UCL Lost Boys

Fnar. Leather condoms, that’s what you’re thinking, don’t try and deny it. Filthy git.

I am enjoying the suburi at the moment. 12 months ago, if you had said to me:

“Hey, Gibbo, next year you’ll be doing suburi almost everyday, and 300 of them, and you’ll be loving it!”

I would have said:

“Fuck off will I.”

But I AM loving it. It’s good, and cathartic. Just me and the shinai. It’s also helping me relax my cuts right now (which in turn is helping me relax my kamae), and is also some valuable time for me to think about my kendo in general.

But why?

Well, it’s bloody simple, actually. There are just no distractions. All you have to do is swing your shinai. After a while, the suburi start to do themselves, and you can really zone out and do some nice, relaxed, and sharp suburi. It’s also a perfect time to analyse things like my hikitsuke, my tenouchi, my shisei, it’s all there. Best 20 minutes ever spent! (“20 minutes?!” I hear you cry. Well yes, I like to take time, do it nice and slow, and enjoy myself. Like a good wank.)

Things are generally ticking over nicely. The new kamae is generally working, and, although we didn’t win the Nakano taikai this year, I had a brief glimpse of what it was I am aiming for, though if I’m honest I was not totally sure how it came about. The guy next to me (while I was changing my shinai) just said “put him under pressure, and take the ippon”, so I did and I did, but it’s getting that to be a more central part of keiko that is (as always) the hard part.

So generally, I hold a much harder chushin and therefore kamae at the moment. I don’t lose so much silly kote, but the down side is that for the moment this has also made me more stationary. I had, up until now, been trying to simply force myself into moving more, but it felt fake.

It felt fake becuase, I realise now, I didn’t what I was trying to move for. On friday, at the power station, Watanabe sensei, framed it perfectly for me. I need to work on forcing the guy in front of me to break his kamae, while keeping mine. Before, I was making them break up (kuzushi) by some kind of mad hurricane like assault, and picking off what came. What Watanabe sensei explained, and the missing link to my neanderthal, is that now that I have my kamae sorted out for now, I need to use it to break my opponenents chushin and close my distance at the same time. Or, with my current thinking, this is the “reason” for moving forwards that I was looking for!

It’s all so easy when you have a hanshi copper feeding you advice like this…

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Hello, this is the webmaster (Joe) here. Every now and then I take a look at the website to make sure it’s running smoothly, including the website statistics. There is a little item called “Search phrases” which tells me what phrases people have searched to find these pages… So, can some one please explain to me why, on this fine (but cold) saturday afternoon (i should be at Wakaba but shhhhhhh) i find that people have been searching

pictures of ladies head shaving in barbar shop
gay my ears
gay barbers shave

Seriously, i feel a bit ill

Joe