New semester

I went twice to training last week. Tuesday and Friday. On both days about 15 armour wearer turned up, so we could get a very decent training for the advanced kenshi.

The Tuesday's training was in a sports hall which I had never been to before. But it will be the home of Uni kendo for at least a semester. I arrived at the end of the beginner's session, before the advanced session. There didn't seem to be many new students, but lots from the last semester, which made up to over 20 people. I wonder if it's because the new students haven't noticed the kendo club yet.

We did mostly basics and exercises like ooikomi-geiko and kakari-geiko for building up our physical condition. During jigeiko it happened a lot that I let my opponent hit my men upon turning around for Zanshin. Of course this was because I was exhausted. But I should try to improve.

On Friday, Georg led the training. We did more trainings on waza after a series of straining warm-up exercises, suburi and kihon-geiko. There were hiki-waza's, notably hiki-men-hiki-kote, hitting men and then kote while moving backwards. We also did free waza against men. Then we did about 10 mins of jigeiko in with rotation.

Some notes:

• To execute men-nuki-kote, the kote-strike should be closer to myself as the attacker moves in himself, which shortens the distance. One step to the left to avoid men, and strike kote. This is useful as men-nuki-men does not work for opponents that are much taller, since the arms usually protects his men.

• For men-nuki-do, be sure to move diagonally to the front right quickly enough so that the men is not struck.