Selection of National Team Members

Ok, so, I went for the nation team member selection on last Saturday, a tough day it was! In total, 65 male and 35 female candidates from all over the island took part in the selection. We were divided into 4 pools, meaning that each team has 16 people, and each of us had to fight 15 matches, whether you advance into the next stage or not.

The top from each pool will be selected as the team member, and the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th from each pool advance to the next round. In the end, 7 are selected as the first players and 3 are selected as the backup players.

The large number of participates meant that we had to fight for 7 hours. It was absolutely exhausting, both physically and mentally. I started out performing badly in my first 3 matches or so. My reaction and movement were slow. It's like I hadn't woken up yet. And it gradually got better.

Everyone fought differently, so I had to adjust my strategy for different opponents. I definitely lost far more matches than I should have, however, being able to perform wazas like kote-uchiotoshi-men a couple of times made me feel good.

My thoughts for the day are:

• Fighting spirit is very very important. I found the best way to get it out of me is to regard every opponent as a strong a respectable player. This way, my mind become sharp, as well as my movement. Because I found that my performance was much better against people whom I thought were stronger than me.

• My kote-men should be faster. This lies on my footwork. So I have to improve this during training.

• Sometimes I raise my kensen before striking men. DONT DO THIS.

• Relax my body more.

• Keep my foot close to each other.

• Be careful of my zanshin. Very often I let my men open after striking kote, and also not separating myself far enough from the opponent.

• Be careful when the opponent is at the close range, and also do not let go of chances to attack.

The below were two matches. I'll let the action speak for itself!
(I'm the white on in the first video, and red in the second.)

Stay humble

First before the training started I helped Tina to improve on her fumikomi by first running across the dojo with okuri-ashi a few times with shinai locked behind the back under the arms, and then with fumikomi. After she managed that, we repeated the same exercise with shinai in kamae or men-uchi. It seemed to have worked.

Some notes from the kihon practice:

• Kote: bring hip forwards. Don't take the shinai off the centre. Left hand should stay in the centre.
• Kote-men: the tenouchi at the men-strike not sharp enough.
  

I should really work on both of them if I want to keep on improving.

We also practiced kote-uchiotoshi-men. The movement is very similar to kote-men, except because the opponent is moving forwards, the kakarite should not go too far forwards. The most difficult thing is perhaps to judge when the kote comes.

Jigeiko: I need more variation of waza. Should keep my posture while doing renzoku-waza, and quickly draw my left foot towards the right.

I did a nice men-nuki-kote on Jan with the kote really popped. At the end we had an ippon-shyobu. I wanted to do nuki-kote again but he didn't launch the strike after a few steps forwards, at which point my backward movement was slowing down and I got too close to him.

Bang! My men was hit.

Jan refused to call it a point because he thought it was a bit short. While some referees might think so, I felt I already lost because his kisei was much stronger, and coming towards me like a wall or a mountain. His self-criticism and humbleness are also why I respect him, not just for the physical kendo. It is very difficult sometimes to stay humble for kendo being primarily a competitive sport. But whoever manages to be confident, strong, but at the same time humble will improve faster and do good kendo. It is a long journey ahead.