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It was just Sensei and I tonight. We started out with warm up as usual except I was the one leading the warm up. We pretty much do warm up in the same order every class, and I pretty much know the order of the first half. It's the last half that's a little cagey for me. It's so much easier to follow someone elses lead. Not only that, when your doing the leading it forces you to start thinking about what exersize comes next while your doing an exersize. That invasive thought then distracts me from what I was doing and the next thing I know I've not reversed the exersise on the count of go. There is something to be said for the mind body coordination exersizes of leading a class. I'm glad it was just sensei and I, otherwise I would have been even more self conscious causing me to flub even more exersizes.
After exersizes we started working on throws that will be on the sankyu test. We stopped to play with the showmen strike for a momment, to see how easy it was to accept this attack using one point and unbendable arm. I asked Sensei to strike me as hard as he could. I would step in using unbendable arm and centered stability, and no matter how hard Sensei swung at me it was as easy as catching a base ball. Sensei took a turn at this as well. I showmened him about 4 or 5 times progressively getting harder till the last two times I was swinging full force. Now I'm 6'2" and 230lbs. Not braggin or anything but to stop my momentum dead in its tracks is a pretty impressive and useful technique.
Worked on Jo and Bokken next. I don't know why I get so tense in the shoulders when I pick up a weapon. It makes my weapon flop all over the place. I swear if there was actual opponents involved I'd be hitting every thing but the opponents. More likely they would be falling over laughing at me. After a few rounds of each Kata I managed to relax enough to steady my weapons to resemble a tree branch on a blustery day. Oh well! I'm sure some day my weapons katas will have some simalarities to everyone elses.
01-15-2004 01:53 AM 
There is something to be said for the mind body coordination exersizes of leading a class. I'm glad it was just sensei and I, otherwise I would have been even more self conscious causing me to flub even more exersizes.
