Time to catch up on the karate front! (and hopefully rededicate myself to keeping up here!)
This past Saturday I took my first belt test in order to gain my green belt! It’s a pretty big milestone because you can begin sparring.
I go through kickboxing at the Green Belt test
I felt mostly comfortable during the test, even volunteering to hold papers and shields for black belt Lonnie Van Cuyk during his test. My marching basics were a bit of a mess, but otherwise things went well.
Now of course, just when I started to feel comfortable, everything gets turned on its head. My first sparring class was Monday night and it’s very much one of those “You know all of the stuff you’ve learned so far? Yeah, forget it…” moments.
While the rest of the class was ongoing, Glenn (a fellow newbie green belt) and I spent the class with Mr. Van Cuyk and Ms. Wiora learning some basic things like blitzing, defensive sidekicks (which is one of those things where we had to ‘unlearn’ our sidekick technique) and a defense/counter I’ve slugged the “triangle defense.” It’s a very humbling experience to realize how much you have to learn… and how even once you’ve learned it, it has to become second nature.
Finally, late last night, my back kind of seized up on me. Very muscular… and I’m not sure at all what caused it. I”ve wracked my brain and can’t come up with anything I did at sparring that would’ve stressed my back to this degree. I’m hoping a steady diet of advil will get it down enough to go to class Wednesday!
