As ready as I'll be...

Tomorrow's the day...

I'm a darn perfectionist. Job, family, a whole lot of stuff keeps me from practicing 8 hours a day but that's almost what I wanted to do the last couple of days. At one point, I have to tell myself "that's okay, it's about as ready as you'l be able to get for this one competition". And with that in mind, I forced myself to wrap things up this afternoon...

Had a nice, if not spectacular practice session with the bo last evening. Just worked on some basics, spins, the throw, some strikes. Didn't even do the kata once from start to finish. Meanwhile, Andrew's class was doing another one of their mock competition. I didn't see his kata, but I knew he was on with his first kiai. Kid's got some life in his kiai now. He finished tied for first place with another older kid, maybe 11 or 12 years old. Even this morning, as I was getting ready for my class, his instructor of last night told me about how well he had delivered that kata. Good, good...

Today was more of the same for him, he did his kata in his class but they didn't score them today.

Me, we worked on some freestyle self defense stuff and since I had told my instructor I wanted some free time on my own to work on my traditional kata, Cat 2, I moved away from the group with about 20 minutes to do in the class. Did the kata numerous times and I'm feeling good about it, about how I'm delivering it. It's not a very long kata, but it plays into my strength, as it calls for many kiai and my kiai are somewhat convincing. ;) I know that I will be competing with some other people doing Cat 3 which is a much longer kata, with more moves and strikes and even kicks, but I'll give my all...

In the afternoon was our bo class. Worked some on my kata, section by section until about 40 minutes in when our instructor got to me and Andrew so we could do it for him once. Andrew did it first and got some stern telling off by our instructor. He said he didn't get the feeling that Andrew was pushing and I must admit that I also felt like Andrew was a bit mushy. He started over and it was much better. Once he was done, our instructor told me he would really like to see Andrew perform his kata with a lighter bo. Andrew's bo is indeed a bit heavier than the kind of bo you need for the kind of open style kata we practice. To tell you, his 4.5 foot long bo is much heavier than my 6 foot long one...

When we got to my kata, I started but then darn it, got untracked. I simply stopped and asked to start over and then, BOOM! I nailed it, strong kiai and all. At one point, it was almost surreal, I had the feeling that after my second kiai, the other students in the class had stopped practicing to look at me. Felt kind of weird. I know it won't be like that tomorrow as there will be tons of kiai coming from all over the place, but it sure felt special today. When I got done, my instructor applauded and told me if I do it that way tomorrow, there's no way I can't win. I'm going there to give it all I got, we'll see.

I'll make sure to let you all know how it went.

Good luck to my fellow bloggers, Mat and akarien. I'm really looking forward to meeting you guys.

FM