Iaido Training Session 59 and 60

A week goes by with a whoosh if one forgets to keep on top of their blog. Anyway, the last two sessions have been fairly good training fodder times where I have spent most of the lesson on Chuden and Okuden in order to improve my tatehiza. I have done some token work on Seitei but have tried to focus on using Koryu to improve my posture, the naturalness of noto and basically get my legs to carry my fat arse a bit more dextrously.

I rather like the way my Shohatto is going but I am feeling that there is more and more to work on. Chiburi hasn't caused me much arm pain now that I have worked out where the right points are of relaxation and tension in the movement. At the other end of my koryu targets, Tozume has revealed it's difficulties and I am aiming to work on them. For me, the key difficulties are:

1. Getting my rear foot under and engaged early enough so that I can use it to drive me forwards into the first cut.
2. Turning the sword properly so that the first draw is secure, cuts the right angle and remains large enough without going below horizontal.

In between, Chuden remains a good training ground for my legs and Yamaoroshi in particular is moving ahead well.

I have a lot of work cut out in incorporating a slightly newer way of doing koryu noto which I think I have written about before in using the residual tension of the extended right arm to be the thing which actually moves the sword instead of an active effort to ram it in.

I have this Wednesday night of relatively undisturbed training time to work on:

1. Doing about 30 mins of Shohatto.
2. To carry on through the rest of the Koryu kata.
3. Doing about 30 mins of Tozume.
4. To check all technical points of Seitei.
5. To have 5 mins rest.
6. To have myself video'd so I can do a quality check.