It’s been a few weeks since my last update. I had to take two or three weeks off to let my knee recover and heal a bit. After the MRI I had the doctor said no running or jumping for awhile so I just took a complete break for about 3 weeks before slowly starting back into it. He said there appeared to be some tendonitis, and nothing mechanically wrong with it that shouldn’t require any surgery.
It was kind of interesting how my knee reacted. For the first couple of weeks it didn’t seem like it was getting better at all and I was worried that it wasn’t going to get better. However after that it got remarkably better in that next week. Enough so that I went to the Thursday night class at the Nampa club and participated in some non-bogu practice that included kata and basic uchicomi. Friday night it felt good enough to bogu-up and take part in full practice.
Both nights were new beginner classes. Stroud sensei was present at the Thursday class to get the beginners started. There were about 4 or 5 beginners and then 5 advanced members including one from the last beginner class. He’s pretty young, but hopefully he will stick with it. While Stroud sensei worked with the beginners I led the other group through the first few bokuto ni yoru kata. We just concentrated on 1-3 since we had a new person that wasn’t familiar with them at all.
About half way through class Atagi sensei showed up and took over leading our group and we started going through some basic uchicomi; men, kote, kote-men and more complex ones. After Stroud sensei dismissed the beginners he joined in our rotations and not too long after that I stepped out with the newer member, Kelso, since we weren’t in bogu. I worked with him on kirikaeishi.
After practice Atagi sensei mentioned the importance of high spirit during practice and equally present reiho or manners. He said that we have to keep both of them at high levels and even though we are trying to kill (beat) our opponent we still need to keep our manners at the same time.
Friday’s beginner class of about 10 people was headed by Dr. Roosevelt. With three of us testing for ikkyu in August the remaining advanced students worked on the first three kendo kihon kata.
I still feel very heavy on my feet when doing kata. I need to be lighter so that my movements are smoother and more effortless. I think part of the problem is that even in kata I am way too tense. Learning to relax more will probably help that feeling along with a number of other things.
After the beginner class left and we moved into the advanced class we worked on some footwork and basics before spending a large part of the remaining time working on doh. Just when I thought I was getting really good at it Dr. Roosevelt told me I was swinging too much from the side and not bringing it down from above enough. He also tried to talk to us about being able to strike quickly and without taking a step before striking. Striking inside the strike of your opponent will give you a great advantage.
After a lot of doh practice we moved into jigeiko and took turns with each person in class. I took it pretty easy since I was still nursing my knee, but did get some quality practice with Dr. Roosevelt. I have a bad habit of wiping out a good kote with a men afterwards which we both seemed to agree came down to having more confidence in the kote hit and not forcing the men when it isn’t needed.
This was quite the long post since it had been a good deal of time