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Weekend Suburi and Sushi

Short post today!

I was out sick on Wednesday, so I didn't get a chance to practice, so I was very open to the idea of getting some people together for a suburi session at the park yesterday. It's Memorial Day weekend, so we didn't have practice yesterday or tomorrow. That means one more official practice before Obukan, and I wanted to get in as much as I could before then. I put up a posting online about it, and we ended up having four people there (myself, Sean, Jeronimo and Marek).

After some fun killing time on Sean's new slack line, we decided to do the team training suburi, which is made up of nine varying suburi drills, and we decided to do fifty sets of each. They are:

-Jogeburi (big swings, all the way back to your tailbone and all the way forward as far as you can, step back as you swing back, step forward as you swing forward)
-Men (two steps forward, two steps back)
-Sayu-Men (Men strikes to the right and left side of the head, alternating, two steps forward and back)
-Tai-a Sabaki (? not sure on spelling; basically we Men in the center, but we turn our bodies for each hit, as well as alternate our footwork so right and left are in front on every other swing....hard to explain in words)
-Katate-Men (One-handed Men strikes with the left hand, no stepping)
-A striking drill resembling one of our warm-up exercises. We place our feet about twice our shoulder width and squat down while striking Kote, and then bring the shinai all the way back behind us and we rise up again, repeat
-Another drill that I don't think has a name. We place our right leg forward and bend it so that it's at a 90 degree angle with the ground, and keep our back leg straight and then do fifty Men strikes in the position. Switch legs and do fifty more
-Haya-suburi (fast-paced swinging drill. strike Men as you hop forward with proper foot position, and then bring the shinai back and you hop back into proper foot position. Very fast drill)

After a little cool down, Sean (McNally Sensei) decided we should do a little kata to finish things out for the day. We all decided to learn Kata 6. It looks very simple, but like all kata there are many subtleties to be learned and executed. One of which was not only the very, very small Kote strike the Uchidachi does, but the very, very small footwork that Shidachi does as they do Suriage Kote to counter. Definitely something I'll have to work on, but not a kata I will have to officially know how to do for a few years. Still I am of the mind that if I can learn it now I would like to. It gives me that much more time to practice it for later.

We decided to go and try out the new sushi place here in the valley, Sushi Sakai. That's another story in itself, food was hit and miss (my lunch was good, at least), and service was definitely a big miss. Ah well, like Wendy said it gave us more time to visit :D

Until next time!

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