Swimming to Fitness

Anti Social Behaviour! (Grr!) It’s amazing just how fast you can lose your fitness and how soon you can feel a difference. I haven't been going training, swimming etc to stay at home with the family. Consequently, last night saw me struggling in class with my balance, breathing and generally getting tired.

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OK, so last night was a really good lesson – we went through again some of the stuff we already thought we knew only in more detail. Hard work really, doing the same stuff over and over, but I think it will be well worth it.

The Escrima Sticks are very useful – I can use them in a fairly small place – since they are much shorter than a Mokkum.

Escrima Sticks?

I’m hoping this latest purchase – Escrima Sticks - will help my training schedule along just fine. I bought them off eBay for £2.99 and they look and feel great.

The plan is not to take up Escrima – a Filipino Martial Art (?) but just to use them to help me co-ordinate my body, in particular my hands, wrists and arms which quite often travel in the completely opposite way to which I told them to!

I’ll let you know the outcome, good or bad.

Anti Social Behavior

An odd thing to mention in a blog really but sadly our family has become a victim of some quite serious ‘young kids’ Anti Social Behavior. I won’t go into much detail other than to say we have been threatened, our back door kicked in and damaged, firebombed through our letter box, our front door smashed in and eggs thrown at our house etc over the past few weeks.

As a family we don’t really understand the reason behind it all, other than it must be our turn, but the consequences on our daily life, especially for our three small children are quite dramatic.

So if things go a bit quite for a month or so whilst I concentrate on this more important issue, please just excuse the delay in my blogging. Cheers!

Handforged Swords

Buying a sword and all the related equipment, sword stands, cleaning and maintenance kits, and gaining all sorts of knowledge about how to fix things must always be difficult for a novice. What do you do if your hand grip wrapping comes off?

My first serious problem occurred when I was cleaning and polishing my practice sword and noticed I had a spot of rust on the blade. I polish my sword almost every time I use it but it must have become wet or damp somehow when I put it away – and when I got it out again there it was, rust! Arrrrrg!

So I need another special mention for one very helpful Rod Waterhouse of RGW Handforged Katanas, the place I purchased my very first ‘Kakum’ sword from. Rod is very knowledgeable and happy to share his knowledge. His web site is http://www.rgwhandforgedkatanas.co.uk/ and you can also arrange to meet him to ‘try’ a sword before you buy.

I got the spot of rust out by the way without any problems and have added a few more Haedong Kumdo skills to my bow (!) which are not in the book.

Happy New Year - 2008

Well, here we are again and almost exactly a year since I first started. I have a lot to do this year if I am to keep up and last night wasn’t the best of starts. I must have had a better Christmas than I thought, certainly on the food front, and If not that then my belt has shrunk.

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Last night was hard work though we did only simple things – draws. However, quite rightly, we are going to up the level of technique this year to perfect all the little things. Sadly for me, I discovered I have taught myself a bad habit in draw three – not bringing the sword over and round the head when first drawn. It’s going to take forever to undo and redo.

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A big lesson here – if you practice something wrongly you perfect an error!