My own 2-week Aikido Intensive
Thanks to a happy fluke in my calendar, my next two weeks will be my own personal Aikido Intensive. It means being at work an hour early (and I am not a morning person). I’ll have to kick butt on caring for Rainy and the donkeys, and on doing my strengthening exercises in the mornings and evenings. But I know it will be well worth it. It’s also going to be a particularly intense time at work, with some long hours, so Aikido will be a good re-centering time each day. And that’s all my days will be - sleep, chores, exercises, work, Aikido, critters, work, sleep.
It starts [change of plans:] tonight, Friday, with the evening Aikido class. Then Saturday morning’s class, watching exams, & dojo party (and making a salad Friday night). There will be Sumo suits! Naturally I’ll try to get a cool photo or video to post. ;-)
Next week I plan to train Tuesday through Saturday. Sensei will be away, so the classes will be taught by several of the yudansha. I’ve trained with most of them before, and am looking forward to experiencing their whole spectrum of approaches to Aikido and teaching throughout the week. There’s only one I have not had the opportunity to work with yet, but have been wanting to. I think he’s teaching two of the classes. Woohoo!
The following week Sensei is back, so the week will have an entirely different awesome quality to it. I plan to train Monday through Saturday that week.
I hope I can do that much! I’m really excited about seeing how near-daily training is different from the sporadic 2 or 3 days a week I’ve been doing. It’s going to mean being really careful not to injure myself, and aggressively staying on top of any sore, achy, or irritated bits. There are going to be lots of ice packs involved, since I don’t do anti-inflammatories. Oh, and getting plenty of sleep - that will be an interesting challenge.
I’m planning to blog every day for the two weeks, if for no other reason than to help with my own recall of everything. It might be pretty straight training notes. We’ll see.
