The Power of Gatorade
10 training sessions in 14 days - I'm buggered! Time for some well earned recovery time I think.
Morning's training at Willoughby was so-so. I wasn't able to cut men straight, which was frustrating. Nevertheless, there were plenty of encouragements from Sano, Itakura and Payne senseis, all of whom I had the opportunity to jigeiko. Even so, I couldn't help but to feel dejected a wee bit. I wore the double-layer keikogi so that I could reserve the single-layer keikogi for the afternoon squad training. By wearing the double-layer keikogi, my body temperature soared at one stage which caused me some degree of physical hardship. In fact, I noticed that the hotter it gets, the higher my resting heartbeat. I wonder how my sempai Vivian does it day in and out.
The first 30 minutes or so of the squad training was the hardest. Perhaps my body hasn't had the time to absorb the food and drinks that I'd consumed earlier. I felt exhausted but I pushed myself anyway. Midway through the training, when shiai-geiko was about to start, I started to feel stronger. I attribute that to the Power of the Gatorade! All of us kyu grades lined up against the dan grades - Toshio, Vivian, Mike and Doug - for shiai-geiko. I played Toshio and Doug and felt confident, a nice change from how I felt in the morning. Payne sensei then selected 6 other kyu grades to join the dan grades for team shiai-geiko. I was in Vivian's team and played the 3rd position, which is known as chuken. My opponent was Mike. Though deep down inside I did expect to lose, I was determined to try my best regardless. Anyway, I gave my best but wasn't able to beat the current national kyu champion, losing to his famous semete-men twice. Good thing is that I noticed I wasn't as tired this time around as compared to my shiai-geiko against Chris. Mike gave some good pointers after training so it's all good.
Things I've learned today:
Morning's training at Willoughby was so-so. I wasn't able to cut men straight, which was frustrating. Nevertheless, there were plenty of encouragements from Sano, Itakura and Payne senseis, all of whom I had the opportunity to jigeiko. Even so, I couldn't help but to feel dejected a wee bit. I wore the double-layer keikogi so that I could reserve the single-layer keikogi for the afternoon squad training. By wearing the double-layer keikogi, my body temperature soared at one stage which caused me some degree of physical hardship. In fact, I noticed that the hotter it gets, the higher my resting heartbeat. I wonder how my sempai Vivian does it day in and out.
The first 30 minutes or so of the squad training was the hardest. Perhaps my body hasn't had the time to absorb the food and drinks that I'd consumed earlier. I felt exhausted but I pushed myself anyway. Midway through the training, when shiai-geiko was about to start, I started to feel stronger. I attribute that to the Power of the Gatorade! All of us kyu grades lined up against the dan grades - Toshio, Vivian, Mike and Doug - for shiai-geiko. I played Toshio and Doug and felt confident, a nice change from how I felt in the morning. Payne sensei then selected 6 other kyu grades to join the dan grades for team shiai-geiko. I was in Vivian's team and played the 3rd position, which is known as chuken. My opponent was Mike. Though deep down inside I did expect to lose, I was determined to try my best regardless. Anyway, I gave my best but wasn't able to beat the current national kyu champion, losing to his famous semete-men twice. Good thing is that I noticed I wasn't as tired this time around as compared to my shiai-geiko against Chris. Mike gave some good pointers after training so it's all good.
Things I've learned today:
- When cutting men, make sure that it's one step one cut when I intended it. I noticed that my footwork hasn't been doing that today. Instead, it's like a mini nidan-waza. My left leg seems to shuffle twice before the cut. Bah!
- Put more oomph into the cut. Move that hip!
- Use less right hand!
- When cutting kote, try to cut straight down instead of cutting it at an angle.
- Don't delay when executing hiki waza, as corretly pointed out by Vivian.
posted by Andoru at
4:33 am
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