Weak left arm

Today's training started late and was short but it was well worth it. We did quite some katate-men suburi. My left arm and shoulder really needs to be strengthened more. It got tired too fast, though afterwards it was totally fine, and there was not muscle pain (let's wait and see until tomorrow, shall we?). Georg stressed the importance of bringing the left foot up quickly when striking.

After a few rounds of kirikaeshi, and kihon-geiko, we practised ai-kote-men. This means that the motodachi strikes kote while the kakarite strikes kote-men. The kakarite's kote wades off the attack of the motodachi, followed by the men-strike which makes the point. I felt the successful kote-men is to keep the kote at the centerline so that men-strike can follow very quickly. Usually this is already sufficient to wade of the kote-attack.

Some stuffs that I remembered from the mawari-geiko:

• Lilli surprised me by a nice and straight men-strike with proper seme and good zanshin. 
• The beginner Matthias impressed me with his effort to always go through no matter if he hit the target or not. 
  
• Against much taller opponent like Eike, I have to launch my attack from a closer distance otherwise I cannot reach men. (Sad but true.)
• I made a couple of nice men-suriage-men. I found it is necessary to go a little forwards while doing the suriage motion, so that the opponent's shinai can be deflected enough and the men is opened up.

Good training!