It's getting close to shinsa season for Sensei, and attendance was odd for a Tuesday. In the ashi-sabaki/kihon portions of class, the focus was on good men-uchi. This meant lots more of the deliberate striking across the entire length and other such drills as fumikomi and men-four-steps-stop-men. Kihon focused on striking men from to-ma, by movig slightly to the left or right, just enough to claim the center-line from an unwitting opportunity.

After men-tsuke with Tuesday Sensei teaching, it was the usual drill of kirikaeshi (regular, no-blocking, one cycle in one breath), men, kote-men, kote-do, with an emphasis on to-ma, ai-kote-men, debana-men, degote, nuki-do, and plenty of kakarigeiko.

Mawarigeiko got messed up, so I only got a piece of one sensei today, and ended up moving around in the line too much. Do I smell?

I didn't feel terribly in control or aggressive today, and was told by an infrequent sempai that I need to loosen up a great deal more. And that's probably right, as usual, it's just that my debana men feels slower than before (or maybe it's not as cheap), and my harai-men is not as fast as it could be. My ura-harai-men in particular tends to go too far on my right, rather than the left, katsugi-style like with some others. In the case of all the others I practiced with, there just wasn't much to say, other than sensei encouraging me to make smaller men and more committed kote. Nothing new, then, but also stuff I should have a better grasp of by now.