The Challenge: 23.50-25.50

Woke up at 5:15.  Felt good.  It's uncanny: If I wake up earlier and practice it feels like my day was already a success.  Same thing with making my bed - it makes you feel alive, like what you do matters.

Practised posture mainly along with lateral sabaki.  Important to note, most of these sabaki are expecting strikes to the solar plexus and lower. Strikes to the head require strong handiwork combined with sabaki to control the striking weapons.

The lateral sabaki have stances, blocks, strikes and deflections that work naturally with them.  The lateral shuffle works best with seisan, neko and kokutsu dachi paired with soto uke, shuto uke, gyaku zuki and mae ashi geri.

The Pivot step moves naturally to musubi dachi.  Tsukami, teisho and uchi uke work well with uraken and nage.

The outside drop step falls naturally into okutsu dachi.  It works well with gedan barai and soto uke as well as shuto uchi to the temple and neck.

The pivot drop step falls naturally to seisan dachi and pairs well with teisho and uchi uke with uraken as follow up.

The cross step behind is a kosa dachi, a shorter version of the 90 degree turn in seiken no migi/hidari.  It works well with haishu and shuto uke that can transition to a nukite to the eyes or neck.

The cross step in front is a kosa dachi that works well with shuto uke and shuto to the neck.  When spinning it can be joined with reverse elbows and yoko geri.

Finally the spin to musubi dachi has no block associated with its sabaki but is well suited to jodan uke, haishu uke and shuto or tetsui uchi when turning to the opponent.

When practising it is important to get a sense of moving effortlessly off embusen, as small a distance as possible and accurately visualizing the vector along which the attack must be intercepted.  From there you must move swiftly, smoothly and always balanced, returning to kamae again and again.  See different attacks approaching, and move through the different patterns of footwork.  Consider the strikes, pulls, pushes and throws which follow naturally from the uke and sabaki.