Keiko: A Kenshi's Journey

Well, this week has not started off on a good note.  Friday, as I was doing some suburi at home, I suddenly felt all my energy leave me.  When I started to get up (I was sitting in seiza), I felt super dizzy, and things went downhill from there.  Turns out I had a bout with the flu, which lasted all through the weekend and through yesterday.  I was not able to make it to practice last night, and I was also informed that there will be no practice on Wednesday.  With the UW Taikai on Saturday, the only other time I'll be able to practice will be Friday night in Bellevue when we head over to the coast.  For me, this is both good and bad.  Bad because I feel like I'm going into this weekend without being properly warmed-up.  Good, though, because it gives my leg and muscles a little extra time to heal up.  If anyone caught my post last week, you know that I pulled the muscle in my left leg, and was not able to fumikomi properly the rest of the practice.  But since then it's hea

Oh boy.  Just one week before the UW Taikai I end up pulling my leg muscle.  I don't think it's anything serious, but I'm definitely in some pain today.  Sensei advised me to get some good ol' R&R and let it mend itself naturally.  This is one time that I'm kind of glad that I don't have practice again until Monday, so I have a few days to let my leg recover.  Also, come next week, I might take it easy and not push myself too hard so that I can be as close to 100% for the taikai as possible.  The funny this is that I wasn't doing anything extreme when it happened, either.  I was just going through one of the drills, and I was concentrating on snapping my left leg up quickly after my fumikomi.  Things happen, and it definitely could've been worse. Despite my injury, which took place early on in the night, I pushed myself as hard as I could.  I had to modify my fumikomi so it was basically in place, and also take baby steps on my follow-through, but

The past couple of weeks have been full of Kendo goodness, with the shinsa and the taikai on back-to-back weekends.  I posted a couple of different times about it recently, but in short they both went extremely well.  I passed my Nikyu test, going from Yonkyu straight to Nikyu, and I also took third place at the taikai.  Right now I'm riding pretty high on my Kendo!  But, I also know that I have a lot to work on, and I was able to see a few of those points very clearly over the last couple of weeks.  I've already begun taking steps to fix them, but I know it'll be a while before I can build those improvements into new habits. Last night Wendy took the reins of the advanced class (after I helped her out with the beginning class).  We did a lot of kihon drills, and also continued our work on Kote, specifically Debana Kote.  This has been tremendously useful to me, since my Kote strike is one of the points I'm working on at the moment.  I have a tendency to lean into the

This past weekend Highline Kendo Kai in Seattle, WA held its 35th Annual Mudansha Taikai, and we had six people going to compete (plus one for moral support).  We headed out of town with a mix of experienced kenshi and some that were going for the first or second taikai experience.  As you can imagine, the excitement level was very high throughout the whole trip. Friday night we trained with Curtis Marsten Sensei and our friends at Federal Way, and had an intense (although cramped) session that evening.  I was able to do jigeiko with almost everyone, including Marsten Sensei, who once again used me as a human piñata.  I gave it my all, though, with him and with everyone else, and had a lot of fun seeing some old friends and training with them.  We packed up and headed back to the hotel for some dinner and relaxation that night, in anticipation of the next day. Saturday came, and with it the taikai.  We got together, as a team, and had breakfast, got ready and packed, and head