…how watching a video of yourself shatters your illusions of invincibility?
I finally saw a video of my shiai against America from Brzail, and I’m not happy. It’s generally ok, but I still reckon I’m too close, and my shisei is terrible. I was almost back to my old hunched posture of my pre-4th dan days.
Yet more for the drawing board….
I had my obligatory company health check yesterday. This was pretty dumb last year (they told me I was clinically obese. Fat pie eating bastard. Ok, they didn’t call me a fat pie eating bastard, but they might as well have done.) so I was expecting more stupidity this year…
good news: I’ve lost 5.5kg (down to 88.2 now) and was asked if I was on a diet.
bad news: apparently having no real reason for a 6% loss in body weight, and the added joy of “officially” high blood pressure (140/88…..oops) is not a good thing.
The upshot? Losing all the joys in life. That cheeky piece of spicy chicken in the afternoon? Gone. Washing down every meal with a beer from the case that I have in the kitchen? Gone. Eating joyful junk food meals? Gone.
Balls.
It’s kind of wierd though, given that I lost a bunch of weight, generally feel more relaxed than I did 6 months ago, and didn’t exactly get shitfaced every night after eating a whole tub of Saxa cooking salt. Meh. My blood pressure was the high end of safe a few years back (128/80) so I guess I should have seen this coming, but I don’t want to live on runner beans and water for the rest of my life. I can’t even have a pocari sweat anymore because of the salt content. What the fuck!
What am I going to do with out my chunks of spicy chicken! All the best food is deep fried!
A late entry from the swede…
http://dontjudgemyhair.com/
Get in there. Nice mullet, twat.
Had the local Nakano ward indies Taikai at the weekend, got me a little bronze for my troubles. Oddly, reflecting back, I’m glad I lost, because I learnt some (to me) hugely important stuff.
The biggy is that (like a true Eureka moment) I’ve actually figured out why my shiai is never as good as my jigeiko. Ok maybe not never, but very rarely. Basically, I get too concerened about being hit, and end up playing conservative, I lose a little bit of the verve that my kendo has in jigeiko, a little bit of that desire to pound what is in front of me like a blacksmith with a hammer and an anvil. In the worst situation (when I lost yesterday in the semi) this snow balls to my going backwards more than is healthy. And then getting hit. What I essentially need to do is detach a little bit more and concentrate on the extra step, , the sharper little point to my seme, the extra little bit of hunger to hit the guy that I can carry effortlessly in jigeiko and seem to lose in shiai. This is most definately a by-product of a few recent shiai (recent, say, in the last 3 years, maybe) where my over zealousness has lost me a silly ippon (usually degote or nuki/kaeshi dou). I lose that little bit of edge. The understanding for this was also triggered by an unlikely source, Hatapoo, who I pound unceasingly in the dojo. He noticed that I definately loose something tangible in my shiai that I usually have in my jigeiko, and without it my kendo basically didn’t look threatening. Hatapoo comes through! That rhymes! If I can bring that threat back in to my shiai then I’m back on course. Come to think of it, I reckon I could very safely put losing in the Euro’s in Helsinki (or the fucking long encho that I fought as well come to think of it) down to that as well.
I am however certain that the rest of everything was on the right path. In my better matches my seme was good, and continuing on from my past musings I’m actually getting people to attack what I want. For example, in my first match I narrowly missed two kote kaeshi men (through my opponents bendiness!) that I was specifically setting up. Good! Despite my body feeling shoddy (just sluggish and tired, from not enough sleep and a hard mash up the afternoon before) I was able to generally do what I would term “My Kendo” (notice the capitals!) which is good, and I also felt quite relaxed and devoid of any kind of pressure through pretty much all my fights, a good novelty for me because I’m usually my own worst enemy in these situations.
And 3rd ain’t bad. No medal though, but I did get a (useless) shinai (it’s too thin) and a certificate with my name on it. Like I had just passed my 10m swimming test.
Got another shiai in about 6 weeks. Let’s see if I can do this again.
We’ve just had a set of 3 consecutive public holidays here in Japan. That means I just had a free 5 dau weekend. Awesome.
Anyways, I’m back to keiko now (though the long hol meant after 3 keiko back in the driving seat I’m left pulling my todger for another 4 days doing nothing….) and what with the tomfoolery of the world champs now firmly behind me and out of the way, I think it’s time to concentrate on making my kendo “better” again (ie sorting out the issues that I didn’t want to mess with while preparing for the big one).
But what to do, what to do! I’ve got my godan in a year and a half, but that’s bloody miles away, so I don’t think I’ll be worrying about that anytime soon, but I guess what I’ve got plans for will have an effect on the eventual shinsa related bull shit I’ll put myself through in 2011.
After watching the interesting stuff at the WKC (but not my own matches yet, I haven’t had a chance to see ‘em because the DVD is still on it’s way) a couple of things struck me, but the most important two are:
1) My seme is not good enough
2) I don’t have any “reactive” attacks.
That doesn’t make sense, at all, especially number 2 (heh, POO!!!) without an explanation. So:
1) My seme is not good enough
While I can quite happily get reactions of of people, I think my seme is still way too focussed on tobikomi waza. This is of course not a bad thing, but I don’t want to pigeon hole my techniques. I’ve always wanted flexible kendo, so now is the time to sort shit out. The seme focus is now not just on forcing a reaction that means I can smack a tobikomi men (or a favourite osae men for that matter) or a cheeky kote, but the allow the guy in a little, and then slap them when they move. I’ve not been very good at this until now for the simple reason that I hate being hit. They say you learn by being hit, well, I’ve finally figured out why. If you don’t get a fucking good slapping every now and then you’ll never figure out how to do proper debana or oji waza. At least that’s what it represents for me right at this moment.
Where this relates to seme and mois is that I need to get over this not wanting to get hit (and there by not allowing them to attack, and therefore limiting my available techniques) and use my seme not just as a denial, but also as an open gate. Again, a horses for courses method (an aggressive attacker is more likely to come for me when I open my centre and step in than someone with a more observant and thoughtful approach – which is also what I want for myself…) but that’s one reason why I go all over the place to practise and don’t just stay in one place.
And finally, I also need to work on the “leap of faith”, ie believing that what I am doing is about to work. It’s something that I noticed about the high level guys when they get points, it’s basically like they go in with the technique immediately, so that if the seme they are doing is effective then it’s in. Coupled with commited attacks and the seme being useufl it at the very least is another denial of the opponent. Obviously they don’t balls it up to an extent where they give away easy ippon, and experience and level plays a part in making it work, but the principle is there, and it’s one I want to use.
2) I don’t have any reactive attacks
Normally this would simply mean that I don’t have any seme either and I’m just waiting for you to come, but that’s not quite what I mean. Watching the WKC, and then also watching the police champs a week after getting back as well showed me that you can get a good ippon by attacking after denying your opponent. Hiki dou, kaeshi men, and a couple of other examples come to mind right away, but the key point is that the moment after a failed attack, people can often let their guard down in a momentary lapse, or they will over exagerate a block out of fear of getting hit (I lose this one from time to time) and it’s here that there is an opportunity. Perhaps this is easier than the seme (though of less ultimate use for my godan? Heh……) but another good place to go, for me and where I want to aim for at least.
Oh, and I need to fix my debana kote. It’s shit. Total, fucking, shit. And with nothing serious uintil probably April next year, I don’t really have an excuse. Back to the drawing board for that one….
First post wkc practise since getting back from Brazil. I haven’t done kendo in 2 weeks (Giving the family some time!) and I’m absolutely egging for a fight.
The only problem is that I drowned 6 cans of Ichiban Shibori and 3 Green Labels on Saturday night while eating my body weight in assorted meat and don’t feel very athletic today.
On the plus side, I bought Wii Sports Resort last weekend, and whilst caning said beers also pounded an ex-World Champion at the chanbara. Which means I am GOD.
It’s been nearly a month since I’ve written anything here (which isn’t necessarily new….) so I guess I should say something about the trials and tribulations that were my 14WKC.
It didn’t start off well. I arrived a day earlier than everyone else, so had to make my way to the hotel on my own. Asking tourist information, they politely informed me that I was staying on the complete opposite side of the city, and a taxi would cost me 130 rupees. Fuck, I think, that sounds like a lot. It actually turned out to be bugger all, but in my jet lagged state I plummed for the city bus, and then a taxi from there. Which turned out more fucking expensive. Cheers then. Plus the taxi driver got lost in an area of Sao Paulo that resembled Baghdad (though I later discovered there were a lot of these…)
The hotel was awful too…..no heating, so room safe, and the air con was a blocky old unit resting literally in a hole in the wall. So I could hear all the traffic going past, and that night, what I am sure were two gunshots as well. Welcome to Brazil.
Great.
I’m not going to go in to every single day, but sufficed to say (and sorry to any Brazlians out there….) I won’t be going back anytime soon. 3 cases of mild food poisoning and a general lack of anything relating to a feeling of being safe finalised that for me. Urgh.
Anyway, competition I guess. It was a mixed bag. My indies was truly fucking awful. I don’t think I have ever performed so badly. On the day my body felt the worst that it had since arriving, my legs just couldn’t move, my arms felt like lead and my shinai (the best balanced and lightest one I had) felt like it was made of iron, with added iron. I didn’t even get out of my group. What was more painful was watching the guy who beat me in the group and thinking that I should have pounded him in to dust.
The hardest thing was that even with all the exhaustion of the last few months, with the baby, crazy workloads and a general lack of sleep, I still hadn’t done kendo with my body ever feeling that bad before, truly. I couldn’t get my head around it and as such had no idea what to do, and ultimately lost to it.
The teams, by contrast was a very good day. I won my match against the Malaysians relatively comfortably, (making it 4-0 if I remember rightly.) and with a decent debana kote in there for kicks. The match against Holland was a proper bloody nail biter. Senpo and Jiho both went down like hookers, and chuken lost the first ippon. I thought that was the crowner, we were going out and I’d barely done anything. Thankfully, our chuken pulled nothing short of a miracle out of the bag the win 2-1, and out fukusho produced more goods to give us 2-0, which left me. At this moment we were still technically losing, as although matches was drawn at 2-2, they had one more ippon (from the 2-1 in chukensen), so I had to win. Strangely, I remember not really feeling the pressure at all, and being able to maintain control fairly well throughout. I think there was one moment where I could have lost an ippon, but held on to take 2 decent enough men to seal the match at a miraculous 3-2 come back. The boys done good!
This put us against America. All the world and their dog knows the yanks got 2nd, so you know the result, but it was still a decent match. I really felt that on another day we would have beaten the Americans, if perhaps one or two things were a little different. But 3-1 is not all bad. And I won my match at least. I faced Marvin Kawabata, the hero of Taiwan who beat Seike to seal the US victory against Japan 3 years ago. Although it was just for pride, there was no way I was going to lose. I simply didn’t want to, it was a simple as that. Although I lost a scrappy men about a minute or so in (I think), the most pleasing thing for me was how, in contrast to other similar situations before, I was able to keep my head on and keep my kendo consistent, as opposed to thinking “AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!” and swinging my shinai Scwarzeneggar style. Conan for the lose baby. After a little more fillandering and nearly losing my men after barrelling in to him I got a “Gibbo Trademark” osae men (I think…) and what was apparently a good debana men though I thought it was late enough to be ai-men. Again, both of these are my bread and butter waza, and get practised a lot, so to have them work for me against an opponent that good and on that stage was pleasing. And I got another fighting spirit award, which makes 3 for 3 for me at the World Champs. BUT, I want a fucking medal, not another award for turning up. So I guess I need to work out how to get to the asageiko at keishicho then……bugger.
Oh, and I photobombed Andy Fisher’s attempts at looking cool with the new ladies champion.
