No fun :(

I was just about to recover from my cold, and then I was hit by another fun. Have been feeling under the weather all day today but still went to the dojo to teach (only watching and commenting, mind you). No fun at all. :(

Coming up with titles is the most difficult part of blogging

I'm starting to fall back into Lazy Blogger mode. だめ！ So, to get back on track, the inflammation in my foot went away almost as suddenly as it appeared, and I'm not complaining. I'm still not really getting rid of these perpetual colds though, so I went to the pharmacy a few days ago and got some Echinacea (or however it might be spelled) that I'm hoping will help. Actually, I think it's helped a little, but...

Stupid as I am, I go to practise even though I have a cold. Despite knowing of all the horrible things that might happen to me. Really need to get my brain checked.

Anyway, back on track again, Hannes and I went down to the dojo by ourselves last Friday to practise together. We did first half an hour of kendo where I surprised both of us with foot-hand timing that was worse than ever. Very strange, because even though this has always been one of my biggest problems in kendo, it hasn't been that bad for quite some time now. Hannes also noted that I tend to strike his mengane. Of course this has to do with him being taller than me, but then, so are most kendoka, so this is something I need to get better at. We tried some different ways, and now I know what it should feel like. Needs a lot of work, though! My plan of grading 2kyu i May seems far away right now... :(

After kendo we switched to another half an hour of iaido. We pretty much just went through seitei twice by ourselves. Also reigi of course, and I quickly went through the koryu kata I'm working on (shohatto, ryuto, seichuto, inyoshintai). I'm really starting to mess them all up, but I don't really know what to do about it until I get some proper instruction again.

Last night Hannes was teaching the newbies and I went along as sempai. I was hoping for a relaxed session, because I could still feel my cold a little, but his plan was to make us sweat. A lot of fun, but didn't feel like an entirely good idea, so I skipped out for the last 15 minutes of practice. I'm not that stupid. ;)

Foot inflammation

Yesterday, after a long slow day of studying on the coach, I got up and realized I could hardly walk because of the pain in my left foot. For some reason it had turned red, swollen and was aching, no, more like cramping every time I took a step. It was still pretty bad this morning, but seems much better now (still slightly swollen, but no pain), but I didn't want to risk anything and so concentrated on teaching the others today so that it gets time to heal.

I hope for it too be back to normal on Thursday, at the latest.

Lots of chocolate, little of iai

The already mentioned chocolate festival has left me with an unhealthy amount of good chocolate in my possession. I won't complain though.

I decided right after writing the last post here that I would try to get some training in after my mother left town on Sunday, which happens to be today. The original plan was aiming for an hour, but as I was not feeling very well and have lots to do before my Japanese exam on Tuesday, it ended up getting shortened to 15 minutes where I just managed to warm up with a skipping rope, go through reigi and do each seiteigata twice.

Ukenagashi is no good at all. The overall timing is crap. This will be one of my projects for a while.

The thrusts in tsukaate and shihôgiri are...well...weird. I think I've gotten too careful. Need to shape up.

In morotetsuki the beginning feels a little shaky. Mostly the actual morotetsuki.

I noticed that my yoko-chiburi looks like the angle might be a little off (could be due too mirror angle though). It is also shaky. And my right hand gets too much relative power in tenouchi sometimes, resulting in the kissaki going off center.

That would be the main issues right now. ;)

Sloppy technique

My cold is almost gone, so I decided this morning to skip kendo (to not risk getting ill again), but attend iaido so that I can at least get some practice in this week. Jocke was teaching the class and focused a lot on different turns and morotetsuki.

I had some bigger issues though: generally sloppy technique. As I have suspected for some time, these last six months or so when I have practised way less than what I ought to, I've lost a lot. My grip is sloppy, my tenouchi was hardly at all today, my balance comes and goes... Also my nukitsuke and noto needs a lot of practise as I've had pointed out to me on multiple occasions this winter from different teachers that I'm bending my wrist in a weird way when performing these two.

With about 2,5 months left until the Swedish Championships it's definitely time to shape up! I really want to keep kendo up, so this probably means that I need to be more disciplined when it comes to studying, so that I can devote more time to practise. I'll have to sacrifice my "lazy time", and try to be more effective. I want to practise at least an hour by myself each week, outside the regular training schedule. I think I will need to work out a plan. Probably using FunBeat, because it's great for these things.

Another cold :(

There was a combined seitei and tameshigiri seminar this last weekend that I was supposed to go to, but a very weird cold struck me Thursday, and so I ended up staying at home. Three other people from my dojo went though, and they claim to have had a lot of fun. No surprise there.

Because of said cold I stayed away from both sessions last Thursday (first kendo, then iaido - hard, but it works) and the session yesterday (kendo kihon with the newbies - lots of them!). Today I still have a cold, even though it's gotten a little better, but I still went to the dojo to teach as I usually do on Tuesdays. There were more people than regular at practice today, so I could easily refrain from practising myself to make sure the others had enough room, and health-wise that was probably a good thing.

I probably shouldn't do kendo (even though kihon) tomorrow either, but I hope to be back on track so that I can take part in both sessions this Thursday, as I'm going to miss practice on Saturday as well. That's because my mom's coming to town and we're going to the Chocolate Festival that day. :D

Updating...

I've spent some time now reading up on my previous posts, to see what I should write about to get the few readers out there back on track with what's been happening. I soon realised that there is quite a lot, but I'll try to keep it reasonably short.

From the beginner's course in iaido last spring, that I was writing about about a year ago, only two people are still practising. Most girls dropped out, which was of course a sad thing. At the moment there are still only 3-4 girls practising in the club, including me. In total I'd guess we're around 10-15 people practising iai, and with almost no interest from potential beginners this semester, it doesn't seem that we're going grow until the autumn, at least. There are enough of us to keep things running without getting too lonely though (if you read some of my earliest posts here, you'll see that not too rarely I was practising all alone).

I decided during 2006 to aspire for the national team again, which was a great thing because I got to go to a lot of great seminars and learned loads. I practised very intensely the entire first semester of the year and at the Swedish Championships in May I received one of the bronze medals in the shodan class and, even better, got one of the judges' vote against someone graded higher than me in the team competition! During the summer I was told that I'd been chosen for the national team and in September I got to go to the European Championships in Brighton and compete. I soon fell out of the competition in the shodan group, but I graded nidan (didn't think I'd pass, but I did!) and had a lot of fun. English food is really crap, though. ;)

I also managed to keep my kendo attendance at a high enough level to manage to grade for 3kyu at the beginning of summer. Not a great accomplishment, but it felt good.

Then came the autumn... And, well. Things didn't go as well. Basically, I had a more or less perpetual cold during these months and nothing to motivate me. In essence, I practised way too little, but didn't really know what else to do.

Right now I'm trying to raise my motivation for iai, as I've already seen how much I can benefit from that. Using FunBeat, I've set a goal to practise for at least 3 full hours a week, which isn't really a lot, but I think that as a minimum it is enough to get me going again. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to aspire for the national team again. I would really like to, but am not sure if I will have the time and money to really go for it.

On the kendo side of life I'm trying to shape up. Last March I started a "101 things in 1001 days" project, which is basically a list of 101 things that I want to accomplish before december 2008. One of the tasks is to grade shodan in kendo. This has motivated me to get off my lazy butt and go to practice, and made me notice that:

1) It was more fun than I remembered!
2) Even though my stamina is out the window I can do a lot more than I thought. Yay!

So the short term goal right now is to get ready for 2kyu at the end of this semester. And have fun getting there.

Needless to say, maybe, my body seems to have entered some sort of shock state due to the sudden increase in practice time, but I think it's coming out of it again, though slowly. I'll rather deal with a few aches here and there than repeat what happened in the autumn though.

And so...I managed to write an all-too-long blog post anyway. But at least now you know what's happened. :)