Two more practices have gone by without so much as a post, I'm afraid, and it's all fading again.

Saturday we did a bunch of kata, all seven tachi-kata, in fact, but it was not clear what the beginners managed to pick up. Then it was the usual warmup routine, which was rapid and to the point before keiko proper. The same old problems, and I felt like I was even more tentative than usual, not really cutting with decisiveness and going forward as much as I should have. Too much kote-waza, and not straight in enough, while my attempts to use harai-kote also were too far to the left. Sensei remarks that I do fine when attacking second--after he has already overcommited. But I am too tense to reattack, counter, or do anything after the first strike.

Today was a Sunday classic, though it feels like we've abbreviated the entire lead-up to men-uchi. With an energetic kirikaeshi-kakarigeiko circuit, it was off to keiko, including some with visiting godan-sensei, who reminds me not to block, though I didn't even realize that I had been. I should try to regain that feeling of debana-men all of the time, as I used to be that way, but now I'm not anymore: I have gone through several phases in my jigeiko, I think, and it 's hard to identify them all, but roughly speaking when I started out I could not hit men without kote-men, then there was a phase where all I did was men-men-men and could not bring myself to hit kote, with a good period of always-trying-debana-men, and then finally this current period of too-much-kote.