Hai Sensei.... Hai Sensi...

This blog is a bit late as I have been busy. Since this is so late, I don't really remember the things that I did on Tuesday or Wednesday... so instead, I will talk about about some other things. :O) Tuesday there were only a few of us in class. All of us have been there for about a year or less. Well, the new guy asked a question wihle we were working together and I tried to answer his question. Sensei looked over at us and said "NO talking." I gave a small rei towards sensei and said the only thing I could "Hai sensei." I made a point not to say much for the rest of the class. Sensei gave me plenty of corrections during the class (none of which I can recall at the moment). To each of these comments, I said "Hai sensei." and did my best to do as he asked. This should have been a good indicator for me that this week was not going to be easy.....

Wednesday I strolled in the dojo, all fresh and ready. I was a bit stresed out from work as I have been working on 3 cases and going through training, but I was looking forward to class. We worked on a few variations of techniques. I had done shomenuchi kotegaishi before, but not these variations. Needless to say, I wasn't getting them. It seemed like the entire class I was struggling to get things to work. I couldn't even get stupid shomenuchi ikkyo to work for crying out loud! By the end of the class I was so upset with myself that I could feel myself on the verge of crying! As my husband and I walked back down to the changing room (we had to put on hakamas for iaido) he sensed something was wrong and kept asking me. I told him nothing was wrong and that I was alright. By the time I got back up to the dojo, I was already beginning to feel a little better. By the time class started, I had wiped my mental slate clean and I wasn't so miserable anymore.

Thursday went better then the two days before. I actually felt like I was doing well on a few things. We worked on ryotedori kotegaishi, shihonage, sumiotoshi and kokyuho, tsuki kokyuho and kotegaishi and katatedori iriminage, katagatame and ikkyo. For the most part, I was getting the techniques (to the level I am expected to). We had a visitor in class for the 2nd hour. She was very nice. Apparently she lives or trains in Japan and was just here for a visit. I have no idea of her rank, but she has been training for about 30 years. Sometimes she was gentle and other times.... not so much. While working on kokyuho with her she bashed me in the mouth with her elbow. DOH! At least I wasn't bleeding. At one point, sensei clapped his hands, so I went to run around behind him to take a seat. Sensei changed his direction and I almost ran right in front of him. I said "Sorry sensei." and hurried up to run behind him to sit. As I was running like a frantic maniac to get a seat, he said "Ashley." and motioned for me to be his uke. I hurried up and reid, said "Onegaishimasu." and ran back the other way in a frantic circle to get back to him. Needless to say, everyone else in the class found this quite funny and got a chuckle out of it. He demonstrated katagatame on me. This wasn't the normal kaitenage to katagatame. This was from katatedori where you go towards the outside of their hand, come up over top and just scoop them down into katagatame. Sensei also did some other stuff with me trying to get me to keep close to him. He has been pretty tough on me lately. I guess he is just trying to make me a good uke. I don't mind. :O)

Saturday went alright as well. Sensei wasn't there, so his wife taught class. My partner and I got scolded for talking. Seems like I have been getting scolded a lot lately! We started off class with katadori ikkyo from suwariwaza, then moved to tachiwaza. We then worked on tsuki kokyunage. I had a little bit of trouble with this one, but not too bad. We then moved onto katatedori for the rest of the class. We worked on uchi and soto kaitenage for a while. At one point, I had gotten my partner into a position where he could prevent himself from rolling. I tried, tried again, tried with hips... and nothing would work. So, instead, I just took him down into katagatame. Turns out, whether I was the inspiration or not, the very next technique we did was katagatame. :O) We then moved on to shihonage, which is one technique that I feel pretty comfortable with. I actually have fun with this technique.

At the end of class, we were told to work on ikkyo, nikyo and sankyo from katatedori. We were also told to do omote and ura variations for all of these. I didn't really have a problem with ikkyo. For nikyo, I didn't do the variation that she wanted. I just did nikyo, but she wanted ikkyo to nikyo. I had a bit of a problem with the ura variation of this technique for a bit, but I started to get the hang of this. For sankyo, I didn't have a problem with the omote variation. For ura, I wasn't really wrong, but I wasn't doing it the "shortcut" way. So, they attempted to show me what to do for this. I still don't have this down, but I figure I will have more chances to work on it over time.
Though the beginning of the week didn't go so well, the end of the week was a bit better, which didn't leave me with a sour taste in my mouth the whole weekend. I know I am nowhere ready to test for 3rd kyu (which is what sensei said my first test will be for), but I can't shake this feeling that I may be testing for a lower rank sometime. Sensei's are known to do things that aren't expected, so if he walked up to me and said "I want you to test for 5th kyu" it wouldn't really surprise me... but it would at the same time. Who knows. I just hope I am wrong because I am not ready to test for any rank. I am quite content being a 6th kyu at the moment and I hope I won't have to test for another year or so.
I think I will skip over the things to work on for this week...... HAH!