Jamaican Beer

Thursday we went straight into jigeiko. Always takes one or two rounds of it to get warmed up and fluid. Have to think about some ways to mitigate that for shiai, when that first fight counts. Also for the first few rounds we started the jigeiko with kirikaeshi. Still lots of work to do, lots of work.

So I spent these fights 'trying to attack more'. I'm not sure how well it worked out, I can only remember getting hit pretty often, while my brain was focused on trying not to do a load of the usual stuff I do in an attempt to have a clean slate to just attack more without thinking too much about it. Had a conversation afterwards in the pub and form the result I'm still missing crap loads of opportunities. Apparently I was making them but failing to do anything with them. Unfortunately I wasn't consciously seeing them so I need to focus my attention on improving my sense of opportunity. Another note from the pub conversation worth mentioning is that the centre goes pretty far beyond geometry. That's all I'm going to say for now as that's got to roll around in the head for a little while.

Heh, got some good advice on the chudan from a few different sources. One was a talk afterwards regarding my arms and that essentially they're too straight and extended and should be brought up and a little more 'elbows bent'. Will definitely try this out next Thursday. In the beginning of the lesson (and the last few practices as well) my left calf has felt particularly tight and I've had no idea why. During a round of jigeiko I was told my feet are far too far apart (specifically my left foot too far back), which is something I hadn't realised. Lately I've been trying to work out what 'feels' best for foot placement. To make a long story short after this advice apparently my feet slid back apart and I got a good crack from the sensei's shinai as a reminder on the left calf. Better that though then months/years of blisters and/or screwed calf muscles. Needless to say for the rest of the evening I focused on keeping the feet in the right place, which turned out to be harder than I thought, as the foot placement seems to be dug into muscle memory pretty good.

My left calf.

We also had a little bit of light oji-waza kihon, and during this I focused on keeping the shinain in the centre line, and forward, trying my best to cut down on pulling the shinai back on things like suriage-men and kaeshi-do. It felt like it worked, though it's of course opened up the ol' chestnut of timing and distance, so thats the next step!