January - February 06

 

 Day 431: Monday, December 18-05 - Day 439: Sunday, January 08-06  

The day after the exam I went to kendo training. My teacher brought some champagne. I felt it is victory for everyone.

For the next few days I did my suburi with a feeling of unreality. It was never my intention to do these suburi only until the exam, but afterwards a little voice in my head started questioning why I was doing them. 'You've done enough,' it said. 'You can bow out now gracefully.'

I am sorry to say, I went into a slump. The end of 2005 was very busy. I travelled a lot, I had a lot of visitors and I did kendo a lot. But then I didn't lift a bokken or shinai in anger for almost two weeks. I felt I had earned it.

I hung out with my wife and daughter. I went on holiday, tried new recipes and read about 10 books. Only in the New Year did I get back into training. And it was awful. I went to the dojo and couldn't even do the basics. Really, it was embarrassing. The following day I was glad to pick up the bokken.

Part of this motivation came from reading Lance Armstrong's 'It's not about the bike' - a book I recommend to anyone. In it he says something like, 'Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.'

But the other part came from myself. I used to think I was a tough guy and that I could endure anything. But the day my daughter was born I realised that this was only so much hot air. She went directly from the delivery room to intensive care where they placed her in an incubator and inserted drips and drains as she struggled for every single breath. We couldn't hold her for days. I was totally annihilated and cried helplessly in front of strangers. 

So the other part comes from knowing that life can be taken as easily as given. I can choose. Either I make sacrifices for things I want, or I quit. And I don't always make the right choice.

I guess this year I will continue to walk the line between success and failure - sometimes on one side, sometimes the other. I hope my friends and family will be there to nudge me back if I need it. And I hope my plans for this year work out. We will see. As always, no promises. Just a la prochain fois. 

Happy New Year :)  

 

 Monday, January 09-05 - Tuesday, January 10-06  

Kendo training both days. My teacher said that we cut sayu-men and do along the same trajectory, so I have been practicing almost solely sayu-men and do suburi. I realise that my sayu-men needs a lot of work, so it's unsurprising that my do is so poor. 

Training both days is fun, but hard work. I need to dominate fights more and not always look upon myself as the challenger. My teacher points out that I tend to bend my left leg and stoop. I resolve to work on these.

Another person tells me to keep my shinai straight after striking sashi-men, rather than point it at the sky as I normally do. I try this and it really works. Yet another thing to work on!

 

Day 440: Wednesday, January 11-05 - Day 445: Thursday, January 19-06  

It is becoming too difficult to record every single suburi and kendo training session. There are simply not enough new things to say regarding the suburi to make a daily log worthwhile or interesting. So rather than remarking on the minutiae, from now on I am going to update every week or ten days noting the most salient parts of my training. 

On the weekend I travel to the UK for squad training. We concentrate on oji waza, particularly kote-nuki-men, men-kaeshi-do and kote-kaeshi-men. The Great I Am advises me, because of my size, not to move forwards in men-kaeshi-do until after the do has landed. A light bulb turns on and glows dimly in the recesses of my mind. I try it and see and improvement immediately. 

I also continue my conversation with the sports psychologist I met by chance some weeks ago. I have read a number of books she has recommended, particularly enjoying Lance Armstrong's 'It's Not About the Bike' and Michael Johnson's 'Slaying the Dragon'. Armstrong makes the point that it is seldom that our minds and our bodies work in synchrony. Either we are giving ourselves negative self-talk - 'I never do well against this person' - or our bodies are complaining. He highlights crucial parts of races where he united the two parts - to devastating effect. Coincidentally I was reading Inuoe-sensei's book on kata, and he makes the same point. 

Following this insight,  and to extent to which it is possible, I am now concentrating on disciplining my body and my mind during my suburi. Additionally, I continue to work on sayu-men as the foundation of and precursor to do. I try to better control my bokken by experimenting with the amount of force used in the up and down strokes, and locating the most efficient way to apply that force in tenouchi. 

I have also given up smoking. I gave up before my daughter was born, but it crept back in a couple of Christmases ago and I quickly reverted to being a registered addict. Although I can list 100 good reasons to quit - my health, my family, my kendo etc - none of these have proved sufficiently compelling to help me on a minute by minute basis when the craving gets bad. So eventually I decided to make it into a competition and challenged my smoking partner at work to give up. He accepted the challenge and I added more pressure by telling him that he lacked the stamina to do it, essentially he was a loser, and I was going to tap dance on his nuts when he dropped out the race. The net result? I have been clean for almost a week and he is a loser. 

 

 

Day 446: Friday, January 20-05 - Day 463: Monday, February 13-06  

It has been a long time, hasn't it. 

I have been feeling very guilty about not keeping this blog up to date. Unfortunately, I have a list of priorities, and if time is short this is one of the first things I cut. 

Recently I have been taking it easy after the madness of last Autumn. I have been hanging out with my wife, reading books on subjects other than kendo and not giving in to cigarette cravings.  

The suburis continue. I was hoping that I would be almost at the halfway stage, but I am still two months from it. 

A couple of nice break throughs. My 'do' seems to have finally improved. At least, I feel comfortable doing it as a suburi. My daily workout now looks like this.

100 x shomen 
100 x sayumen
100 x do
100 x sayument
100 x do
200 x kote
100 x kote-men
100 x 20 shomen
20 x shomen, sayumen, do, kote, shomen

Rather than getting easier to do, I find the suburi more and more taxing physically. I am slightly concerned about this because I have been trying to refine them with the philosophy 'minimum force, maximum effect'. 

Another factor is that my daughter is getting in on the act too. I can just see her through the door of the room where I train. If I catch her eye then she starts giggling and making her 'chase me' signals. I can normally ignore this for about 10 suburi, but then I give in and chase her squealing around the apartment with my bokken. 

On a more serious note, I continue to refine the basics: proper hand position in kamae, use of the knee in suriashi, keeping my spine straight. By working on all of these in suburi I hope the effects will come through to my kendo. 

I need to refocus on my kendo as I think that I get out exactly what I put in. Currently I feel as if I am treading water, which has been fine for a few months, but can't continue indefinitely. .