Today was sweatily unbearable, though Westchester-Sensei showed up to put us through his usual rapid paces, but I was deprived on two occasions of running the gauntlet of Sensei. I was somewhat more aggressive today, but should probably keep in mind Hayashi-Sensei's advice--30 seconds of kiseme before shodachi...

More shiaigeiko and the need to change things up in practice. I think I need to have an aggressive mode switch to turn on when appropriate... As it stands I tend to "wait" a lot in chudan before striking--sometimes, though once a few strikes are exchanged I go into more of a kakarigeiko mode, but more often than not it's mudanuchi or otherwise not precise enough for ippon. The tension at least has improved overall, but I should continue to strive for naturalness.

Shiai season is definitely not among my favorites but at the least it ups the ante and gives some of that all-too-unwelcome scrutiny: I guess this time around there are actual tryouts for team placement, which should be extra incentive, even though I tend to choke. It's good, even though I'll likely now miss one practice a week due to classes next semester at least. My goal is not so much shiai as shinsa, June 2009.

After a week's absence, today's return was sweltering despite the A/C (!) which Sensei decided to turn on. The main thing I noticed after was fatigue in my abs, which I hope is due to my greater use of my tanden and so on. It could just be the heat, though. The daily 5-minute plank routine has worked wonders--forward, side, side, back, forward, at 60 seconds each. One of those things where you don't get faster when you get better...

So I've missed two weekend practices due to socializing, but no more! Especially with a tournament coming up, I do need to get a good deal more serious and just in general given how difficult the Fall will be. So now I have this book on core performance and will be doing my best to build a routine to grow the basic strength and flexibility which should help me move forward...

Oddly enough, this post is written just before going to practice. It's been bad, the ways in which both my extracurricular conditioning and my blogging/journaling have basically died out of late. Now that I have blazing wireless, there should be no excuse.

In terms of conditioning, I'm not going back to the hindu-squats from before my back injury, but I have fully (or mostly) inflated an exercise/physio-/swiss ball and so try to do a lot of reverse crunches, and then a medley of squatted (static) suburi (shomen, sayumen), squatting (dynamic) suburi (to two inches above the floor), lunge (right, left) suburi (two inches from floor), and other core conditioning exercises. Gone is my previous focus on the heaviest suburito I could find.

Hopefully there will be few training interruptions this summer.

Masago sensei visited, with mostly a focus on seme--if opponent does nothing, tsuki. If to his right, men. If to his left, kote. Also some oji-waza and applications of kata, with an emphasis on the left foot, but rather difficult to learn anything directly from his lessons.

In my keikos with him the men were a little exhilirating but it's clear that I need to work a heck of a lot more on my kote, as tonight for instance the kote were these loops which were over-extended. That and momentum are difficult.

It's been said that one's priorities should be family, work, kendo, but I've too long reversed those. With Mark, I've missed a lot of practices, but hope to do better in the coming months... My new hardwood floors should let me practice more than ever...