Moving from Kamae

Yesterday's training at Uni was canceled due to the absence of Stephan, who went to Tengu Cup in Frankfurt, and several others. I still went to the dojo, nonetheless, to train on my own, since I know I can still improve on the basics. For example, the things I worked on were:

• striking from kamae, and moving while maintaining a kamae that is ready to strike at an instant. To practise this, I moved forwards->backwards->right->left, and repeat, during which I randomly strike men, then repeat the footwork again and so on, until I reach the other end of the dojo.
• Kamae. To achieve the above, one has to put his centre of mass forwards. I discovered the best way to do this without loosing the balance is to adjust the position of the hand and the shinai. For example, placing the hands nearer to the lower belly allows the body to lean much more forwards. But too much of it will be risky, of course.
• Do-strike, with walk-through. I used the columns as the targets.
  
• Tsuki. Not sure I was doing it correctly so I didn't practise for long. Mainly concentrate on using the hip to push the whole body

I also ordered contact lenses, because the Men and my glass frame was killing my ears on Tuesday's training!

Next week will be a great week. In principle, the Zekken I ordered a month ago from emaishop should arrive, as well as the two shinai's and a Tenugui from Ninecircles. An extra goodie I shall receive soon is the book "Kendo - Elements, Rules and Philosophy", which I bought from ebay for only 6.59 GBP inc. P&P !