Grading days are extremely hard. You dread them and unfortunately the higher up the belt system you go, the harder they become. But… they are the most fulfilling experiences ever and leave you with a massive sense of pride and accomplishment. Due to the increased time scale between my gradings now I didn’t take part in the recent grading and had the pleasant role of assistant, which was quite nice but (being totally honest) would have much preferred to have been involved in the action first hand.
It was very strange when I arrived at the Dojang because even though I knew I wasn’t grading, I was still nervous for some reason. Maybe it was because it is still a grading day and the general anxiety in the atmosphere and memories of previous grading experiences make you that way. Or maybe it was because I had the expectancy of representing my Instructor and our class as one of only three red belts in attendance? I knew I would be sparring (which was one of the things that I was looking forward to) and would also be assisting with board breaks, etc, but when you are watching everyone go through their syllabus requirements it becomes very infectious and you can’t help think about yourself and the desire to be up in front of everyone, showing off what you can do!
The general mood seemed to be very sombre at the start and there didn’t seem to be any cockiness or signs of pre-nerve defiance on display, which can be frustrating (and equally amusing knowing what is in store for everyone). All participants seemingly knew what was coming their way this time round – sweat and pain.
For the first time ever we had three separate classes attending; Pool, Falmouth and Truro. It was really nice to have representatives from all of the various belt colours grading and also to train with them afterwards which is something of a rarity at our classes in pool. We sometimes ‘borrow’ one or two adult green belts from the Falmouth class on Wednesdays and have a small contingent of white, yellow and orange belts, but getting everyone together at once and having an entire Dojang full of people of all grades, ages and sizes felt amazing and it seems that we are slowly starting to spread our art across more of the south west, all under one name.
I had a couple of very enjoyable rounds of sparring with two of the Falmouth orange belts and a green belt, who were definitely not in the mood to be bullied around on their grading, both catching me with some great hits, and I also got to partner and fight one of my seniors and friends on his 1st gup grading (sorry for the punch in the throat, nice sweep). I also enjoyed being kicked in the fingers quite a lot when holding re-breakable boards and was generally very happy that I wasn’t sat at the back doing nothing for the afternoon! Everyone seemed to perform to the best of their ability and as always the little guys were outstanding, including a youngster who had only recently had her arm out of a cast! Very hardcore! I guess this shows what we are all about. Even though you sometimes may not be able to train to your usual standards due to an injury, illness or just feeling crap and tired, you should still try your best to attend lessons and train as hard as you can. In theory that mentality should make you a much stronger person mentally as well as physically. There were some people who clearly had that type of mentality on the day and had the desire to keep going when they had nothing left and that gets my full respect.
On a personal note, the grading has really inspired me with my own training and I am now focused on getting my head down and moving towards the next grading which will hopefully be for my orange belt in kickboxing around the end of July. Apart from a slight blip in a lesson a week or two ago I have been loving my Hyung practice, especially some of the much higher Chil Sung forms which I was lucky enough to be introduced to in a class and have subsequently completely forgotten. I know the entire sequence of moves for the first two and have been practicing them at home loads, which I think might have made me slightly overlook some of my previous forms causing some mild in-class-amnesia which I have recently tried to rectify! My next big milestone is Bassai, which I have purposely not looked at yet in an effort to keep my attention solely on my current gup requirements, but the temptation to watch the videos on the interweb has on some occasions proved a little too much! One step at a time Dom…
Forms are my most favourite thing ever in Tang Soo Do, but most of my attention recently has been dedicated to sparring, which has meant watching lots of various fighting footage in my spare time and is what I have been really looking forward to in lessons at the moment. This was also fuelled by my introduction to the WCL (World Combat League) to which I have become immediately hooked on and spent a large chunk of my day off today watching the various WCL youtube shenanigans, definitely going to buy the two DVD’s which I watched at a friends house last night.
Umm… think that’s about it for now. Have had a mild guitar playing resurgence so maybe more on that soon.
Be excellent to each other.
