Teaching again

Yesterday evening I lead the training again at the uni training. I thought no one else would turn up , because Stephan and many of the senior guys have gone to the Baltic sea. So I emailed Wei earlier inviting him to join me for a small training session. Four other non-Bogu wearers turned up as well, perhaps not knowing that Stephan was away.

I tried two new exercise with them that I invented.

1. Men-suburi, but the left foot stays at the same spot while the right one reaches as far as one can. The right lower leg should be perpendicular to the floor and, best, to the upper leg as well. Body posture should be maintained at all times, with the hip following every strike. This exercise is the promote a large leg movement while doing fumikomi and striking forwards, as well as a good posture.
2. Footwork and reaction. I asked everyone to line up in a row at one end of the dojo, and do the following footwork: forwards, backwards, right and left. Do this continuosly until an appointed person strikes men, at which point everyone else should try to strike men as fast as one can to follow up. After the strike the footwork is resumed, and the process repeated. The person who initiates the strike is rotated, so everyone (including me haha) gets to practise. We did this from one end to the dojo and back. This exercise simulates the situation in shiai/jigeiko, where, during one's movement, if an opening appears on the opponent, one has to attack immediately.
   

I like explaining the ideas to the beginners, but the downside was that I didn't get to practise mouch. On the other hand, when I did get the chance to practise with Wei, who wore bogu, too, I had to concentrate and to make every strike perfect, because the others were all watching.

We did two hours of training, without playing basketball like we normally do to warm up, which was replaced instead by running around the dojo, which I prefer much much more, since it's equally intense for everyone, safer, and takes a shorter time. Considering also that the beginners usually train for 1.5 hours, they had a hell of a exercise yesterday!

What I would have like to do is to practise at least 5 waza against men-strikes at the end with Wei. So that I could get more out of the training. But well, next time.