Waikato Kendo Club

Wow! What a difference a week makes. This time last week I was gathering my resolve and determination to take the hard lessons learned from my first shiai and use them to improve my training for shiai. I arrived at training yesterday knowing it would involve some shiai and was feeling excited by the prospect as I could only improve from my first effort which saw me making foolish mistakes in my nervous attempt to avoid appearing afraid. Before shiai however, we had a monster training involving my first gi keiko. I was fortunate enough to train with our talented fighting friends, Clement and Do Hun. What more could you ask for!? Two of our top competition fighters and both with different styles and approaches to training. I was already tired but I had to give it everything to try out techniques on Clement who is a committed and serious training partner, as well as a good kendo friend who generously shares advice. After the hard training build up and several minutes of striking at poor C

Wow - what an experience! After months of training I finally had my first chance to hit someone in an uncontrolled fashion yesterday. Having missed out on gi-keiko opportunities through my absence, my first chance came in an actual shiai. We had to pick a number and see who we randomly drew to fight. Luckily for me my first opponent was Leo - the awesome Ni-Dan!!!! Thankfully Leo was kind to me and allowed me to last for one minute of shiai before dispensing me with a tidy men cut made possible by my foolish attempt to cut kote on the wrong hand - his left. The whole experience was okay, apart from the slightly embarrassing feeling of knowing that I was making mistake after horrible mistake in front of all my peers. The beauty of fighting Leo was that I didn't feel as nervous because there was no way I could win, and I knew he would go easy on me, so I just got to try some techniques. I was silly to even consider trying kote and do, but I did and missed, giving Leo easy opportunite