忍耐 + 掌握人生
Lifting Out Of Kendo Doldrums
Today I finally had the chance to sweep away the week-long kendo dust and put on my kendo gear after a busy, hectic, stressful, straining week at work, pushing to meet demanding project deadline.
I finished work at 9pm last night, caught a cab home, relaxed for a while, then went straight to bed at 10:30pm. Woohoo!! I achieved the "sleep-early-on-Friday-night" goal I set myself last weekend. It was so easy getting up this morning. I got out of bed before the alarm set off. I felt so light, so free. It's finally the Queen's Birthday long weekend. There were no more work obligations I needed to worry about. I could finally go off and do things I enjoy the most - kendo and meeting friends in a relax and casual way.
There were about 40-50 people training today. After stretching, suburi and ashi-sabaki practices, those with bogu put their men and kote on. The whole class, including the non-bogu beginners, made 5 lines against the 5 motodachi. The lines were really long and so there weren't that much cutting opportunities and most of the time was waiting. We practiced the basics today - kirikaeshi, kihon-men, kote-men and uchikomi-geiko.
In the kihon-men practice, I had trouble doing the most basic kendo cut. It was really worrying when my first kihon-men cut missed an absolutely opened target. The shinai slid off the motodachi's men. Goodness heaven. What's wrong with me? I couldn't believe myself with that horribly wrong men-cut. I really couldn't believe it. You wouldn't believe how much effort and concentration I had to put in to my second kihon-men cut. It was so difficult. I had never found doing a men-cut to be so difficult before. It was a relieved when the second men-cut landed on the target.
Slowly, I found my basics back. However, it will take many more frequent training practices to get my kendo back to my peak where I can really enjoy the more exciting elements of kendo.
I had three jigeiko today with Cath, Sano sensei and Yoshiyuki. I didn't set myself a specific waza to practice on today. I just want to let my body get used to kendo again - concentrating on the absolute basics, such as foot movement, hand position, focused-mind, and be able to make a hand-foot coordinated strike.
Attack After Making an Attack
Yoshiyuki gave me some good advices on attacking opportunties during the jigeiko. He observed that, at the moment, I was doing one cut, then pass-thru, then back to chudan-no-kamae, before looking for the next attacking opportunity. The time between actively looking for attacking opportunities was too long.
He said that when I passed through my opponent after my first cut was blocked, I should maintain high alertness of whether my opponent's targets were opened just after he blocked my attack. If the opportunity presents, I should instantly make a follow-up close-distance strike, almost like a hiki-waza itself.
Afterwords
I hope my kendo life will get back to normal after the bank's next Thursday's CRM system Release 9.0. I want to play kendo and I want to feel comfortable with my kendo again.
I really miss the energetic, kendo-craving Me.
I finished work at 9pm last night, caught a cab home, relaxed for a while, then went straight to bed at 10:30pm. Woohoo!! I achieved the "sleep-early-on-Friday-night" goal I set myself last weekend. It was so easy getting up this morning. I got out of bed before the alarm set off. I felt so light, so free. It's finally the Queen's Birthday long weekend. There were no more work obligations I needed to worry about. I could finally go off and do things I enjoy the most - kendo and meeting friends in a relax and casual way.
There were about 40-50 people training today. After stretching, suburi and ashi-sabaki practices, those with bogu put their men and kote on. The whole class, including the non-bogu beginners, made 5 lines against the 5 motodachi. The lines were really long and so there weren't that much cutting opportunities and most of the time was waiting. We practiced the basics today - kirikaeshi, kihon-men, kote-men and uchikomi-geiko.
In the kihon-men practice, I had trouble doing the most basic kendo cut. It was really worrying when my first kihon-men cut missed an absolutely opened target. The shinai slid off the motodachi's men. Goodness heaven. What's wrong with me? I couldn't believe myself with that horribly wrong men-cut. I really couldn't believe it. You wouldn't believe how much effort and concentration I had to put in to my second kihon-men cut. It was so difficult. I had never found doing a men-cut to be so difficult before. It was a relieved when the second men-cut landed on the target.
Slowly, I found my basics back. However, it will take many more frequent training practices to get my kendo back to my peak where I can really enjoy the more exciting elements of kendo.
I had three jigeiko today with Cath, Sano sensei and Yoshiyuki. I didn't set myself a specific waza to practice on today. I just want to let my body get used to kendo again - concentrating on the absolute basics, such as foot movement, hand position, focused-mind, and be able to make a hand-foot coordinated strike.
Attack After Making an Attack
Yoshiyuki gave me some good advices on attacking opportunties during the jigeiko. He observed that, at the moment, I was doing one cut, then pass-thru, then back to chudan-no-kamae, before looking for the next attacking opportunity. The time between actively looking for attacking opportunities was too long.
He said that when I passed through my opponent after my first cut was blocked, I should maintain high alertness of whether my opponent's targets were opened just after he blocked my attack. If the opportunity presents, I should instantly make a follow-up close-distance strike, almost like a hiki-waza itself.
Afterwords
I hope my kendo life will get back to normal after the bank's next Thursday's CRM system Release 9.0. I want to play kendo and I want to feel comfortable with my kendo again.
I really miss the energetic, kendo-craving Me.
posted by Vivian Yung at
3:47 PM
Name: Vivian Yung
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