Energetic Thursday

I missed Tuesday’s training because my daughter is teaching and things got a bit much at home. I also decided to take it easy on Wednesday after a two hour stretch in the voting line. The result of all the rest was that last night I was practically bouncing off the walls with energy.

I showed off what we learned at the sword course a bit before the class. I find the sword to be a versatile and deadly weapon and enjoy hearing even the boken swoop through the air as I cut my opponents down. Shortly after wards we started warm ups. One of the first kyu students took us through stretches. I was a bit irate because we didn’t stretch half the muscles we were supposed to.

First we did a bit of body conditioning. I had a couple of KGs on my training partner and by the time we went over to bag work the Sensei had to swap him with a better uke as he was getting whiplash from bag work with me.

After bag work we separated into our kyu groups. We started on Gun work. The first thing that became painfully obvious about evading and disarming an opponent with a gun was, well, distance. If his not holding the gun against your body, you won’t be disarming him. Scamming is vital when facing a gun and no sudden or jerky movements until you strike. 

You have to get your hands as close to the weapon as possible. If the weapon is on your head, follow an upward motion with your right hand and grab the wrist with the left hand from above and behind while lowering your stance and ducking your head down out of the line of fire. From here a basic figure four movement will take the opponents balance and you can disarm him. You could also go into a wrist lock, but be careful not to get caught in the firing line again. If the gun is pointed at your stomach, you would follow a circular side-ward motion with your hands and bring your body next to your opponents’ body, mirroring your opponents grip on the gun. From here you can twist the gun out of your opponents’ hands again being mindful not to get caught in the firing line.

We ended the night off revising the two sword katas we learned over the weekend. I was quite a bit more of a challenge inside the small Dojo than it was in the open air outside, but we quickly adapted our footwork and luckily no one suffered blunt trauma from a boken or worse.