This post is part of the First Year of Budo series

Jodo

Small class today which is always good. Along with various comments in regards to our week-long seminar (2008 Australian Iaido and Jodo Seminar and Championships) we received a fair grilling on our tandoku. I was glad that I seem to have adapted 2 of the major things I was doing wrong last week but there’s always more to improve on. On dobari-uchi my strikes were far too wide which means I’m not visualising what’s actually happening. tsk tsk.

After that we went through kata. Sometimes I screwed up pretty bad but there was one time where my partner and I seemed to gel really well together and that was cool.

Iaido

After warmups in which I was told I’m still pushing up when I go to cut (I really can’t feel it most of the time and when I watch myself in the mirror I can’t see it) we went through all 12 kata. Luckily I had spent some time the day before trying to learn kata 8 and 10 although it didn’t appear to pay off in day :). For 10 after the tsuki I didn’t step through with my left foot which meant that I would naturally cut to the left next (and another visualisation thing I guess). So I cut opponents in a different order which left me finishing facing the opposite direction to everyone else. Rather comical.

Today I head off for the week for the 2008 seminar. There is going to be about 6 sensei down from japan including the australian technical advisor who is a 8th dan hanshi (and quite awesome I might add) along with a whole bunch of 7th dan and high ranking sensei. Should be quite a full on set of training sessions. Expect some reports when I get back.