A Saturday Morning In January

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It was a catch all kinda morning on a damp, blustery winter day. Ended up doing a real cornucopia of stuff in my outdoor playground with plenty of variety. After a warmup run it was some 50 metre sprints.....


Followed the sprinting up with some deadfall squats. I really need to focus upon lower body strength this winter.



Back on the softball diamond I opted to do some bokken kata. I picked up a bokken online to teach myself some sword play this winter just for the fun of it. Scratch another lifetime "must do" off the bucket list. As a historical reinactment fan sword play has always been of great interest.You Tube is great for these type of things. All kinds of instructional videos to self educate oneself. That said Aikido Ken-Gi is quite complex so my attempts are quite rudimentary to say the least.Things one does to help pass the winter away.....(wink)


Followed up the katas with some sword spins. It took me the longest time to figure out the hand and wrist movements but once I got it I was able to start practicing in earnest.Yeah - I know. Nerd alert!(wink) As a swords and sorcery fan and a LOTR acolyte sword spinning is neat in a Hollywood movie kind of sense.Remains a work in progress for no other reason that it is a challenge.


Heading homewards I stopped at my balance beam. The last big wind storm had dropped two trees so I placed a third across them to form a Z. My injuries from my bike crash in October have cleared for the most part with the exception of my balance. Vertigo and dizziness were the worse legacy of smashing my head off the pavement and, although better, my balance is somewhat sub par. Decided I would start working on making it better by some simple exercises. Oddly enough I find bokken kata seems to help it as well as it involves footwork and body positioning combined with (controlled) sword strikes. Funny how things work out sometimes?



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