Blade96

I'm sosososo in love with olympics! Its such a beautiful thing on this earth. The whole world watches the games, waiting for them every 4 years. Its something so lovely, that brings us all together helps unite us in friendship and friendly competition. It is one of the things beautiful on this earth. Love it. My most fave things? Joannie Rochette, obviously. what a brave and courageous woman she is. Her mum would have been proud. When the skiier fell down the hill and broke her ribs and lung and still won a bronze. And - our hockey double golds, obviously. Alexander Bilodeau. Special. Most gold medals.

Enjoyable? Oh, very much. Thanks for the congrats everyone! I look forward to learning now the 8th kyu portion of my training! (and work on that gyaku zuki - durrrrr) Thanks all! ~ Ooooooossssssss! ~

Thanks. Yeah, that passing feeling is a pocketful of fly!!!! thanks Lupin. btw. You're next! Hope you get that rank of yours too!

Good job! sounds like you did well! not just pass but do well!

Am 8th kyu now! not a white belt anymore. (then again I heard someone say that white belt is the most important belt...for without them there can be no black belts....soooo guess i aint as important anymore....hehe) Test was a lot of fun. You were right....the first KIAI i gave - and i made them very loud cause i also read somewhere that it can wake up the judges cause they might get bored sometimes - made nerves go away. Think I'll tell about it....there might be people who'd like to know a bit about what happens at one the same way I wanted to know. This is what happened at mine. we lined up at the command shugo as always - but we were told to stand in front, those who graded, and BB's were in back. was so they could see us. Then we were put through the Tsuruoka sequence - a sequence named of course after the famous founder of karate in Canada, Masami Tsuruoka sensei (and my sensei's teacher. well him and Hidetaka Nishiyama sensei, a student of Funakoshi o sensei were both my teacher's teachers. Like I said, good lineage.) I was the only one to do it right with each block every time. The other 2 white belts fluffed it. I could see them out of the corner of my eyes. Then we did seiken zuki, first normally, then in kiba dachi stance. then we did oi zuki, then the blocks moving forward. Then gyaku zuki which i fluffed, but it didnt count against me because its not part of white belt testing. (i know it but when you've learned to oi zuki then gyaku zuki takes some getting used to.) Then we did mae geri keage zenkutsu dachi then kiba dachi with yoko. Then we did our kata. first as a group then each of us was called up individually to do it. One of the white belts temporarily forgot his shutos at the end of it. Me and the other white belt did it perfectly though. then we did ippon kumite which I did perfectly without any mistakes. Then the higher belt levels testing did their stuff. Yellow belt testing for orange did his stuff right and his heian nidan and his kumite and sparring were good. But poor blue belt testing for brown wasnt so lucky. Poor guy, he had injured his knee some weeks before so when he did the jump in Heian Godan kata he stumbled a bit. didnt fall, but his landing wasnt perfect. Also, when he did his kumite, he nearly passed out! when done just walked to the wall and collapsed! Was breathing so hard I thought he might have a heart attack or something. His breaths literally sounded like bellows. No joke. anyway we all passed. Nobody failed. not even the nearly dead blue belt who is now brown. Of us three white now yellow belts, only I escaped criticism though. With the other 2, the black belts who give their opinions, and the senseis who make the final decision, it was kind of like 'you earned your yellow but you need to work on this, this, and this' With me though, sensei turned to me and said Unanimous agreement from everyone. And not a word of criticism, even constructive. Absolutely perfect. I thought they were a bi9t harsh on the half dead guy though. They criticised his kata. 'you can do a better kata than this' Yes, but he'd hurt his knee! They also criticized his breathing. which i suppose made sense. I went to a bar downtown with some of the higher belts and the 2 senseis of course. I sat between sempai and sensei. Both of them bought me drinks (white russians cause they know I love those) and fed me french fries, chicken wings and onion rings. Had a great time for several hours. Talked about everything....a lot of it was olympic talk. Both my sensei and I are hockey fans and fans of the Detroit Red Wings of the NHL. Then came home and watched canada almost lose to the Czechs in the ice hockey olympic game. (we almost didnt make it to the gold medal game!) Then went to bed and passed out myself because I was tired too. But I had a great time yesterday.......loved it! Hehehe. I got my new belt this morning.

all good wishes.

my shodan told us that kiba dachi helps us do for example yoko geri keage and yoko geri kekomi easier than when we're in zenkutsu dachi. so it helps that way too.

Yay! =] good job.

for us like Taikyoku kata taikyoku shodan is a 9th kyu kata, that we were taught before we learned heian shodan. Of course it wasnt called taikyoku by our senseis but that was it, they just called it 'basic white belt kata'

Why not go the whole hog and say - konnichiwa, ogenki desu ka? Or would that be a bit silly? Chitsu There's an idea Kidding, Chitsu. I know what your getting at. But it was just between me and him, we were in an elevator no one else around so......I most likely wouldnt do it in public though like at a mall, surrounded by lots of people.

all good wishes from me to you for that test. From one shotokanka to another. =]

i ran into my sensei once outside the dojo and I bowed and "oss'd" to him. no one saw though, it was in an elevator at university.

Is that pun intended? btw i never did sports either in school. Played a bit as soccer (that's football for you europeans) goalie in gym class and as defence in basketball guarding the net which i was good at but never anything organized. only once was i in a tournament in grade 6 a bunch of us classmates formed a floor hockey team. we came second place. I'm good at shotokan though I'm glad your first lesson was how I said it should be! I'm glad you enjoyed it. Really.

again, what everyone else said.

yeah it really would be cool, lupin! I hope you get yours too. I'd love it if we do both get promoted same time! same meaning in ours, except its japanese. where Jodan means upper and age means rising.

true enough!

That bolded sentence is true. It was very hard for me at first. I started shotokan on september 10, 2009. I was a totally new to MA. doing stuff my body wasnt used to doing it was quite difficult. at first. Learning the first kata was difficult at first. it all was. but now I know basics and when I learned thathe second kata i learned it in just a couple of classes. dont be scared of them. the BB's and higher belts. First they'll teach you (how I learned) seiken zuki - the basic punch. Then the arm blocks. and after you can do them standing still they'll teach you how to do forward doing them. and backward, later. Then turning (which is difficult but dont be frightened - rise to the challenge. They like that. ) anyway thats how I learned, the order I learned stuff in. Oh and dont forget to have fun! and good luck! and hopefully the higher belts will come to meet you and say hi. Make friends with them and get to know them. Thats what I did. Dont be scared of the BB's - or brown belts - they are not there to bite you. (and if they are, they likely shouldnt be there or hold that rank they have. anyway i dont think most of us here think much of higher belts who harrass beginners. I'm a beginner though almost a yellow belt. but because karate is lifelong the amount of time I been in it is very small. very. so I'm a beginner too.)

not 'like' a high block, it 'is' a high block Ah ok cool. I don't do a Japanese style so had to google it... saw it would be the same or similar to a chookyo makgi in my style. Is that tae kwon do or tai chi you're talking about? Taekwondo, that's my primary style, I only did Tai Chi for a couple of years. Besides, neither use Japanese terminology i know. Tae kwon do is korean i know, I'm not sure about tai chi. oh, NM. I googled it cause i dont know anything about it. Chinese.

My right side is stronger. I could break my sensei's hold on my wrist well with my right arm, but when he grabbed my right wrist and i had to use my left arm to take him I had to do it twice cause i didnt break his hold first time. (he teased me for that, I'll get him back, lol.) and what about our Kata's? Heian Nidan for example has just one yoko geri keage and its just the right leg. we dont use the left for example. so we only do work one side when doing kata cause its always prefomed the same way. now we do work both sides, but i worry about that too, especially with katas.

not 'like' a high block, it 'is' a high block Ah ok cool. I don't do a Japanese style so had to google it... saw it would be the same or similar to a chookyo makgi in my style. Is that tae kwon do or tai chi you're talking about?

what everyone else said. Best wishes!

not 'like' a high block, it 'is' a high block lol yeah my sleeves are quite massive, thats why my sensei was making a joke out of them =] and i agree with lupin, there aint nothing wrong with loving rank and belts. As long as the MA is training for a love of the art and not just so he/she can impress friends with belts and stuff i see nothing wrong with liking rank. Thanks for the good luck wishes though, you and lupin!

My gi sleeve is so big it covers up my face when i raise my arm for age uke. so he'd bend down to look under it so he could see my face. Just a joke though. Dont attach anything to it throwdown he was teasing me about my gi sleeve. cause the other white belts havent got big flowy sleeves on their gi's. any one who says they dont like rank is lying! lol So of course i like rank. But the belt means something to me on a personal level, because where i was born with a balance problem, and people all my life - and family was the worst ones- who said the only reason i could succeed at anything was because of my brain and I'd never do anything physically (like play sports or sing, etc) In 2008 christmas my mother while out for a family reunion embarrassed me in front of my relatives by saying my balance was so bad i couldnt even get a job in a restaurant cause i couldnt even carry a cup of coffee across a room. I was furious. To put it mildly. so for me I see the belt as a chance to prove all the naysayers wrong. because completing first level of training means that I will be succeeding and learning how to defend myself. My skill level is what is important to me - if I pass that means I've completed that level. and im learning self defence. learning shotokan. and that is what thrills me most of all. What I want most of all is to learn Shotokan. not belts. Belts are secondary for me. The belt is just something to keep as a reward for completing each level. But it does show the naysayers that they are wrong. Thats what it means to me.

black belt to me mean that you've completed basic training.

well just got back from shotokan - my date's been set for us me and friends to grade! Sensei said i need to know: Seiken zuki - Jodan, chudan and gedan Gedan barai, chudan uchi uke, chudan soto uke, jodan age uke, shuto uke Kata - Heian Shodan Class was funny tonight.....fluffed my gyaku zuki while doing it (i know it but still messed up lol) after class we have to sign the attendance book. Sensei said 'No one escapes' I, joking around with him, said 'Can I escape?' He looked at me and said "you can". Then wrapped his arm around me (i get a hug every class from my senseis who i consider my friends) and he said Now you go home and practice for your grading sensei's hilarious! I was doing jodan age uke while in stance zenkutsu dachi and he kept bending over and peering at me from under my gi sleeve lol! and I said, giggling, stop it, You're gonna make me choke! cause he had me in stitches! anyway, I have a nervous excitement, the same nervous excitement I had before my tournament on dec 12 2009. I am not scared or frightened in the least. I always approach tests - and the same with univ exams, with the attitude, I either know my material or i dont. and in this case I do. so no need to be scared. My NiDan couldnt leave without saying hi to me - we are friends as well. and my brown belt friend complimented me on my soto uke ....said I was quite good. I could use some advice though. so I have 2 weeks remaining as a white belt. Any advice you nice folks can give me here between now and then would be greatly appreciated! ~ Blade ~