Tuesday March 1st

There is no hiding in the Hombu Dojo... The instructors eye for details coupled with the small number of students in each class makes it enevitable that all your bad habits and mistakes will be weeded out... if you are training everyday in the dojo!  There are always many things running through my mind in terms of technical details that I need to improve on...  One of these is my ability to perform yoko-geri kekomi correctly... I know that I am not doing it 100% right and I'm trying to work on it....

Inada Sensei and Matsue Sensei were teaching at the dojo tonight...  Ususally Tuesday evening classes are pretty quite... Actually as I was making my journey towards the dojo I was thinking to myself that it would be great if I could get Inada Sensei to help me iron out a few issues and critique my yoko-geri kekomi... Unfortunately there were five of us training in the 6-7pm class so the chances of him working on my kekomi with me on a one to one basis were slim.  We started off the class with kihon from zenkutsu-dachi.. gyakuzuki... kizami gyakuzuki and then geri.  As we were doing these Inada Sensei called me with a surpised expression and said that he forgot to do the "chairs dips"... So we finished off the kihon and I went to get the three chairs... The first night we did these particular dips we did 6 sets of 10 repititions... last week we did 6 sets of 15 repititions and tonight we did 6 sets of 20 repititions... There were just two kids training and Inada Sensei and myself gave them a helping hand in completing sets of 5 repitions.  The other two people who were training found these extremely tough but it was great for me to be able to power ahead with Inada Sensei!  I must admit that I did find the third set extremely hard but I rallied after that!

Shortly after the "chairs dips" we did some ido-kihon up and down the dojo and of course we did yoko geri kekomi from zenkutsu dachi and I could see Inada Sensei was eyeing me up and he didn't seem totally happy with my technique... He disappeared into the office for a minute and Matsue Sensei came out...  Next I heard "DI-A-R-MADO" from the front entrance... Inada Sensei was calling me and gave me an elastic tube and joked about my name being so hard to pronounce... Low and behold, Matsue Sensei started to teach the other 4 students and Inada Sensei brought me down to the back of the dojo for one to one practice for my yokogeri kekomi.  So the main problem for me is that I break my centreline when I extend my kick by leaning slightly forward.. This messes everything up and results in a loss of power and length in my kick... I guess if one took a photograph of the extended position of my "bad" kekomi one might think I was doing mawashi-geri.. So I practiced about 30 repititions of kekomi on each side with the tube wrapped around my foot.  Sometimes Inada Sensei would shout "kekomi" (thrust) at me and he would smack me with the shinai (bamboo stick) if I didn't do it correctly... When I was getting "better" at it he asked me to take away the tube and practice freely using the shinai for balance... This breaking of the centreline is such an old habit that I had built into this kick.. I felt so "awful" at times in trying to change it!  I then practiced in front of the mirror and it was nice to get an odd nod of approval from Inada Sensei... He then gave me a couple of stretching exercises to help me improve...  For me this 20 minutes with Inada Sensei was very special and I really appreciated him giving me this tuition... Even though I felt awful at times and just wanted to walk away from it, I now feel much better about what I'm doing incorrectly and what I need to do to improve my execution of the technique...  I really need to try and relax my shoulders and upper body and just let my hips do the work!

Matsue Sensei took the 7-8pm class.  There were only three of us training.  I had a feeling he might have done kata... well I  was hoping that he might do kata because I was so wrecked after the previous class!  But we started off with kihon... just gyakuzuki from zenkutsu-dachi and then Matsue Sensei went to the front entrance and gave us all a rubber mat, a weighted metal geta (Japanese style sandal weighing 5kg) and a belt.  We first of all sat on the floor and dip mae-geri and yokogeri (sitting sideways) 40 times each side slowly... We proceeded to practice mae-geri, mawashi-geri and yokogeri-kekomi with the sandle tied to our kicking foot with the belt... 30 kicks on each side... very slowly.  When we had sets for maegeri complete we removed the geta and performed the kick freely 10 times on each side.. We did the exact same for mawashigeri and yokogeri kekomi (front and side) from zenkustu dachi... This was all extremely difficult training...  Matsue Sensei was giving out to Haga san about the way he was breaking his centreline when doing kekomi.. So I'm not the only one!

Tonights training was probably the most special for me so far.. Mixed emotions... Feeling totally "awful" in my technique at times and then sometimes feeling that little improvement which gives me a positive boost!  I don't know.. it's very hard to explain the feeling!  On a different note, I had some good progression in my thesis again today so was happy about that.. The days for submission to examiners are counting down fast!