Improve Improve Improve

I'm currently trying to improve on several things:
1) hiding my hit before moving in, no moving shoulders too much. i realized that if my foot is at ready i can actually have quite a long range. the reason i started to have the body problem is because my foot was not ready and i need the extra distance from controlling body center.

2) semei. the fight for the center. it has to become natural such that i will go for a hit just by the instant i felt i have it. and if i don't i must do backup waza instead of going in stupidly

3) foot readiness. always always keep your foot ready, no matter what the situation

4) do accruacy. training and basic swing is the fundamental

... I don't want to lose again.. not ever

January Update

I know I haven't posted for a while. That's because there were heavy snow in Vancouver, and I can't get to anywhere, especially for kendo as well. I have just started doing kendo again last week. I think I have lost some skills already.

Tomorrow is my first intercolegiate taikai. Lenard and Shinozaki are both pushing me to win. Hiding behind my intentions, I want to win badly as well. And it's not for pride or anything, just because I decided so. and I don't even want to keep the trophy.. if i win.

I have been training as hard I can, doing subaris 400 times every non-kendo day, but I am still facing serveral big bad habits: 1 is that whenever i go for men i lift up my head. 2 is that with so much training on do, mine still look very scary. 3. my kote speed has increased thanks to my wrist training, but it is not very accurate on people who keep their kote straight.

I have so much more to improve on in order to win the tournament, yet I can't achieve them. I guess I'll just have to make do what I have. Fight for a good fight!

officially 1 kyu

I've finally obtained 1 kyu 2 weeks ago. I'm glad that finally i don't have to focus as much on the basic stuff, and in the next year to come, on waza and foot work, and the training of the mind. I haven't been practicing as intensely as i used to be, so my skills are really downgrading. it sucks. so now, after exams are done, i'm going for a series of intense training to hopefully get my skills back to normal. i need to train how to be able to focus on the center without paying much attention, or be able to trick my opponent to get my center..

3rd year of kendo begins

I have been sick for the past 2 weeks, and just got back into kendo tuesday. It was quite a tough practice for me. I was leading the warm up, and the line up, lost my voice shouting. I'm glad that Hiro from SFU kendo made it to UBC practice this time. He looks like he is going to keep on practicing once here every tuesday.

Dualling Hiro has made me to learn how to deal with people who don't go straight and hit fast kotes. Harding's idea of kendo is always going straight and fast so before they can hit your kote, you already striked men. however, there are multiple wazas that doesn't require you to go straight, instead, going side ways to strike a kote or men. Those are extra hard to deal with, and they are often employed by higher level people. what i realized is that, whenever i'm surely able to strike a men and raised by hand, there is no going back, i can't just disable opponenent's kote if they hit me fast, and the only way is to retrieve my own kote and go for a punch style men. I have deviced the technique, and is going to try it out this practice. Though, I must first distinquish the distance, that it will only be effective if opponenent is at his/her optimal distance to strike kote and not the too late stage, if it's at that stage, i should defend and then go men.

maybe i should focus on kote for a while... and forget about men, just keep on training kote until I become a kote master, hmm...

and Setobu (sp), the new Japanese san dan girl was teaching me a lesson not to stop after initial hit, if i miss, try to do a backup right away, and then rest. this way your opponenent may not be able to defend the backup hit right away and you score.

Kendo Sept 4th Osborn

since harding sensei gave me the go on 1 kyu exam. I'm going to turn my next 2 month of kendo into complete basic training: I'm going to stop using waza, and do very basic hits in slow but well rounded manner, and not stop and then going in, but to keep on going.

Kendo sept 2nd at Osborn

Harding gave me the go on taking my 1 kyu exam. he said that my first time kitikaish was pretty good. I slowed down a bit and was not trying to speed up by forcing myself to, and also i wasn't taking the 2 breath, but many breath. I think the timing of breath got me agitated to go faster than i can, and that was why my kitikaish looks stiff. Harding emphasized that you must fight relax, no matter if it's 10 min into the shiai or not, so that slowly your kendo become natural to you, and you do it as if it comes to you, not you try to force it happen.