I'm not a really athletic kind of guy. This Saturday we practised fumikomi (?) the big step forward with the nice bang on the floor.
We did a fun excercise where we had to hit the other's hand and then step backwards, the other person had to avoid the hitting hand and try to touch the retreating guy in a nice lunge.

Well, hitting the guy's hand and going backwards went really well, but jumping forward doesn't go too well. I'm heavy and my right foot hurts (holiday hiking injury, see thread 'instep pain' for the symptoms, I now tape my foot, it helps!). So I just can't make this big, fast step forward. :-(

In other martial arts my heavy build (not only heavy weight, I know I'm too fat, but I'm also heavy built) can be used as an advantage. In karate I just move closer and use a lot of punches. In sports like jujutsu and judo I can make my strength and weight count. In aikido I just rotate around a lot, which is much faster than moving mass.
But in kendo you seem to have a big advantage when you're light and fast and I see little way to use strength or mass to an advantage (without KO-ing my partner 8-) ).

Any ideas about strategies to offset my disadvantage?