I did shit Kendo

Halfway through my lunchtime workout I thought to myself “this is a bad idea”. Yes, I need to pick up my game after what was a disastrous summer fitness wise, but the legs were already complaining on the trainer and the shoulders were feeling fatigued. It was a bad idea but I pushed through it for the hour; after all, no pain, no gain. Right?

Wrong.

By the time I arrived to training at 7.30pm, I was already yawning. Never a good sign. I purposefully arrived early so I could stretch as I was feeling stiff all over, especially my hip flexors. Yet another bad sign. But I was there, I sat down and relaxed , did some deep breathing and focused. It’s always good good to focus, yes?

But in the first five minutes of warm up, I was feeling it. The shoulders were complaining, the legs were turning to jelly. Oh dear…

The rest of the evening was a mix of getting it right-ish, but mostly getting it wrong, in a kind of sine wave pattern. But my mood, a.k.a composure, was not matching the wave, being more like a downward slope through Ashi Sabaki practice, then into Kakari-geiko, and by the time Kiri-kaeshi came around, I was done. The only upside being that the night ended with a Kakari-geiko that I felt half good about. Only half.

End of the night I was done and in a glum mood.

It’s said that if you try your hardest to do the best Kendo you can, then you have done well. I am not sure what is said if you do the best Kendo you can when your are tired through your own machinations (hence your best is only half as good as it should be), but I get the feeling in an old school setting it would amount to something like ‘bad luck butter cup’.

Image: Saskatoon Kendo Club