Today was one of those days where there is always a bit of salt with the sugar.......

The sugar: getting to wake up at 7am instead of 5am!!

The salt: it was the coldest temp so far!!!

This theme continued all day for us which made sure that we were always challenged, as you have probably worked out the daily training regime by now so I won't bother you with what it is we did from 8am till 9.30am. I do think things are becoming more automatic at the moment and you find yourself attacking openings you didn't even consciously realise were there, the 'salt' was that because  you were doing this you weren't prepared for the zanshin due to that lack of conscious thought that was occurring after this week so far!!

After our 9.30am break we all ran down to the local brekkie joint for food and coffee loading, was great to chat to everyone outside of a freezing dojo and frozen dogi, the 'salt' was an hour later we were putting these wet frozen dogi back on our bodies!! Followed with more kihon, a now very easy 50 of the 4 normal warm up cuts then 100 jumping-men.

To have a bit of fun and bring a sense of realism to the week we did a king of the ring tournament, with the winner staying on to fight the good fight. A draw knocks you both out. The comment of sub-conscious realisation of openings seemed to come to the fore here. I witnessed some truly amazing strikes followed quickly by some truly dismal zanshin, was quite funny seeing the look on the attackers face when they realise where they are but not entirely sure how they got there!! We finished up with the shiai's at about 12.30pm so a solid 3 1/2 hours of kendo has me feeling great and wondering how thats possible?!?!

Think the real challenge for the final day will be to bring the mind back into the kendo equation, but that also will unfortunately mean realising just how sore the body is!! 

At least next week with the body fixed, the salt will vanish and we will all be on top form WITH top bodies (instead of the rent a dents we are currently dragging round with us) ;-)