A week of working with the saber and I’m definitely getting more of a feel, including the feeling of sore shoulders, forearms, and hands.\u00a0\u00a0 But right-handed, I can hold the saber out straight in front, arm straight, with much less quivering, and raise the tip and lower the tip to level again, over and over and over….twice as many up\/downs as when I started.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Then rotating the wrist, thus the blade, so that sharp edge is to the outside\/down, outside\/down ten times, then inside\/down, inside\/down, inside\/down ten times.\u00a0\u00a0 Elementary first steps to controlling the blade.\u00a0 Switch to left hand, which is weaker.\u00a0 More quivering in the straight front hold (even today)\u00a0 then on the right.\u00a0 Can’t do as many up\/down or rotational turns as with the right…but more than I could do on the first day.<\/p>\n
Whole-arm swings, to loosen up, in a figure-8 pattern, right handed first for a gradually increasing number of swings,\u00a0 then left handed , passing hand to hand in the middle.\u00a0 Then added another exercise on Thursday:\u00a0 elbow “motionless” as much as possible at my side, wrist only moving blade in figure 8 swing without letting my right shoulder lean sideways or forward.\u00a0 A work in progress, not there yet.\u00a0\u00a0 Several other exercises, also not yet mastered, but working on them.<\/p>\n
I’m working on both sides, because I have a big strength difference between left and right that I want to reduce, not because it’s in any of the written or demonstrated exercises.\u00a0\u00a0 The one-sidedness goes back to the encephalitis I had as a child, which left my left side much weaker for quite a while and was exacerbated by playing tennis in HS–right-handed–which selectively strengthened the already strong side and left the weaker side to itself.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m thoroughly enjoying the saber and hope I end up “straighter” on top after another half year or so.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile this week Horngard II is sitting at 32.8K words in spite of everything else that’s gone on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A week of working with the saber and I’m definitely getting more of a feel, including the feeling of sore shoulders, forearms, and hands.\u00a0\u00a0 But right-handed, I can hold the saber out straight in front, arm straight, with much less quivering, and raise the tip and lower the tip to level again, over and over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,53,133,5],"tags":[112,12,107],"class_list":["post-3067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horngard","category-life-beyond-writing","category-research","category-the-writing-life","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-research","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3068,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3067\/revisions\/3068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}