New guy who just started came to practice for the first time. Always looking for an excuse to spend all two hours on nothing but basics, I ran him and the other guys through the serious fundamentals. We started just practicing how to walk up and down the hall, focusing on upper and lower body coordination, keeping the hips steady and the feet moving enough but not too much. When we finally got around to using our swords we took our time doing basic stances, moving in and out of high, mid, and low kamae before actually cutting. We concentrated on hand positioning, blade movement and arm mechanics, as well as timing with the lower body, and of course maintaining total bodily stability while moving and cutting. Also talked a bit about line of sight and the relentless pursuit of eliminating wasted, unnecessary movements. After two hours my right shoulder was twinging in pain, but I've got less that two weeks until the national tournament, so I'm not resting it; plenty of rest when I'm dead.
After class I hurried home only to discover that the 9pm conference call I thought we had, we didn't. So Hiroko and I watched tv while eating a heavy-on-veggies dinner.
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