Kung fu fighting
The plan to post every day for a month has died a miserable death already as I failed to take into account the weekend, so here's a general catch-up.
I had another kung fu grading on Sunday, aiming for the 5th grade (or second green). It went reasonably well in spite of my very bad reactional kicks, and I stayed on to the end to watch my first black-belt grading. It looked rather tough.
The two candidates had to:
Both performed very well overall, though one lost concentration during his second form and had to sit down for a while before trying again, and the other clearly hadn't practiced his partnered sequences enough and made mistakes in some of the basic patterns. The sparring looked ridiculously hard, in that they had to fight lower grades first (one of whom was taking no prisoners), and then take on black belts who hammered severals shades of shit out of them. It'll be an achievement if I ever get that far, but it's going to be some kind of undertaking.
After that, a group of us did the traditional thing and ate lunch at Chinatown before watching the ridiculous yet surprisingly fun DOA: Dead Or Alive.
Update Captain's Log? Fuck off more like
I had another kung fu grading on Sunday, aiming for the 5th grade (or second green). It went reasonably well in spite of my very bad reactional kicks, and I stayed on to the end to watch my first black-belt grading. It looked rather tough.
The two candidates had to:
- Show all eight basic forms
- Perform a series of twelve set movements with a partner
- Demonstrate nine of their own defence sequences against an attacker (arms only, legs only, then arms and legs)
- Show basic kicking sequences on focus pads
- Perform techniques shown to them on the day (ie something brand new) by two of the three examiners
- Spar up to four times with other brown belts as well as fresh (as in not tired) black-belts for a few minutes at a time
- Finally, break three pieces of wood with one hand technique, one kicking technique and one jumping kick.
Both performed very well overall, though one lost concentration during his second form and had to sit down for a while before trying again, and the other clearly hadn't practiced his partnered sequences enough and made mistakes in some of the basic patterns. The sparring looked ridiculously hard, in that they had to fight lower grades first (one of whom was taking no prisoners), and then take on black belts who hammered severals shades of shit out of them. It'll be an achievement if I ever get that far, but it's going to be some kind of undertaking.
After that, a group of us did the traditional thing and ate lunch at Chinatown before watching the ridiculous yet surprisingly fun DOA: Dead Or Alive.
Update Captain's Log? Fuck off more like