Like most
people I get a little nervous before important events in life.
Job
interviews; a date with a pretty lady; phoning up to find out why NPower have increased
my direct debit by £86 and never told me.**
For the last
2 or 3 weeks I’ve felt nervous about my upcoming grading for Practitioner level
4.
I’ve talked
about private lessons with one of the instructors. I’ve been attending KMM
sessions 3 or 4 times per week at different venues. I’ve rationalised with an
abacus and a slide rule and a magic ball that “mixing it up” is a good idea so
I deliberately go to venues with different instructors (we have 3). I have been
practicing in front of a mirror in my bedroom with my laptop on the bed, while
Zeev Cohen and Eyal Yanilov demonstrate the moves for P4 on the official DVD.
Today we had
the Pre-Grading Workshop in Stratford-upon-Avon. This was planned as an
opportunity to “iron out” any wrinkles in our skill sets and set us up for next
week.
Two of our
three instructors oversaw this and to my immense delight it turned out to be
just what I needed.
We split
into various groups, according to grade, on the mats and got to work with the
various moves and techniques that would have to be demonstrated at an actual
grading. Behind a curtain in the other side of the sports hall were about 200
kids and their parents. A Tae Kwon Do (sp?) tournament for little ‘uns was
going on and a few of them came over for a look. One parent seemed overly
unimpressed, simply watching us work out with a poker face the entire time.
However two little boys thought the stick disarms that me and the other P4
candidates were performing were “well cool.”
I also got
distracted during choke releases by the endearing and unbelievably cute (but
hysterical) sight of a 7 year old in a kimono, helmet and boxing gloves
SKIPPING past us with her mother.
Working
through our techniques built a LOT of reassurance into the training. I’d
seriously been thinking of canning my grading till October if I wasn’t ready
the week before but as the training wore on, I felt more and more self-assured
and I know my training buddy Graham felt the same way.
Biggest arse
ache for me in the last few weeks was Scissor Kick. Designed for when you want
to run at and kick someone who is running at you, it means leaping off the
floor and then kicking with the same foot you launched with. Finally cracked
this one today which, along with the Stick Disarms, really boosted my
confidence.
The forward
rolls for this level include doing a combo of Forward> Backward but without
getting up or stopping (i.e. roll,
twist, roll again). I had this nailed when we were confronted by two
separate piles of strike pads and told to roll over them. The first was high,
the second was long. After a few fumbles and knocking the first pile over a
couple of times I got it.
At the end
the groups had combat scenarios appropriate to their level with Ps 1 and 2
doing ground-based fighting (i.e. wrestling) and us plus P3 having the
delightful joys of “3 against 1” for a minute each as a stand up fight with 16
oz boxing gloves or MMA mitts on.
After it was
all over I personally felt 70% more in charge of my destiny than I had before
we started. Revision is the key in gradings and this crash course had done its
work for me and the others.
A great day
of prep, and also great to see members from the other classes that KMM runs
(Solihull, Coventry, Birmingham, Banbury, Rugby and Leamington Spa as well as
Stratford-upon-Avon).
Counting
down to the grading with relish now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
** Reason = Coz NPower are twats.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Have your say....