a MMB! Kendo Blog: Intensity

MMB! Kendo Blog

Sunday, July 17, 2005


忍耐 + 掌握人生
Intensity

The intensity of last weekend's National Squad Training stayed on with me throughout the training this week. It felt great to fight with intensity and urgency. Jigeiko became much more involving and challenging when I really put all my focus on my opponent, scrutinizing and pressurising my opponent. It's even more enjoyable when my opponent could match my intensity, and the fighting for the centre-line becomes a psychological and tactical game of control. It is a whole new feel to Kendo which I really love.

I intended to go to all the training sessions in the week. However, my dad needed the only car in my family to drive to the car auction on Monday night and I was feeling unwell on Wednesday, so I could only manage to attend 3 sessions this week. Nonetheless, I really put a lot of effort into those trainings, so I was satisfied with my training this week.

Tuesday
I had a good long jigeiko with Onodera sensei.

Thursday
I was feeling crook in the early morning and took a sickie from work. However, I was feeling much better after having some medication and a lot of sleep in the afternoon, and so I went to the UNSW training that night.

Kirby led the class and he ran it just like the National Squad Training - stretching, group suburi warm-up, National Squad warm-up routine in bogu. Oh yes, Kirby also picked me to ask how many haya-suburi we should all do, and of course, I quickly answered "47" without thinking and hesitation. It's a low haya-suburi number at UNSW standard. It was funny to hear from Aaron at the end of the training that he said he was scared when I said the number. Somehow "470" was the number he thought he heard. tehehe, I guess the UNSW guys really had haya-suburi-phobia. Poor guys! =P

The class was really small on Thursday - only 12 people were training that night. Many have gone overseas or on holiday trips at this winter holiday season. But Mark Stone and Peter Strauss were there on the night, and I had a couple of good and short jigeiko with Mark Stone. It's nice to hear that he said my kendo was much stronger now.

Half way through the training, Sano sensei was doing a waza demonstration on Kirby and he borrowed my shinai. Remember I have started using the chunky shinai about a month ago? Well, when Sano sensei was using my shinai to do demonstration, I was looking for his face expression, and it was really funny. First Sano sensei hold the shinai, then he looked at the tsuka in an unbelievable sort of way. Then he gripped the tsuka again and demonstrated the cut. After he did some explanations to the class, both his hands gripped the shinai once again, and then he turned to me and asked "what's this?" hahaha. I love my shinai. It is just so much fun to look at people's expression when they gripped the tsuka.

Oh, remember I had to borrow a womens size 38 shinai in last weekend's National Squad Training because I forgot to bring my shinai bag to Brisbane? Hayami lent me her spare shinai, and wow, that shinai felt so light after I have been using the monstrous, chunky size shinai for a month. My shinai swing was so much faster using the normal shinai now.

Saturday
There were heaps of people training in Willoughby on Saturday morning. The beginner also joined in with the rest of the class.

I had Peter Strauss as motodachi in the waza session, and had a short jigeiko with him afterwards. From my jigeiko experience with him on Saturday, I found that Peter closed in the distance really quickly and favoured renzoku waza, leaving me no chance to relax or re-adjust. He was also the more agressive attacker type of players, and definitely would not wait for the other side. He would pro-actively go in and search for the attacking opportunity. So my jigeiko with him was very fast-pace, and I found him quite difficult to play against. Anyway, I would love to play him a couple more times to see how I should play against his type of players before he leave for Japan in about 2 weeks time.

I also had jigeiko with Gideon Lawrence, Mark Stone, Cath Hallgath and Aaron Alcantara on Saturday.

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