So there were two radically different practices.

Tuesday, Aussie Sensei led us through a Tokyo special, whcih meant in lieu of the normal dojo length ashi sabaki, we grouped into fours led by a sensei a piece and did diagonal all-the-way to the wall follow-through to all sorts of basic strikes like men, kote-men, kote-men-do, but all only for an hour before some vigorous jigeiko.

Thursday, Sensei led us through some really basic but much-needed strikes, mostly from issoku: men, kote (lift up without shoulders, then step in a little diagonally, but not much), suriage-men, kaeshi-do, kirikaeshi+karageiko, and all with an emphasis on ‘tsuki-mon’ but no actual tsuki.

Keiko was interesting: I fought against a jodan-shodan. He was tough, but I landed at least one clean men.

Hayashi Sensei Keiko

Hayashi Sensei visited, which meant that there were a lot of visitors and a late start. Godan and up only could sit on the Sensei side. In lieu of the usual warm-ups, we did a sequence of leg-based stretches: lunge-walking, deep-lunges, ayumi-ashi with a koshi-focus, lifting the right foot high before stepping forward, big-lifting-ayumi-ashi, big-lift-hold-put-down-ayumi-ashi, backwards and forwards fence-straddling, deep squats, fumi-komi both Godzilla-style and straight-puddle style, one-steps with a focus on pushing on the opponent’s tsuki. The foot-raising style has two effects—it improves balance and forces all of the weight to be shift to hidari-ashi. Oddly, all of these were done with shinai in hand.

After a longish break, we ended up putting on men. Kirikaeshi is meant to be done with a focus on kaeshi—catching the opponent’s strike with the aim of deflecting it into kaeshi-doh or kaeshi-men. The sequence, so rapid-fire, of kaeshi moves Sensei showed was impressive, including do-kaeshi-men, which I’d never seen before.

Men, men-debana-men, men-nuki-doh, kote. Small men is only for attacking forwards. Debana-men can be performed immediately when the opponent steps in. We hit men from three ma-ai in one go, starting from already-hit position. Analogies drawn to golf, tennis, baseball in terms of the use of tame and the hips.

Big strikes as in kihon develop tenouchi and the use of the entire body at once, but with practice this becomes smaller and second nature, just as deadly.

The last practice of the year was energetic: a good deal of jigeiko, and advice from Sensei: that I should remember how I treat my girlfriend: softly, gently rather than tensely and so hard. The routine was not much beyond the usual ashi-sabaki (with SAR) and some basic kihon culminating in uchikomi-geiko (men, kote-men, doh, kote-doh, men-taiatari-men, men). Practice itself was pretty unremarkable–I felt like I could have kept on going, though my knuckle still kept on getting nailed. Does this mean something about my kamae?

The Koreans all showed up today, which meant I didn’t get any Sensei action, but my knuckles but got plenty of shinai action, to the point where I actually had to stop, but now it feels better, even without icing. The focus that Sensei had for us was mostly on kihon waza, but he already started the speeches about shinsa, probably because it’s so close to when we come back from vacation and kagami biraki. So we did lots of men (closing in: shokujin, kojin, issoku-itto) nice and explosive sutemi style. Then we did some degote, some nuki-men, some kaeshi-kote/kaeshi-do. Kirikaeshi and kihon-men-kakarigeiko finished us off. A good, sweaty practice, and the focus on shinsa is nice, because it’s something I needed to start working on earlier.