Keiko: A Kenshi's Journey

Last night was a pretty good night of training.  I worked myself to exhaustion and then I pushed a little bit more to squeeze out all of the energy I had.  Sean was back with us and will be here for the next couple weeks, so we will have the pleasure of his company at training for a while.  It's always excited to have our old members back to visit, and Sean brings a lot of experience and skill to the table when he comes. We started out the night, as we have been doing lately, with kata practice.  I jumped into the group that was going over Ipponme and Nihonme so I could refine some of my movements and my timing.  I also seem to have a problem with distance.  Namely ending up back in the middle of the floor after completing the kata, especially on Ipponme.  I don't know if my steps are too big or too small.  Judging from the way I also seemed to end up on the shidachi's side of the floor I would say my first step in to strike is too big (as uchidachi) and my steps back are

What a night of training!  I felt really accomplished after making it through last night.  I had quite the weekend, helping one of my friends move to a new house, so I was still feeling the effects of that.  At first I wasn't planning on going, but as the day went by I started feeling better and started convincing myself that, yeah, I can make it!  And boy did I make it!  I'm really glad I decided to go, it was very fulfilling and I felt great afterward.  We started out with a bit of kata practice.  We usually take a couple months, twice a year, and really study and practice kata.  This year we're introducing the Kihon Kata into our practice, as well as the traditional Nihon Kata.  Wendy had us pick one Nihon Kata that we wanted to work on and focus on that.  I was paired with Aika and I decided to go over Sanbonme, while she focused on Nihonme.  We had a nice time, and I really tried to focus on the distance and timing of the steps and strikes.  I'm to a point where

This weekend our dojo traveled down to Portland to the Rose City Taikai, and if I had one word to describe the trip I would say it was awesome.  Not just the taikai itself, but the whole trip.  We had a good trip down and back, and were able to do some fun things, see some fun things, and generally spend time bonding as a team. This taikai was my first one ever last year, and I did fairly well for being new to it last year, so this year I was really excited to see how well I would do after a year of practice and taikai experience under my belt, and I feel that I improved a hundred times over from last year.  I came into the tournament last year as a 7 Kyu in the 0-3 Kyu division, and this year I was a 2 Kyu fighting in the 2 Kyu - 1 Dan division.  Quite a step up and I knew I had to bring out my best Kendo for the day. My first match was against a Shodan from OSU by the name of Burns.  The match started off and after a few seconds I came in with a big Men strike to take the first p

It's been a while since I last posted.  Partly because the site was doing some weird things to me, and partly because last week was a bad week for me as far as Kendo goes.  I was able to make practice on Monday and Tuesday night, and I felt like I was lacking.  I was kind of in a slump over my Kendo and I was really down and hard on myself.  But things picked up over the weekend because I found some inspiration and confidence and was able to bring it out this week, just in time for the Rose City Taikai this weekend! Last night we trained in the dark.  Literally.  During our warmups a nasty storm blew in, with hail, thunder, and lightning.  While we were doing hayasuburi the lights actually ended up going out.  Did this stop us?  No, not entirely.  There were still a few people that finished out their sets in the (almost) pitch black.  Luckily it only lasted for a couple of minutes, but that's what I love about our dojo.  Even if the lights go out and all is dark we're st