忍耐 + 掌握人生 Farewell Dino

Seme


Me against Ka-bi in the Founders Cup Tournament

Carrying on from the latest post-training video self-analysis, my goals for last Saturday and Monday keiko were to practice the very basic of applying pressure to create an attacking opportunity, which is:

• Seme, seme, seme...
• ...until my seme beat opponent's centre-line;
• move in immediately to the attacking zone;
• using forward momentum, propel whole body forward to cut men;
• follow through cut with quick suri-ashi and good zanshin.

Saturday Willoughby Keiko
I was one of the seven motodachi during last Saturday training, so I had plenty of opportunities to jigeiko with different players.

I tasted some successes with my new seme approach, which was being conscious in generating seme through my posture and pushing my opponents backward. As a result, I created more attacking opportunities as my opponents try to deal with my seme, and I was able to land a few men cuts that I hadn't been able to do before and also created some very good openings for debana kote.

The highlights of Saturday keiko was with Dino, Aiko and Nurlin. It was my last keiko with Dino at SKC before he flies out to Spain this Sunday. Aiko, my nihongo teacher, came to training at SKC for the 2nd time and I finally had a chance to jigeiko her. That was great.

I invited Nurlin to jigeiko with me for the second time of the day with 5 minutes to the end of training. It was a great keiko as I was really able to concentrate on trialing different kind of seme to see the response and reactions from Nurlin.

Feedbacks from Nurlin: She was able to see me coming in for cuts in the first keiko, but in the second, she wasn't able to see them coming before I landed the cuts. Also, it seems that I have been successful in creating fear to freeze her movements. So I think I am going into the right direction. Now I just have to keep practicing it.

After the training, about 20 of us went to Zen - a Japanese restaurant on Penhurst Street, Willoughby for lunch and club meeting. Afterwards, I drove Aiko and Lester to Chatswood station, and Max and Eleana to back to Gordon.

That night, we had a farewell party for Dino at Elaine's place. It was a great night with lots of food and beer. And we played a lot of games too. Here is one of the many great moments during the parties which I managed to record into my camera.




Monday UNSW Keiko
This session the whole class concentrated on moving in from toi-maai and do a perfect men cut. I had plenty of sleep the previous night, and was really pumped up. Throughout the training, I constantly reminded myself to execute each cut like an ippon cut in the World Championships.

We did a lot of men and debana-kote practice. At the end of the session, I had jigeiko with Sano sensei, Yoshiki and Mark Stone.

Once again, I concentrated on practicing seme, moving in to cut a perfect men / kote cut. It was so much harder practicing seme against Sano sensei. Sano sensei held very strong centre, and it was extremely difficult for me to apply enough seme to create opportunities to cut. I think I need more attack-the-shinai techniques against strong players to create the opportunities to cut. Pure emotional seme without physical shinai attacking technique is extremely hard to unsettle the strong centre of an experienced player.

Wednesday Willoughby Keiko
We practiced kata, a lot of ashi-sabaki and perfect basics cuts.

Tonight I could feel that good flick at the very last moment in a men-cut. I have been doing the hand-weight exercise my hand physiotherapist advised me to do whenever I have time at work. I still feel pain in my left wrist from time to time, but it is definitely becoming stronger again.

I asked Itakura Sensei for comments at the end of training, and he pointed out that my upper body is leaning forward.

Next lesson, I need to practice:

• seme forward from the hip, and
• punch in with left fist.

Thursday Dino Farewell Keiko



This is Dino's last keiko in Sydney before flying out for his 1-year stint in Spain. We spent quite a fair amount on kirikaeshi, men, kote and kote-men, before the 15-sec rounds of kakari-geiko against Sano sensei, and Dino.

In the final half an hour, we had a big farewell keiko for Dino. Dino had to fight each one of us, which is some 30 of us, one by one, from lowest grade to highest grade. Dino faced a new challenger whenever an ippon was scored or 60 secs was up.

Just when Dino thought it was all over when his ippon-geiko against Sano sensei was over... we had something more for Dino. I will let you see it for yourself in the youtube video-clip below. Enjoy!!!

A Tribute to Dino

Farewell Dino!

All the best in Spain!