a MMB! Kendo Blog: March 2006

MMB! Kendo Blog

Friday, March 17, 2006


忍耐 + 掌握人生
Ying & Yang

I was lucky... very lucky to be able to slip out of the office at 6pm on Wednesday and Thursday to go to kendo training in the past week. With the hectic crazy pressure to meet the Bank's IT project deadline, it serves as a good reminder that time at training is very precious. So I should put my whole heart and 100% effort and commitment whenever I have a chance to train.

While driving to the State Dan Squad training held at the Willoughby dojo on Wednesday night, I was trying to find the reason for being able to get pumped up, focus, and ready in my best shiai matches. There are probably a few contributing factors. However, the one that, I think, affect me the most is my mood before I step into the competition arena. That is, as soon as I am on the road going to the venue. If I could get my mind to focus and to build up the unbeatable feeling, then my shiai performance on the day would be good.

With less than a month to the National Championships, I must practice to get my mind and my mood ready before I step into the dojo at every training. So that means I will need to somehow get myself pumped up and be focus in the car on my way driving to the dojo. I actually have done some experiments to find out how to get that sort of readiness. And I found that listening to classical music in the car tends to relax me too much; whereas ABC News Radio keeps my head to busy thinking. Pop song with good rhythm is probably the best as long as it is not too annoying.

Food is, of course, the other main contributing source of affecting my energy / mood level. As many of you might have already know, I need to eat a good decent full meal 30mins before training. I can't do with pasta as it is too heavy. McDonald's bacon & egg muffins definintely a BIG NO NO! (I have had enough in Canberra.)

I found that rice provides me the best source of energy and set me up for the best shiai performance. As crazy as it might sound, I will bring a mini rice cooker to Perth (Thanks Michael!) and cook rice for breakfast.

Ying & Yang
The Dan Squad Training on Wednesday was fantastic. I had my last jigeiko on the night with Sano sensei, and he gave me some very useful feedbacks at the end of the training.

The first comment Sano sensei made was that I think too much during my jigeiko.

The second comment was on my kote-uchi. Sano sensei was able to tell that I was going for kote during the jigeiko. It's probably my pre-striking movement that sent the kote-cutting signal to him. Maybe I bent to my left and he could tell from my body posture. He said I should cut kote in a similar way to launching a men. To keep my opponent guessing.

So his advice was to equip myself with a kote cut that looks like a men, and a men cut that looks like kote. It's like Ying and Yang. Mix them up. And keep my opponent guessing all the time.

Some more photos of my shiai moments in the Hong Kong Asian Taikai