Martial Arts Musings

StressRelief101

Well, today was my belt test in karate. I've been preparing for this for the past month. I've been working extremely hard at trying to get my combinations, one steps and forms down. Got to the dojang at 10:30-ish today and waited for Marlene. She got there shortly after I did. We went in and practiced a little bit, got ourselves oriented and generally got ourselves set up for the test.
It was actually a *big* test...there were several yellow belts testing for yellow/black; yellow/black going to orange; orange to orange/black and orange/black to green. We had one green belt going to brown. We were in a group going to brown/black. There were three people who went to red from brown/black. It was cool.
Mr. M got us in the middle of the room and told us that if we goofed up, don't panic, just keep going. He said that it would be okay. We said we'd fake it with confidence (well, Marlene, Susan and I did!).
We lined up in belt rank order and "memorized the back of the head of the person in front of us". We used that line up for our testing formation. It was fun. We started out doing stretch kicks to warm up, then punches, then some other kicks. Then he started us in on our forms and combinations. The beginner belts went first up to their highest forms. Then we had to do our forms. After our forms, the intermediate belts did our one steps and then we got to spar. Sparring is cool! I got to spar with a young lady who I found out is 13--she's very good at what she does!
After I sparred with her, I sparred with Marlene, then with one of the black belts from the 'board'. That was even MORE fun! Sparring is, as I have said, COOL! I got hit. Several times, in fact, by my black belt partner. You know what? I didn't mind it at all! He is a good teacher and a lot of fun to work with. After the sparring, we sat down and then they brought out the boards. Yep...boards. We got to break boards and *everyone* who was testing, from yellow belt on up to brown/black got to break a board. I chose to break my board with an elbow as the last time I broke boards, I hurt my hand. My friend David was there (he's actually on "the board") and he held the board for me so that I could break it. You know what? I got it on my first attempt! I need to date the board too. I know it sounds goofy, but that's something I'm going to hold on to. After all the stress and worry and panic, I did it and itfelt GREAT!!
I'm a bit sore now. We walked over there and then walked home. Hubby was there at the end to see me break the board and to see the final torture, er, endurance, where they make you kick continuously for a minute or so. They had us do that at the end of the test, when we were all wiped out. Why do they do it? I guess because they want to show people that even though we're tired, we can still show the audience that we can kick/punch/whatever.