Quite a workout

Roll, rolls, and more rolls

Phew. I'm still sweating, even after the drive to work from the dojo.

Needless to say, aikido class today was quite a workout. Due to the odd number of students, I worked in with a pair of yudansha, and the three of us managed to knock out the hanasu no kata and the entire junana hon kata (which means, of course, you end up doing each technique twice and taking ukemi for each technique twice). With yudansha, there wasn't much need for discussion, so we were able to keep a pretty brisk pace.

On top of that, once class was over, Scott and I continued to work on the last half of yon kata, plus the jo-no-tsukai-kata (jo against hand) and the tachi-tai-tachi (sword against sword) section of san kata. Well, to be precise, I attacked him for all of it for the purpose of his rank demonstration.

On one hand, I can't help but feel many of my technique were pretty sloppy. I'm afraid that I end up "odd man out" and standing around more than I'd like. I'm still relatively young in this art, so I'd like to stay in the game and get my practice for many more years to come before I do the teacherly, stand around giving pointers thing.

With aikido, I find you can work in threes fairly well, but in judo, it's a little tougher (and I need much more practice in judo!) Yesterday, for example, there were five of us, so guess who stood around for the most part?

But you know, maybe it's not as difficult as I think it is. I've just got to make the effort and put a little thought into it. Hmm.

At any rate, moved a lot, it feels good (kind of a rambling, "dear diary" kind of post today). How was your practice today?