I was exhausted last night during kendo. I made it through suburi okay and through the following practice. But by the time we got to keiko I was ready to collapse.
I notice a number of common flaws that happen when I’m this tired.
- I stop going in straight. My wrist is in pain today because I kept going in at an angle rather than a nice straight approach.
- I reach with my arms a lot and stop moving with my waist. This, combined with #1, leaves my kote wiiiide open for all to whack mercilessly.
- I react more to my opponent than trying to create an offensive move.
These are some things I need to keep in mind if I’m in a long match or just “not feeling up to it.” Normally I pay attention to these but when I’m tired I need to doubly watch myself. It’s all too easy to start thinking about just defending oneself I think, and in my experience this does not work.
So the next time I’m tired I’m going to try to concentrate more on just keeping straight good form and try not to be so concerned about my opponent. Even if this is “easier said than done.”
Focused on more basics today than usual. Straight men mostly.
When I do this I tend to create a mental image in my mind of my body moving forward like a tree on a sled. I try to think less of my strike and more about pushing my body into the opponent. This mental image seems to work well for me.
Naturally I also tried to spend time thinking about maai and controlling my opponent. But to a lesser extent today than I have been.
I’m also having a problem quite opposite of my cold weather slipping. Blisters! If it’s not one thing it’s another. I’m certain now I’m “pushing” too much with my left foot. This is probably part of the problem in both my slipping and blisters.
I find my kendo tends to follow a sort of pendulum between “focusing on basics” and “focusing on higher level things” (I’ll be writing more about this later). It all depends on how my basic kendo is going. Men strike is looking good? Start to focus on maai and the opponent. My strikes start to turn bad then I go back to focusing on “just go men.”
I have been, for the last few weeks, trying to escape focusing on the minutia of my attack. To allow my body to simply make the strike while I direct it from a higher level. I’ve found mixed success so far. While doing this I do see my opponent’s moves much better. I’ve even once or twice been able to predict a move. But I’m still not sure how much is luck and how much is skill (I’m leaning towards luck until I see more consistent results).
While focusing on higher level tactics I also find myself a bit more frustrated at making my attacks. This is where my mixed results come in. I can see the “playing field” better but I seem less capable of executing my strikes. Perhaps this is because I have an inflated sense of ability when I focus more heavily on my strikes themselves. But I also think that a better-executed strike has a better chance of actually succeeding. There is much to experiment with here.
These days I’m swinging the pendulum back towards basics. Just go straight and keep low (I have been hearing more critique on these points lately). But I won’t swing all the way back to “tunnel vision men strikes only.” Perhaps I’ll only nudge the pendulum a bit and see how it works.
The other night was our last class for the year. To celebrate we invited friends and family to join us to watch a brief suburi followed by a small in-house shiai with food and drink afterward.
The shiai was broken into two groups – roughly speaking the upper ranks (3 members) and lower ranks (4 members). I fought in the ‘lower’ category (kyu and under) and won my three matches (2-0; 2-1; 2-1).
I find it interesting how differently we fight when a score is being kept. During normal keiko one is free to experiment and try different things in addition to practicing straight-forward technique. But the second “hajime!” is shouted things become very “plain” by comparison and a bit more tense.
Overall I was pleased with how I did and with how others did. Especially some other members of the class who’ve shown a lot of improvement over a short period of time!
One thing that I have noticed, however, is that the last couple times I’ve competed in a shiai (mock or otherwise) my shinai has seemed “heavy” compared to normal keiko. I’m sure it’s a mental thing, perhaps nerves. It seems to be new though as I never really felt that way before. Always learning new things and developing new problems!
