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May 24th, 2008.

Rant of 10,000 cuts…

It was the weekend of the Atlanta Blade show that Sensei had been anxiously waiting for, so I volunteered to instruct at the dojo for the Friday-Saturday weekend as acting senior student.  I was already aware several people would be out of town, while others weren’t feeling well, which in turn led to a slim turnout.  Though I had already practiced the day before, I felt an overwhelming sense of anticipation as my awareness grew that I would have the dojo to myself.  With no one to discourage me, my ambition began to grow being left unchecked.

I knew I could do something, and I had the time.

Recently we had been pushing ourselves beyond our routine Senbongiri Keiko, a training drill we reserved for Friday and Saturday nights after Kihon or Marui Keiko respectively.  This required us do our regular series of cuts, when done at the beginning of class is a total of 110 cuts in all.  You can do the math to figure out how many times it takes to do this to reach the 1,000 mark, normally it takes anywhere between thirty to forty five minutes.  At the time, the current group had gone as far as four thousand, which I may have provoked by having done 3,500 solo the week before that.

Friday night we chose the alternative- Subarito Keiko.  We did the set of repetitions a couple of times, and called it a night.  For a Saturday it was unusually quiet- disappointingly so to see the dojo so empty, a poor testament to a new training hall.  After the Kihon Keiko, I took a brief nap until about 6:45pm.  I woke up shortly and resigned to the training I was about to do, putting my hakama and keiko gi on.  At 7:00pm I started, determined to do better than the last four thousand cuts.  Bowing Rei first to the Kamidana, then to my Iaito I started slow wanting to avoid wasting energy.  Tiff was with me keeping herself busy, allowing me to play Uchida Tomu’s Zen & the Sword series in the background to keep my mind occupied (Great interpretation to Eiji Yoshikawa’s work btw).

I bought a green Tenugui and rolled it up (like in the picture shown) above to prevent the sweat from further stinging my eyes, though I doubt I looked remotely as cool.  Outside the dojo, I got gawked at by the hookah bar next door patrons; this would continue until they closed.  Admittedly, it was inspirational as it was daunting to begin with the evening sunset.

When I reached four thousand cuts, I agreed with Tiff to sit down and take a break to eat dinner with her, I was still feeling pretty good and decided to keep going.  I had to change my keiko gi, which was so soaked at this point felt like a plate of ice slapping my back.  Dinner consisted of about a dozen pieces of sushi, and I quickly returned to the dojo floor fearing my body would cave to the onset of exhaustion prematurely.  I brought with me that day my favorite Gatorade Rain, Lime which pretty much tastes like jell-o.  Later on I began mixing this with mountain dew’s, creating a concoction to give me energy and hopefully would allow me to overcome feeling tired.  Afraid of whatever side effect it might have, I drank water by the bottle as a chaser.  It amounted to one recognizable side effect; over the course of the night I had to go the bathroom at least two dozen times.

Around 1am, the bar next door closed, and Tiff had gotten sleepy from reading.  I resigned the TV, regretfully forfeiting the distraction.  So at this point no music was playing from next door, the streets fell silent, and I couldn’t listen to anything from the DVD player either.  It was hard before and all I had now was my Iaito, me, myself, and I; this became hell.  I unavoidably had no choice but to notice the different things my body was doing.  My right arm began to feel uncomfortable and eventually I identified why; I had been ramming my arms together for every hidari gyaku-kesa, bruising my arm and wearing off the body hair there just as well.  Now I’d started day dreaming the circumstances in which a swordsman would normally face such exhaustion, which you can imagine.  On the down side doing so I had reoccurring problem were I lost count, a lot, resulting in a Tasmanian devil-like outburst of unapproved kiais.  Luckily I had a system in place which allowed me to track my progress; I moved a pair of bokkens up a sword rack thus marking my progress, the rack on the left side for each increment of 110, on the right side it went up for each increment of a thousand.  Needless to say when I took breaks I stared at these much like a must delinquent stare at the clock in detention.

Around 3am, I reached six thousand or so, and I had nothing left to give.  I had already decided to go for ten thousand, as I had already come so far, and it hurt enough then that I knew a second try would be a long, long way away.  Tiff woke up and we went to the local drug store, and I got a large supply of protein bars, Gatorade, and a pair five hour energy drinks.  I only took one of the five hour drinks, but I took the protein bars down with no restraint since I was surprisingly hungry at the time.  Choosing not to wring my second keiko gi out like a mop I changed into my lucky green top, which is actually samue worker’s top which I had trained many hours in since the material is light for training outside and isn’t itchy like some tops I’ve worn.

Here on out, every set was forced purely on what little technique I have, even with the caffeine I was sore and my arms and back felt like dead weight.  Any anti-friction agents in my shoulders and elbows were non existent now, I found Jodan Kamae particularly difficult now, with the Jodan, Chudan, and Gedan cuts to be absolutely torturous.  Gradually I found a way to a more maintain proper grip, and to relax my arms in the Jodan Kamae, but it didn’t stop the grinding in my arms.  Outside life had come back again as traffic picked up, and the sky eventually started to hint at the sunrise.  I didn’t want to be caught up in Sunday morning traffic so I tried desperately to pick up to the pace.  I finished my last five hundred cuts with the sunrise; that was very, very inspiring.

Victoriously I moved up the pair of bokkens up the rack the last time, then bowed Rei to my Iaito which I now felt tremendous respect for, partially for not having a cracked tsuka or damaged mekugi by now.  More for the fact it was my partner for the arduous task.  With a sense of finality I bowed Rei to the Kamidana.  Though I learned far more than I can convey in writing, I did feel a sense of disappointment that I was finished as well.  As anxious as I was to get some rest I was still relatively awake, and drive home wasn’t so bad.  However numb I might have been at the time didn’t last for long.  When I woke four hours later I experienced multitudes of pain- I slept with my hands in a tenuchi grip and I couldn’t move my arms higher than my shoulders for almost two days.  Moreover, my upper back felt like it had been beaten briefly with a bat.  It was a good time to be twenty-five!

- Arthur Fain (musashi@nihonzashi.com)