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It has been a while since my last entry. The final weeks of my first year of grad school and impending fatherhood made things pretty complicated for a little while. In addition to everything else, I've been diagnosed with type II diabetes, so I've been working hard to change my diet and deal with that issue.
I continued to train, however, and the past couple weeks have been really good. Two Saturdays ago only Micah, Robert, and I were in class. We decided to experiment a bit with two-man randori with swords! We used bokken, so we moved more slowly than we would normally and stopped ourselves when we felt that we were speeding up.
Of about a dozen turns as uketachi (the same role as nage when we do it empty handed), I had one turn where I felt pretty good about my performance. I cut my two opponents, but more importantly, I did so by blending with their attacks and by not getting cut at the same time. :-) Otherwise, I noticed that I was overcommitting on my attacks when acting as uchitachi.
This past Saturday, Glen Matsuda sensei -- the AAA Eastern Region director -- came down from the New York area to teach us. We worked on some techniques from ushirotekubitori. His major point was to show us ways to move so that uke is continuously moving and off-balance.
We took a break after about an hour and got some answers to the questions that we had regarding Sato sensei's leaving the AAA and the future directions of the organization. Generally speaking, it sounds as though the organization is heading in a good direction and that it's a shame the AAA and Sato couldn't reconcile their differences.
For the second session, Matsuda sensei answered specific questions we had with a focus on koshi nage and randori. The class was excellent!
06-07-2005 01:34 PM 