After a rather long break for the Eid holidays it was training as usual at the dojo. Last night was my first session with session since the break. Things are different now and I have mixed feelings about it. What happened last year is still vivid in my mind and everytime I look at sensei moving on the mat I can't help but feel a sense of loss and sadness. But I must not disgress. What I want to write about in this post is about the training. I was truly glad to be back in sensei's class after the break. We, the few seniors now have sensei all to ourselves as the dojo agreed to split the classes into beginners and seniors. To top is off, there were only the 2 of us for this class. I can see a big workout coming..yaaaaay.
One of the differences I noticed in the senior's class is that we don't have our normal exercise that we used to do for the general class: tai sabaki, ukemi, shikko etc. I can only assume that where we are now we should be reasonably proficient with these movements therefore practice of them is dispensed with and we are expected to refine them in our own time.
Sensei started with the ikkyo movement, stopping after entry has been made. What he wanted was to draw the circle for ikkyo in a different way from how we would usually do it, which forwards. The circle is drawn to the side to to speak is achieves the same goal as the other circle, which is kuzushi. Sensei was talking about drawing circles, how you draw them and where you draw them. I was training with a man who is taller and much stronger than I am. Having been training from another (now defuncted) dojo, he still retains the trappings of his past training despite sensei's instruction there for over a 1 year before the dojo closed. I am familiar with his movements and tried my best to adjust to his movements which were heavily dependant on the muscular power of his arms. At times I feel a very strong re-coil from his entry and my re-action would manifest itself through the medium of certain sounds (insert laughter here). Maybe I am getting too soft..
Then we moved on to executing the technique. Apart from drawing circles I was also told to draw my circles firmly and in the right place. I think sometimes I tend to be too "nice" during training and it compromises the timing and effectiveness of my techniques. Something that sensei wants done away with.
The difficulty I find during the training is the timing of it all. You need to make contact at the right time and space, otherwise you would end up with a heavy shomen, feeling a strain on you lower back taking the shomen or stretched out of your spacee etc. What I see is that it boils down to not clashing with your partner. Ah Mr Awase. I really don't see you that often! And of course I needed to get over the mental hurdle that I am dealing with someone that is taller and stronger than I. But then again it would be pretty boring if all things were equal. It was tiring but I had lots of fun.
I have always loved circles.
