Its my turn to take the new beginners group for the next 8 weeks. At our club Shodan and above take it in turns to run the course so we all gain experience in teaching kendo (under supervision from sensei). The course introduces basic big men cuts, kirikaeshi and an introduction to Bogu.
This was my first one so I was pretty nervous about taking a class of 25 people. I broke the class into basic footwork, kamae and men cut (split into 3 then 2 'phases' of cut). The class was finished with 10-15 mins of hyasuburi. Hopefully I can keep the newbs interested for a few weeks, but we all know how bad the attrition rate is in kendo ;)
Saturday and Sunday was the London Cup. I fought in the first pool match for us in the team comp, we had more than 5 people in the squad so we were allowed subs. Nas and Oli took turns for later matches.
I fought against a lady from the Dutch national squad (Chung). She was much shorter but quicker than me and won with a degote. Two disappointing things about my performance. One, my usual problem with attacking too close allowing the kote and two, crap zanshin/kiai. I spoke with one of the shinpan afterwards who said I would have scored at least one men cut if i'd claimed the point more convincingly.
Sunday was the individuals and I was paired against Lee from Shiraoka in Scotland. I didn't last very long against this lad, he was too strong for me.
Not a very good couple of days really. However, the one improvement from previous shiai is that I didn't feel as nervous as before. Maybe in another 10 years I will be able to get into the second round?
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