlier than normal so that I can attend. Some extra Kendo time is always good.
Thursday, November 4, 2011 - Session 42
Tonight was wicked fun. It wound up being a somewhat lighter class than usual and this was good because I have been having some serious winter aches now that the weather has begun to turn. Lower back goes all angry and circulation is no longer my friend. I will change that though! Time for steam rooms and calisthenics! Anyway, tonight we devoted the class to nito! I admit that I am not quite as excited about nito as my senpai and sensei but I still find it fun. Having a shoto just changes the game so much. For instance, having a shoto gave me something to hold on to after I was disarmed in my keiko with Werden Senpai, thus providing hilarity for all. Oh well. Setting aside the keiko, which happened at the end of class, we started out by running through the kihon kata and then drilled out some katate strikes before Maestas Sensei brought out a few shoto shinai and we got to practicing. We did some rotating drills and I filled the motodachi role for most of those drills. Which was good because I enjoy one shinai quite a bit more and just receiving strike after strike gave me an opportunity to see where I might look for openings were I to ever find myself against someone who practices nito and such. In fact I really do enjoy the motodachi role in general. I feel as though I learn a lot there! We ended the night with some keiko, with me and Amaury Senpai and Werden Senpai as the participants. Amaury used nito against me and - for once - I felt as though I could finally focus on successfully putting down some strong attacks. Granted it was only because he had no experience using nito in keiko until tonight... but still! Then he fought against Werden Senpai with only one shinai while Werden Senpai used nito, and that was fun to watch. The spirit was high! Finally, my turn to try out nito in keiko came and I was paired against Werden Senpai and I totally crumbled. His spirit is always very high and his seme has - thus far - been enough to keep me down. It was still fun though and being challenged like that (even when I am struggling) is always very inspiring! So even though I do not feel that nito is for me, it was fun just watching everyone else get excited about it and pumped. I love fun nights like this. Oh and the new girl will be buying some gear soon! Which means she is liking Kendo! Which is always good.
Thursday, October 27, 2011 - Session 40
Nihonme. Second Kata. Kote, Nuki-Kote. At least at this point in time, in my very short time practicing Kendo, this particular kata has had the most influence on my performance. It is the kata which introduced me to timing after all. In shiai keiko, the majority of my attacks start with the same drop that the uchidachi in the second kata uses. Not in response to a kote attack though. I simply find that I can best visualize my attacks when I first drop my own shinai below that of my opponent. When I first started doing this in keiko, it was being done to strike at the kote as in the form. But then I started going for a men attack as well. In part because I knew that it would not be what was expected but also because I am more confident striking for the men. Tonight I focused on striking for the do after that drop, to minimal success. Each time I went for the do, my brain paused for a moment because I was striking gyaku-do rather than the more standard do and Justin Senpai has told me (several times) that gyaku-do is not particularly appropriate at my current level. But it is the side that feels most natural when striking from that dropped position. Drop the shinai into gedan, bring it up along the right side (my left side) of the opposing shinai into jodan, and then down for gyaku-do, is basically what happened. No good. BUT! When I was in shiai keiko with Himitsuheiki Senpai (Joke: He is the best in our regular group and came outta nowhere but I cannot remember his name so I call him this as a joke and he is not Japanese) I managed to switch it up at the end and strike for men rather than gyaku-do, which he said confused him and which allowed me to strike a solid and clean men! Both he and Maestas Sensei said it was a very good men.
Hurrah!
But I do feel that I am becoming more sneaky as I become more confident. I drop the shinai sometimes before an attack because I know that - in part - it helps to conceal the potential target that I am aiming for and such. Like intentional telegraphing or something, at least in my head. I know that it really is nowhere near as tricky as I imagine it to be in my lofty imaginings, of course! I want my Kendo to be more direct than that. But it does help me visualize more effectively for whatever reason. Amaury Senpai suggested that I feel more comfortable dropping my shinai before a strike because I am so keen on gedan-no-kamae and the drop allows me to switch from chudan to gedan just before attacking, and I think he is right on that count. It makes sense in part because Maestas Sensei told me that I am too receptive in my keiko and that I play almost exclusively on the outer boundaries rather than fighting for a more central position like I should. I am all reaction and very little proaction. I agree. I really do like gedan a lot and my hope is that I will someday be able to successfully play in that stance and put its value on display, but I also know that (as with any stance other than chudan) my first priority needs to be chudan. I need to become very strong with chudan before I can begin entertaining other stances. And not just in the actual position but in the mentality as well! Right now I am only reacting because I am an instinctively reactive person. I cannot truly entertain a reactive and receptive stance until I am good at acting aggressively, until I can proactively react. Does that make sense? I think it must be like that little half step that people at my level (including me) take before fumikomi. Technically, it is proper footwork. But not at our level. We need to be able to do proper fumikomi before we can do that little half step with intention. The same goes for gedan and reactive technique, or at least that is what I have been told.
A great practice overall.
Thursday, October 15, 2011
Back when I first started Kendo (oh those many sage months ago, when I was yet but still a child and unlearned in the ways of the world) I had my pride assaulted. Assaulted is actually a strong word. More like poked. My pride was poked. I had heard several men in the online Kendo community go on about upper body strength limits and so forth. Because my pride was poked in this way, I wound up committing to using the heaviest shinai I could find. I had actually started out with a pretty standard size 39 practice shinai intended for women from the E-Bogu website, and it actually did feel heavy to me when I had first started despite being on the light side at only 460 grams or an approximate single pound. But that quickly changed and the shinai now feels light as a feather when I hold it and its grip feels much too thin. Which seems to limit my awareness of the shinai in space due to poor proprioception or something like that. So, after the previously said pride poking, my first shinai was ditched (and later scrapped for parts) and I traded up to the ise bessaku shinai and its approximate 530 grams weight. It definitely helped train up my arms and it was a definite adjustment. Now I tend to switch between the ise bessaku and the kamakura shinai which has even more weight in it. Consider both very much recommended. The ise bessaku is my favorite for life.
But times change. Oh yes! People mature and pride can sometimes be set aside. Well that or a person can realize that - unless she really commits to doing some intense strength training - simply swinging a heavier shinai will never really get her to a point where she can wield the heavier varieties as though they are nothing at all. Humility, friends! Humility and frugality! At the moment the ise bessaku I practice with is actually using a slat from my very first shinai, which made for some interesting weight distribution in the resulting frankenshinai that I made. It is simply an expensive shinai to replace seeing as it costs about a quarter of my current paycheck. Woe to the part-timer! No. Scratch that. About a third. It is about a third of my paycheck. I need more hours. Anyways, at this point I am considering picking up a few of those that I first used and see whether or not I can perform better with something lighter in my hands that I can actually move about with some speed. I can definitely practice katate more effectively at least! But lest you think I am finally sweeping aside the chip I have on both shoulders, stand corrected! I will keep on with my ise frankenshinai for practice outside keiko and I might just start hitting the weights at the gym again. In fact! I can even do ten push-ups now, which is ten more than I was able to do one month ago! I am such a beast. Oh yeah!
;)
Thursday, October 14, 2011 - Session 40
18:18 PM: Kendo cannot come soon enough tonight. I will be leaving for the YMCA in about five minutes or so and I could really use the practice. I am having one of those low nights, where all I want to do is run away and go someplace new where nothing is the same as the life to which I am accustomed. Vacation time in just another week and some days though! So I can run about then. For now, what I really need most is some Kendo to help me feel grounded. Holding a shinai always centers me and helps me feel more focused. It helps me feel good about who I am and where I am. It can never come to soon.
12:51 AM: Some nights Kendo is fun. Other nights, Kendo is the most perfect kind of good that I can imagine. Tonight there was someone who was new (to me) and who has been doing Kendo since he was sixteen years old. Much like Justin Senpai in fact. Karen Senpai also showed up with Maestas Sensei. Amaury Senpai and Cameron also showed. So it was a great night with a full group and all! Cameron actually inherited the loaner bogu that I had been using once I purchased and received my own bogu and tonight was his second night with all the gear on. Hmm. We pretty much jumped right into practice and began the opening reiho with our bogu - all but the men and kote - on from the start, and we did several rotating drills after our suburi. Men, Kote, Do, Kote-Men, Men-hiki-Do, Men-hiki-Men, Kote-nuki-Do, Harai Men, and so on. We worked up a sweat right from the start and it was great! Although I had tied on my men a little too tightly and there was a knot right on the back of my head which was rather uncomfortable. I was glad for a free moment in which I was able to adjust it when I was the odd person out in our rotation. We ended the class with rotating keiko and I was able to keiko with Cameron and then Amaury Senpai. A few times, I was able to work with maki waza and at some point I would like to try using maki waza to bring the opposing shinai down, drop my shinai just a little bit when it is below theirs, and then smack it upward before going for men. Not sure it would be effective but I hope to try it. Sad to say, my attacks still need a lot of work before they are truly clean and I am still probably only fifth kyu material... but someday soon! I just need to start committing myself to practice again. My depression really gets to me at times and it can be easy to try and hide from everything, including Kendo. But once I am practicing all the sad feelings go away and I feel so good. I am fortunate to have this in my life. I am very fortunate. OH! We also went out afterward! My first second practice!
Thursday, August 4, 2011 - Session Thirty Eight
Kendo journal. I have missed you. I have also missed Kendo! I have been absent from practice for something like two weeks, in part because I got overzealous and tweaked up my right ankle a bit. It was super minor but it was sore when I walked so I chose to miss class last week so as to prevent it from becoming something worthy of concern. We did some Iaido tonight. Which was fun. Murder on the knees as usual. Discovered that the Boulder Circus Center has an Iaido group or something as well. Might check that out soon. Still waiting on my bogu to arrive and the anticipation is killing me. Not a whole lot else to write about tonight. But in a real fine mood.
Thursday, August 4, 2011 - Session Thirty Six
I wonder where Amaury Senpai has been? I do not have a working phone otherwise I would be bugging him with text messages and telling him to get down to practice and hit me on the head. We had a new student tonight who I think has all the right motivation to keep on coming back. Sensei was running a few minutes late so I introduced her to some basics like how we hold the shinai and how we move our feet. Sensei then showed up and I feel like she had fun. It is always great to see how people respond to Kendo at first. What practices make them nervous, what practices they get into right away, and so on. For me it was the screaming which was the most difficult when I first began. I tried to get into Kendo several years ago before finally getting started because I was so afraid of all the screaming and all the noise. But then there I was after class was done, saying to watch competition videos to see how men scream and women scream. Kiai is a real pleasure for me now and I am glad it is something I can be comfortable with. I am looking forward to having her in class next week. She was fun to speak with and fun to practice with.
There were several small moments during class tonight in which I spontaneously realized that I had made progress in my own technique. My attacks still wobble from side to side somewhat but they are so much more fast and more strong than they were when I first began. My footwork has improved a great deal as well. I feel more and more as though different elements are beginning to work together more and that feeling has helped me become reinvigorated. It is so good. I think that - sometime - when we run through this or that over and over again I do not recognize that I have made progress because we are moving forward. But when we have a class like the class we had tonight - in which we focused only on simple men strikes and sliding backward and forward on our feet - I am given the chance to look backward and see just how many footsteps I have left behind me. Or something like that. Returning the core basics from time to time drives home the progress that one makes because it is the foundation rather than a repetition of that with which we might still be unfamiliar maybe? It was wonderful.
Thursday, July 29, 2011 - Session Thirty Five
There was no practice last week because Maestas Sensei had to go and pick someone up from the airport or somesuch and Amaury Senpai needed the time off for something, and there was a Dungeons & Dragons game I wanted to attend. BUT! Practice this week was great. It was just me and Sensei again and he ran me through the first seven kata like we did two weeks ago, but this time it was much more thorough. He had me run through both the uchidachi and shidachi sides to the kata and I think that going through the uchidachi side helped me cement the shidachi role a bit more in my head. I still have trouble remembering anything at all beyond the fourth kata. Or really the problem is that I have trouble remembering them in sequence but I definitely feel that I remembered them better this week than I have in the past. So that is a good sign. Sanbonme remains wicked hard. The seventh kata is also pretty difficult. It requires so much coordination!
But the difficult elements in Kendo are the elements that help a person improve! And they are also what help a person have fun! I have not had the nervous/excitable laughter experience for a long time, but tonight it was hard to stifle the grin. I was having a great time running through the kata with Sensei. Although there was this one moment during gohonme (kata five) when he advanced as uchidachi and I totally blanked. He came forward for the men strike and - rather than reacting as prescribed in the kata - all I did was utter the absolute girliest squeak-and-shriek that has ever left my mouth. My shoulders tensed up and I think my body prepared itself for death or something because I felt this sensation that I imagine must be the opposite of seme or somesuch. Like suddenly the actual physical air opened up around me and I become one hundred percept vulnerable and open to attack. It was weird. We laughed about it though. I am not normally such a girl about things and I definitely do not shriek like that. I rebounded though! Totally got back into the swing of things (pun!) and I feel as though I did pretty decent. Nights like tonight help make Kendo great. It is just so full up with good times, you know?
Thursday, July 14, 2011 - Session Thirty Four
Kendo was good. Just me and Maestas Sensei tonight. Ran through the nihon kata a few times. It was good. Sanbonme remains my favorite. Made some progress on improving my gedan stance and made some progress on improving my performance in the first three kata as well. I am still having some issues with physical stability and balance but correcting that is really a long term goal. I have had misaligned everything for years now so acclimating to normal body movements and alignments will take some time. I would write more but I had to pick my brother up from a bar and so I am not really in the mood. Kendo can erase my stress like nothing else but some problems just do not end.
Thursday, July 7, 2011 - Session Thirty Three
No class for the last two weeks. Two weeks ago class was cancelled because Maestas Sensei was having car troubles, Amaury Senpai had work that needed catching up or something, and my seasonal cottonwood allergies had left my eyes all but welded. Last week I was feeling down and needed to study for an anatomy exam. Which I wound up not studying for at all. I have been slacking so hard! Augh! I got back into the swing of things this week though! But we also only got back into the swing of things for an hour or so before the electricity at the YMCA died. Practiced in the dark for awhile until we began losing what little light the two small windows give us and then called it quits for the night. Maestas Sensei mostly just ran me through some basics and then the motodachi side for kata three, which remains my favorite because it is all about gedan. A lot more from kata three stuck in my brain this time around. Still finding it difficult to execute the second thrust though. Using my hips and weight (?) to thrust the weapon forward has been a little hard for me to absorb at the moment.
Thursday, June 16, 2011 - Session Thirty Two
A poster on the Kendo World forums asked a question tonight. I figured I would put up my respone here: Mmm. I first attempted to start because I was fascinated with Japanese swords in general (nihonto, nodachi, et al) and some anime inspired me to go and try it out. I sat down to observe a class at the San Fernando Valley Kendo Dojo and fled after a few minutes due to all the screaming and intensity in the practice. Being that loud was a very scary prospect at the time. Six or seven years later and I wound up actually starting because I valued the discipline and the focus that Kendo offers, because I never stopped feeling embarrassed about ducking out from that first dojo and never going back, and because being loud no longer frightened me. (It kinda took a few years for me to really get comfortable with the fact that most people see me and think I am a young man ... and that most people hear me and think I am a young man ... and trust me, it is a pain in the ass when you work in a call center and only hear "Sir" and "what a nice young man you must be" all shift long ... ehherchm ...) As to sticking around? I suppose I just want to be good at Kendo. So never being quite strong enough or quite enduring enough or quite fast enough only ever encourages me to try harder at being a little more strong, a little more enduring, or a little more quick. So I guess that any drill which gets me closer to that goal is a drill that keeps me coming back again and again. Even when I feel like I am going to throw up and die. I love them all.
Practice tonight was solid. Maestas Sensei had Amaury Senpai and I start out with our bokuto and had us go through the kihon. I always enjoy the kihon and I always feel like I learn a little something new whenever we run through them. Men, kote, do, tski. Kote men. Men hiki do. Harai men. And so forth and onward. The mood tonight was even more relaxed than normal. Which wound up being deceptive! Because Sensei had us put on our bogu and run through the kihon again once we had finished running through them with our bokuto. Complete with running through after each strike and such. After that we put down our shinai and worked on fumikomi for awhile. Unfortunately my ear had become pinched inside my men and so I had to suck it up and deal until we were given a break. Fumikomi was hard! Sensei really emphasized landing our feet at the same time and I found it very difficult. My back leg is too slow and not snapping forward quickly enough. Anyway, once we were done with fumikomi practice we moved on and practiced some waza. Harai men, o-kote, and ko-kote were on the menu tonight. Harai men was a little difficult for me tonight and it became especially so when he had us practice it by reversing the positions of our shinai, dropping the shinai and bringing it up on the left side to knock the opposing shinai to the right before striking men.
Finally, we moved on to keiko. Keiko was so good! Although my body did start to give out as it usually does, my mind was much more in the game and I think I was able to keep up a good spirit throughout. I even managed what I think was a good do attack followed by a good attack to the men. I was even able to rebound after I started to get exhausted. Rebound in spirit at least. Although by the end I did feel like I was going to throw up and - naturally - Sensei had us finish with some kiri-kaeshi. My performance in the kiri-kaeshi was a bit wobbly, and my performance as motodachi was also wobbly even though I normally do alright at blocking each attack. One or two made it through. But yeah! Timing really seemed to be lesson for tonight and I still need to work on proper timing overall. Waiting to act until my opponent commits to their attack is a big area for me to work on. Great practice! Great night!
Thursday, June 2, 2011 - Session Thirty One
It is good to back at the home dojo. I think that must be a fundamental experience. One visits another and learns something while seeing how other people pursue the same goal. It broadens your appreciation. It also makes returning home much more sweet. You get to ease back into the familiar and approach it with fresh eyes that prevent you from taking it for granted. The way your floor feels beneath your feet. The way your senpai crushes you in keiko the way only your senpai can. The way your sensei totally mocks you for it. Good humor abounds! New friends and old friends! Silver and gold! The really good garlic gyoza I left in the freezer and can now eat! Coming home after a wonderful trip is always good. Anyways! On to practice!
So Amaury Senpai just purchased his own brand new bogu. Which means we got to see how the himo are tied on and all that. It also meant that he was motodachi for our first drills. You know, so we could help him break in the new bogu. Mweh heh heh. Sensei also started us in bogu tonight and I think it made a pretty good difference in my energy levels. I hit my wall earlier on in the practice and pushed through it with more time left to practice. Though I did still hit a second wall toward the end. I really realize now just how much altitude can make a difference in endurance. So now I am even more determined to build up my endurance here so that the altitude is no problem! In doing so I should see significant endurance improvements whenever I go elsewhere. But yes! Sensei had us practice some oji-waza tonight and that was fun. I was able to apply some of what I learned in Chicago during practice (like allowing the momentum in my swing to pull me into fumikomi rather than losing balance when I stutter step and attempt to launch) though I did so imperfectly, but that just means there is room for improvement! Sensei brought his son to practice tonight and I was very impressed. Apparently he has been practicing against adults ever since he was five years old. Not that I was told this until he and I were in keiko. Of course. I was a little disappointed in myself for dropping a lot of what I picked up in Chicago when it comes to running through and drawing out my kiai from start to end. I had shortened my kiai again for only the actual strike (which is how we do at Yamakage Dojo pretty much) and was stopping in taiatari (more like foolishly relaxing into taiatari) once a strike landed. Familiar environments bring back familiar habits. Just more to work through!
After some round robin keiko we removed our men and kote and went over some waza that I had never seen before. Maki waza and also otoshi waza. I had a hard time with some of the maki waza. Mostly when attempting maki from the left side. I even impaled my face on his shinai when we practice the maki waza with our men bogu on. Just bam! Face! Dead. But the otoshi waza was soooo cool! Sensei showed us Harai Otoshi Men and had us practice it for awhile before bringing class to an end. Sensei also said that some people think otoshi waza - especially harai otoshi men - is rude. But he also pointed out that it usually works. It seems so powerful and it felt really good (at this point I should probably bring my dark aura to the drycleaners) but I am still covering too much distance with my steps for that kind of waza. I end up much too close and it impedes my follow through. But it really raised my spirit and felt super good. No need fr me to get too excited about it though because I still need to focus on my basics. Basics! Basics! Basics! I really feel that I should not even try the more advanced waza until I can score one good clean men ippon, and one good clean do ippon after that, and one good clean kote ippon even then. Although it is still nice to look ahead. I love Kendo so much.
Oh! I forgot to add that my tenegui slipped down over my eyes during my last keiko with Amaury Senpai. It made fighting very difficult but at least I could watch his feet. Oh man. I definitely need to tie it tighter next time!
Friday, May 27, 2011 - Session Thirty
Just finished up with visiting the Chicago Kendo Dojo and I am so fired up! It was a very, very, very different experience than the training style to which I am accustomed. But first! I showed up with my two friends - Katrina and Jason - in tow because I did not bring my own vehicle with me and we bumped into another woman who was there to observe the class. It turns out that she was an Aikidoka who wanted to give Kendo a try and so we all hunted down the entrance together and found it after some brief confusion. It turns out that we had arrived pretty early so we stood around and I began introducing myself to the people who were there. It turns out that there was another visitor as well! From a dojo in London! He was there with his wife on their honeymoon and he was so tall! Eventually, other people began to arrive and a very friendly student named Magic asked me to run through the first four kata with him. I had some trouble remembering the kata, in part because I have been without my attention deficit medication (weeeaaak excuuuuse!!) and in larger part because I need to practice them more often. An older gentleman (and I wish I could remember his name) then ran through the first two kata with me and I made some progress that I will be able to keep with me. After that we put on our do and tare and then circled up for opening warmsups, which were startling for me but I caught up after a few fumbles.
Practice was so intense afterward. There were rotating kihon practices and that was a definite departure from what I have previously experienced. It was good and I feel like I got into the swing of things (classic pun!) quickly enough. A whole lot of men, kote, and kote-men and do. At one point I got to practice my do against the gentleman from London and it was so easy to hit do because he was so tall. I mean he was really, really, really tall. What was really striking me at this point - other than the Chicago kendoka - was how very not tired I was feeling. I suppose that practicing at altitude has its benefits because I only felt hot rather than exhausted and my exercise induced asthma was not kicking in at all. Normally I do not get to enjoy a refractory period but I was fortunate enough to not have to deal with the EIA until after my last jigeiko with Andy, and so I was really able to focus on the input that I was being given from the senpai. One in particular (again I wish I could remember a name) explained to me that a swinging a shinai is a lot like swinging a whip and just that little bit was enough to help me better visualize a concept I have been working to grasp for a long while. Andy kept me going full steam even when I was about to crash and told me that we would not be done until I could come at him with a full long kiai that did not end till I turned around. Normally we do not draw out our kiai at Yamakage and this was something I had been thinking about, and it felt good to draw out the kiai like that. I will definitely be bringing that back home with me! There were some rough moments too though. At one point I felt as though my center of gravity had somehow become heavier while running through and I felt as though I was about to sink into the ground as I slid across the floors. That was weird. And not being able to remember the kata as well as I should have was also a little embarassing, but it mostly provided me with more motivation to really crack down and learn them at last. So even the clumsy moments were positive motivational experiences.
All in all my experience at the Chicago Kendo Dojo was as wonderful as I had hoped. I met some new Kendo people and - although I could not attend second practice at the bar for conversations afterward - I was happy to be able to learn about them all by experiencing their Kendo in practice, and I can say that the students and the teachers at the dojo are all fantastic people. I hope to see them all again. Oh! As I was changing I spoke with a student briefly and she was full up with enthusiasm. It made me feel so good to hear it! She also has family in Denver so I encouraged her to visit either Yamakage Dojo or Ito Dojo the next time she is in town. But I have usurped this laptop from my friend for long enough. Time to have some water and get to bed.
May 28, 2011: Some other thoughts now that the excitement from last night has died down a bit. I took a brief break during jigeiko in order to get my bearings a bit. I was a little confused with how the jigeiko was working but once I got my bearings again I went and got in line to practice with Miyamoto, and I was struck (pun) with how friendly she was during the time that she gave me. She really helped me with drawing out my kiai (as did everyone else) and also striking a men that was more clean. Just another example of how helpful and rad everyone was when I visited. I am also pretty pleased with the shinai welt I got from a very quick kote strike that stung me under the kendogi sleeve. It looks good.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
So I am going out of town on Wednesday and heading out to Chicago to visit a friend through the weekend. Which means that I will be missing Kendo practice out here with Yamakage Dojo, which is always sad. But it also means that I have the opportunity to visit another dojo out in the Chicago area. I have already emailed with the Chicago Kendo Dojo and will be attending their Friday evening keiko and practice. I will also (barring them saying not to do so) the friend I am visiting along with me. I do not know that she has ever seen Kendo done before and we have been friends for well over ten years, closer to twelve years, so it will be nice to share that with her and all. It looks as though there are also some very impressive individuals at this dojo as well. Details afterward! I am excited!
Thursday, May 19, 2011 - Session Twenty-Nine
Another good evening. Amaury Senpai started a new job recently and was exhausted or something like that so he did not attend practice tonight. He also forgot to let me know (we carpool) so I did not leave until around 18:50 or thereabouts. But I pretty much got to the YMCA on time. I caught Sensei sitting on the (eeew suede) gym couch and then we got started. Once again I was the only student in class so we focused on my posture when in kamae and Maestas Sensei introduced me to seigan-no-kamae for the first time. Quite a bit more difficult than I expected! Sensei also ran me through my swings a few times so we could strengthen the basics a bit more. I made a little progress there but pushing and pulling the shinai through my swing is still a bit lost on my body, and I am still mostly raising it up and then simply slashing down. During the footwork portion I tried turning out my feet a little bit to see whether or not it would help with my suri-ashi but that (like so much else) was a bit more difficult than I had expected. I have mentioned before that my knees turn inward and I guess that is due to underdeveloped muscles in my inner thighs. Turning my feet outward aligns my knees forward and prevents my feet from drifting inward whenever I step or slide forward and backward. But it also changes the muscle groups being used. So I think I just need to knuckle down and call up that physical therapist and get started on developing those muscles. I also really need to focus on what Sensei says about starting out slow and big with my swings. I think I instinctively feel like I have more control when I swing quickly, but that is just a personal illusion. I lose control when I attempt a slow and controlled swing because I do not have the muscle strength (strength is not quite the word I am wanting to use) tension to keep it controlled. Which means that even my fast swings are still uncontrolled.
Afterward we spent the last thirty minutes or so sitting on the floor and talking about Kendo in general. Sensei gave me some real good pointers on zanshin and then he basically spoke about Iaido for awhile and different mentalities in Kendo and told stories and things like that. It was real great and not just because I have had this headache all day long and was maybe not as up to swinging and screaming as I normally would have been. I like any opportunity to be social with the people from the Yamakage Dojo and not just because those people make up about on third of my social time in this area. It is also because I like Kendo people! Good times, good times.
Thursday, May 12, 2011 - Session Twenty-Eight
What a good night. Amaury and I went out to the YMCA as usual for the regular practice session. We got into our uniforms and then hung around on the gym couch (whose faux suede material seems unfortunately chosen for a place where sweat is super common) and waited for the cardio class before us to end. Sensei came walking up the hallway with two people already in tow! I had never met them before but I recognized them. Maestas Sensei has talked about Karen from time to time and I guess he finally got her to come back down and get some practice in! She was definitely as tall as he described. Of course, no one ever mentioned the second person. I just assumed (correctly) that she was Karen's child. Anyway, the practice started out light and we began with some men, kote, and do suburi for our warm up routine. We then moved on to the kihon. I still need so much practice on the kihon. I know we wig out on it whenever Amaury and I manage to get together to practice on our own - and I have not given it much attention on the solo front either - so I am going to work that into my new daily regimine.
Once we were done with the kihon - which we practiced for an hour or so - we got into our bogu and ran through some kirikaeshi and some more kihon. Keiko came afterward! It was a round robin match deal that began with Amaury and I paired up as usual. I was owned. Karen then cycled in and then I cycled to face her once she and Amaury were finished. I was owned again. Just when I thought the owning was done, Sensei cycled in to face me. So totally owned again. I got to sit out for a little while and I watched Amaury and Sensei go at it before Karen went in and faced off with Sensei. I wound up in keiko with Karen again and - again - was totally owned. Both she and Sensei were really able to push me around. I was super amazed at how much physical strength Karen had and with how fast she was in the match. I would be able to totally observe all her moves until the final moment when she suddenly disappeared and I felt that familiar crack as a shinai came down on my head. Pretty incredible and I felt totally invigorated in spirit even though my body was beginning to reach its limit. Amaury and I paired off again and I actually got in a few hits that elicited "good" comments from Sensei! Which always, always, always make my night. I also got one or two from Karen as well though the commentary from her which still sticks in my mind is a moment in which she took me aside let me know that my zanshin needs work and that I would have had a few men strikes had I been more focused.
Practice like this really make me want to get back on that horse and hit up the YMCA every day again! And so I am going to do just that! But this time I am going to change my approach a little bit. Rather than running through the same routine every day, I am going to devote each week to a different kata and a different strike, while still including the usual and necessary drills for footwork and such. My footwork has been not-so-good lately, and I think some bad habits have snuck back in because my balance is total crap again. Anyway, now it is time to kick back with an orange soda and play some video games while cuddling with the dogs. I hope things are going well for everyone out there!
Thursday, May 5, 2011 - Session Twenty-Seven
Last night was wonderful. Sadly, Amaury Senpai was not at practice last evening and neither was anyone else. So it wound up being only me. Maestas Sensei and I went over the first four kata and I really enjoyed learning the third kata and its gedan-no-kamae good times. I have been slacking on my daily practices due to all the sickness that has been going on but I am going to ramp that up again after this weekend is through. Time to get back on the horse and kick some butt! I also still need to work on building up some seme and I might enlist my younger brother in helping me with that. If only as a practice dummy to swing on. Muah ha ha ha! Oh and it was also my birthday last night and the fact that I was able to celebrate my 30th with Kendo and then a small celebration with some Denver friends really made it special. Honestly, at this point I think I would be truly happy with life were I only ever to do Kendo and see friends and practice my faith. Of course there is so much more to life than just those things and continuing my schooling while pursuing a career that I know I will enjoy are both up there on my list as well. But I am definately happy with where my life is at right now and I can honestly say that I am excited about entering my thirties now while still somehow being this ridiculous kid. A life with friends and something to love is a really good life indeed.
