Since R’s folks where here over the weekend I didn’t make it to class, but I promised myself I’d go to most of the evening classes this week (we have class on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday during the week).

One of the nidans taught last night and it was a fairly advanced class. We started off with some basic rolling and then moved up to practicing breakfalls. Then shomenuchi ikkyo (which is a 6th kyu technique, so fairly basic – you can see an example here though we were not letting the person back up after the initial take down, but instead going into a pin). After that we did two koshinage defenses for shomenuchi (here and here but prefaced by the chop to the head attack of shomenuchi). The ukemi for koshinage requires a breakfall so we got a good bit of advanced ukemi in, which is nice, since we haven’t much lately.

After that we when through kume tachi (sword forms) #6 to #9, in descending order (no idea why, but heh). I hadn’t ever practice #7 or #8, and #9 only once before, so it was definitely a learning experience. I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable with #6 though.

It was definitely a class where I left remembering what I’d learned, which was nice. Sometimes you just aren’t able to absorb much and you leave remembering having done class, but without much ability to give the details of what you got out of it.