Keiko: A Kenshi's Journey

We have a motto in our dojo, which I'm sure that some of you have heard in one form or another.  Our motto is "Train like you fight, fight like you train," and basically means that you should always gives 100% no matter what you are doing.  If you train and give it your all every time then you will always be ready to go out and do your best.  But if you are lazy and don't train as hard as you can or hold yourself back for some reason then that can also come out when you are in a match and you can end up being lazy there, as well.  I try to remember this motto each time I'm out there, not only for myself but for the people that I train with.  If I give my all there are obvious improvements that come from that for me, but if I give my all to everyone that I train with each time then they also benefit from that.  I believe that this was the theme of last night's practice, which Billy led us through.  We didn't do too much in terms of variety, but he mad...

This past Wednesday, December 14th was my birthday.  I am now out of my twenties and taking my first steps into my thirties.  While this was, at first, a scary thought to me and actually kind of stressed me out quite a bit, I woke up on Wednesday morning and thought about it for a while.  And I decided to push all of that doubt and depression and everything that was trying to affect me out of my head and out of my life.  I made a decision that day that I was not going to go into my thirties with that kind of attitude.  I was going to have a positive outlook and go in on a high note and work to make this next decade even better than the last.  I have to admit that my twenties had their ups and downs, not unlike a rollercoaster.  I had a lot of big "life events" happen, some good and some bad, but despite all of that I've kept on.  I've stumbled and fallen and picked myself up, sometimes on my own and sometimes with the help of friends and family....

I had a short break from practice on Monday, taking the night off to get some errands done and recharge a bit.  So when I went to practice last night I was definitely ready to go and give it my all.  I think I succeeded in that aspect.  The night started off with me teaching the intermediate class.  I went over some kirikaeshi, kihon drills, and hiki waza drills with them, and also tried to talk a little about keeping a connection with our partner while training.  Especially when we go through the drills and turn to face them again.  I tried to relay the importance of turning and being ready at that second, and I hope I got the point across.  Wendy said she touched on it with them on Monday and I tried to continue that theme last night, instructing them that when they turn they want to come back to kamae and have a good stance as soon as they turn, not after turning and shuffling backwards or turning and dropping their shinai down and then...

I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday (Everyone that celebrates Thanksgiving, at least).  We had no official classes last week due to the holiday, but that didn't stop us from having some super intense "unofficial" classes.  Thank you to Ando Sensei for running us through some drills and giving us all some good, long jigeiko sessions! Last night I had a bit of a revelation.  An epiphany, if you will.  One of those "Aha!" moments.  And it was just more proof that sometimes when we are taught certain things or given certain lessons they won't always make sense to us until much, much later down the road.  What, exactly, am I talking about? Fudoshin is a Japanese term that means "Immovable mind."  This idea was explained to me probably about a year ago by my sensei and at the time I didn't do much with it.  Whether I didn't fully understand it or I was focusing on other issues that I had in Kendo I cannot say, but it was a c...