Tenouchi, posture and maai

Yesterday only Stephan and Christin turned up. So I wasn't too excited about that. However, Stephan made us do very good exercises to improve our tenouchi, posture and maai. We spent most of our time hitting men in small movements (sashi) without going through, in order to concentrate on our posture and tenouchi. This is not easy at all. Then we practised renzoku-men all the way to the other end of the hall and back.

I found somehow since after X'mas I tend to raise my left heel too hight, which caused lots of strain on the big toe to bend. This needs to be corrected.. I find it good to start a new year with the exercise to for what many people might think small things, but in fact important, things.

At the end we did about 5-10 minutes jigeiko. Couldn't to much against Stephan, because his kamae is very hard to break. I need to also improve on reconising the chance to strike, probing with the kensen, and moving in with the right foot.

Jan is back!

I'm writing from my office's computer while sipping into my jasmin tea and biting a Chinese dessert cake, that I don't know how to call in English. Yesterday was the first "real" training. Catherine was here in the past few weeks so I haven't trained very much.

There were about 15 kenshi's in total, with about 5 without the bogu. The session was all kihon, and at the end jigeiko. I had the opportunity to do jigeiko with Jan, one of the strongest, who just came back from his internship in Africa, Stephan and Wibke. Overall I did well. My oji-waza has improved, that I could strike immediately after blocking.

My next goal is to work on having a proper maai.

My laptop has died on me last weekend. And it looks like I'd have to start looking for a new one. #$%@#$^@$...

First training of the year

which wasn't a memorable session at all. I turned up on time only to find that there were just me and Elisa. After half-an-hour of suburi and footwork-drills by myself, I proposed to her that we should begin training.

We did men/kote/do-uchi, kote-men/kote-do-uchi. Oji-waza: men-debana-kote, kote-nuki-men, men-kaeshi-do. Shikake-waza: harai-men.

Finally, we ended the training with ten minutes of jigeiko. Which I mainly used oji-waza, and really tried to observe my opponents motion.

Overall, it was a mild-training after two weeks of absence - a good starter.