More Technical Work

On Thursday we had another more or less technical lesson, carrying on the wristy/oji waza theme of the last few weeks.

We began with few rounds of kirikaeshi, and though it felt nice and loose I was able to get a bit of feedback about it that its all very right arm, and the left isnt doing anything. That's something now to focus on when doing it later. Also that ssomething that can be worked on over christmas-break suburi.

After this was more of the same. Men-harai men, men suriage kote, and some others. We then did some of the live style cutting didstance chudan stuff that we've been doing as well. A particularly difficult one was kote-men-kaeshi-do. The reason for this was getting the distancing just right on the initial kote cut, leaving enough room for the kaeshi-do. There's a -lot- to be learned from this exercise. Int order to get this sort of thing to work properly, the initial cutting step has little room for error, and the kaeshi motion in addition has little room for error (sizewise), as well as how extended one's arms are. This is a time to remember back to before during Satoshi's exercise about just how close to your opponent you should actully be. This of course comes back down to step size, which often comes down for me to left leg energy. More stairclimbing then.

Speaking of left leg. Lately everything below the left knee has been rather tight/sore. I need to look into this. It could be a few things:

- Improper loading of the left leg in chudan.
- Simple lack of strength
- Poor angling/efficiency of the left foot.

Time to start the investigation.

Because of this in jigeiko later in the lesson I found myself again more reactive that I should be. This is also in part to a relatively foggy recognition of flaws in people's chudans, as well as a sort of hesitance to act on the testing harais/suriages that I've been doing lately. Still get the occasionally solid 2nd attack in after a foiled 1st, which is a goo sign. I can't explain them, and at this point I dont think I really need to, It's more important now to continue to train that moment to moment opportunity awareness fter the first attack. This awareness is much stronger after an attack than while I'm in chudan so I'll have to work that one out.

I'm also still getting some solid men-ippon straight on me from isoku-ito so I'll need to sort out my chudan I reckon. I'm not conscious of what giveaways I'm giving so may have to find some feedback somehow or look at video/pictures. This also goes for that left foot optimising I need to do, its not the easiest thing to look at.