Kobudokan

I think it's been well over a year since my last visit to Kobudokan when our 'French friend' had his final practice. I still got lost even with the sat-nav but it was a simple mistake missing my exit to stay on the M56 and the re-route wasn't too painful. Anyway, onto the practice...

Overall the best thing about last night was the ability to just get on with my practice. There's no expectation of me to help with another clubs beginner's. Sure I can give advice and offer instruction but as a guest I'll reserve judgement until I have attended enough to feel it's appropriate to do so. Which allowed me to concentrate on my own efforts and not worry about anyone else. On the postive side the kihon practice was useful and some little techniques utilising the same waza from the fourth kata were explored. Not sure how successful this would be within your average jigeiko, probably a similar success/fail rate as katsugi or katate waza. The last thing I need at the moment is anything else that may deviate my cut from being straight and I know that some were landing without tenouchi and too much right hand but I love the fourth kata and being able to explore a practical application beyond an oji-waza was really interesting. Hopefully it will appear within my kendo at the right moment.

One failing I did have was that this technique and some of the useful hiki-waza practice failed to materialise during jigeiko. Whether this was due to the confined space, with quite a lot of matches taking place and limited amount of room to really get into it I felt I retreated to my usual kendo but very linear and without any strength in my posture that I may have had from last Wednesday.

Other points of note were my utter hatred of their extended kiri-kaeshi. Last time was bad and this time was much the same. After the third set of kiri-kaeshi I was spent and then we had to do another a couple. Totally punishing and it exposes just how badly in shape I am. I also forgot their lovely wooden floor shows no respect to my feet, which are used to the grippy vinyl at the Egg. So a spare tenugui soaked in water had to be quickly set up so I could keep damping my feet for a bit of grip. The adverse effect of this is that my feet really suffered afterwards and my left calf was under a lot of strain. Still I didn't end up on my arse which would have been significantly more painful/embarrassing.

I think I'll need to get out more to get the benefits of that 'selfish training', though sadly I will miss Mano Sensei being there next week as I think dojo loyalty must come first for kata night. Giri 義理 is a concept I'll probably cover at some point. I've mentioned it in my clubs blog and I think its something that is important and is another aspect of kendo that raises it above just stick fighting. It was impressed upon me at my first club and I believe it still holds true now