Blue Belt Grading
My grading for blue belt required not only a new pattern and two board breaks, but also an adjustment to the fact that I was sort of grading alone because Leila had to miss training because of Ramadan and missed out on the grading.
I did one-step sparring with Movan (sp) but we didn’t really train much together and although we encouraged each other on the day, it wasn’t the same as grading with Leila and Leanne.
My board breaks were side-kick and downward knifehand strike. The knifehand was pretty easy for me but it took 3 tries to get the sidekick despite lots of practice. I kept stopping at the board rather than going through it, although when I did break it, it felt easy.
Although I’m happy to have my blue belt, I didn’t really think that I nailed the grading in the way I’d like to, with my patterns still pretty stiff and un-flowing, my sparring somewhat unimaginative, my one-step sparring a bit diabolical and board-breaking not clean enough.
