Lotte's Shingo Ishikawa, in his third year with the team, only played in 14 games this season. At the autumn practice held at Zozo Marine Stadium, he summarized his performance by saying, "As you can see, this season has been like this, so that's my current ability. What's important is to reflect on what happened and how to use that to my advantage next time."

In an interview on October 26, Shingo Ishikawa also said, "When you've been doing this for a long time, you accumulate a lot of knowledge about 'what you shouldn't do' and 'what you should do,' and objectively speaking, I think that's created an image that things have to be that way. So, I'm not trying to overturn common sense, but rather I'm in the stage of breaking it down."

A month and a half has passed since then, and I wonder what phase we've entered since the "destroying stage"?

"Right now I'm in the stage of facing my own body," she revealed.

"After doing something for a certain number of years, you start to think, 'It has to be like this,' or 'I should do this at this time,' and come up with your own answer, and you start to feel satisfied with that, and I start to think that this isn't such a good thing."

"I've tried things that I've never done before that I thought didn't work, and if it doesn't work, I just stop. The same goes for building my body. For me, the conventional wisdom was that during the off-season, I should increase my weight training menu and use heavier weights, unlike during the season, but I've turned that idea around and thought, why not do the things I do during the season in the off-season too?"

Although this season, his third with the team, ended disappointingly, Shingo Ishikawa is facing himself during the offseason in order to show an evolved and improved version of himself next season, his fourth The Marines.

Interview and text by Yuta Iwashita