Black Belt Candidate

No video this time, as we did for Delaney back in May. Actually I don't see his test posted, so that's here it is.



Last night was my black belt candidate test. Our school has ten belts, various colors, but the last two are a brown/black mix and a black belt. Delaney earned his in May, and I've been waiting for a couple weeks for mine. I was set for last week, but our teacher went on vacation, so after missing Tue/Wed this week, I went last night for my test.

There were two people testing, a lady for Green belt, and me. We ran through a rough warm up, lots of basics, at a strong pace and people were tired. I had sweat dripping off when we stretched, but I was pushing. I'd gotten ready, anticipating the workload by applying some icy hot and wrapping my ankle with three times as much tape as I normally do. The last month or so I've been taking it easy, trying to heal up. Sore right side of my body, sore shoulders, just beat up. The whole year has been hard on the body, so I've been trying to not push things.

However I didn't wrap as tight as I wanted. I needed to pull it tighter, and so things were sore. When we went to kata, which was again a pretty good pace, I was struggling on the few seconds we had in between forms with a sore ankle. Every time I stopped moving, it hurt. The guy next to me stepping on it a few times didn't help, either.

I wondered what we'd do, and with a little over 15 minutes left, we stepped to the side and th other girl had to do some blocks and forms. A 4-5 minute break for me, but then I was up. First was forms. I pushed, trying to be crisp, clean, and work at a good pace. Watching my strikes, blocks, hitting hard, and doing my best. It must have been good since this was one of the rare times that I did each form once without repeating anything. For my brown belt I had to do brown form twice, because I wasn't pushing my shoulder forward enough on a punch. I guess I did better last night. I made it a point to strike hard, jerking my shoulders forward to hit, shaking my arms as I tried to stop them in the right place for back fists, making each strike as live as possible. It felt good, but I was tired.

That was the easy part. Now it was boxing. With another adult that I often work with holding the pads, I had 3 or 4, two-three minute rounds. I worked hard, trying to keep distance, and my partner was working me hard. Lots of strikes to get through. By the time we hit the third or fourth set of rounds, I was sucking wind. Trying hard to keep my hands up, but near the end I struggled to get my hands up. A good test, and it pushed me hard.

Then it was self defense, giving me a minute to set the gloves down and catch a little breath. No counting for me, no breaking the moves into sections, just ripping through each of our 5 items twice, loud yells, hard punches. I was ready to drop at the end, but I passed.

Sweaty, my throat hurting even after I got home, lungs aching still as we started to drive home, I felt like I really worked hard. I did.

.

I got home, grabbed a beer and a couple ice packs on my way in. I knew I went a little hard, and I was sore. Definitely sore today, but not as bad as I thought. The ankle and knee feel OK, only slightly more sore than yesterday morning. We'll see how it goes when I run with Delaney later.