Tonight practice was a good practice we opened with with the usual warm up stretches, breakfalling techniques and turn out drills such as cartwheels and round offs feeling stiff from last week's practices. We then moved into a nage waza drill which consisted of moving multiple directions, begining with going back wards and then setting up our partner for a throw. We did three uchikomis and then the fourth attempt was a throw using our favorite technique. (The term Uchikomi is derived from the Japanese verb Utsu which means "to beat against". Many instructors mistakenly interpret the word Uchikomi to mean "fitting in")
I wondered again, how long it was going to take for everything to at least feel normal again. My timing, footwork and coordination was indeed off and I found myself struggling just get my steps right.
We then moved our opponent back ward moving into three uchikomis and then on the fourth a throw. We ended the drill with moving yet another direction for three uchikomis and then on the fourth a throw. We kept this multi directional drill up for 15 minutes then rested. We repeated this three times. This type of drill was done at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado springs.
I felt that felt as if I was moving slow with no fluidity at all. I almost felt like a fish out of water except for the fact that I knew what to do but just couldn't seem to get my body working in unison with my mind.
We ended with an anaerobic uchikomi drill in which we again partnered up and one would attempt 10 uchikomis sprint across the mat touch the edge and sprint back to your partner and do 10 more and then run the sprint again. We repeated this for 5 sets completing 50 uchikomi.
I had managed to work up a good sweat tonight and again felt like an old wet sack of sore bones on my way home. As much as it was hard work, I was just as anxious for another practice and in a hurry for the rust to wear off and disgusted with my performance despite the encouragement I had gotten from some of the guys at the dojo.
