First competition!

[skullsplitter]

Well I survived my first tournament. I am 39 just started a few months ago and am an orange belt. I competed in forms and point sparring and placed 4th out of 5 in each.

Sparring was a blast. The division was 18 and older beginner to intermediate men. I ended up fighting 3 times. I won the first, got the crap beat out of me the second, and lost in a close one in the third.

Plus it helped out my son seeing me do well. He normally walks out of these with a couple of trophies, but the poor kid had an off day.

Some observations:

1. The near constant yelling during forms and weapons is out of hand. One kid in my son’s division yelled as he entered the ring, as he approached the judges, before he introduced himself, after he introduced himself, all through his form, as left the ring, and as he reentered for scoring. It was more annoying and less intimidating.

2. I see a lot of comments about pitty-pat scoring in the point sparring. Not on this day. Of course we were all padded, but from the kids all the way up to the adults people were throwing some blows. I unfortunately caught one of those blows to my ribs which are still hurting. Even though my boy lost, he snapped his opponents’ head back a couple of times with some stiff punches. Saw a couple of mouthpieces get knocked out and several folks getting knocked to the floor. Good stuff

3. The lack of weapon variety is disappointing. When my boy started this about 7 years ago, I was amazed at all of the different weapons people competed with. I loved watching them all. Now granted, our numbers were a bit down this year. We had 150-175 competitors and were expecting in the 250 range. One person had an oar, but all other weapons were bo, chuks, or kama. Is this a trend or just an odd day?

[Wastelander]

Well I survived my first tournament. I am 39 just started a few months ago and am an orange belt. I competed in forms and point sparring and placed 4th out of 5 in each.

Sparring was a blast. The division was 18 and older beginner to intermediate men. I ended up fighting 3 times. I won the first, got the crap beat out of me the second, and lost in a close one in the third.

Plus it helped out my son seeing me do well. He normally walks out of these with a couple of trophies, but the poor kid had an off day.

Some observations:

1. The near constant yelling during forms and weapons is out of hand. One kid in my son’s division yelled as he entered the ring, as he approached the judges, before he introduced himself, after he introduced himself, all through his form, as left the ring, and as he reentered for scoring. It was more annoying and less intimidating.

2. I see a lot of comments about pitty-pat scoring in the point sparring. Not on this day. Of course we were all padded, but from the kids all the way up to the adults people were throwing some blows. I unfortunately caught one of those blows to my ribs which are still hurting. Even though my boy lost, he snapped his opponents’ head back a couple of times with some stiff punches. Saw a couple of mouthpieces get knocked out and several folks getting knocked to the floor. Good stuff

3. The lack of weapon variety is disappointing. When my boy started this about 7 years ago, I was amazed at all of the different weapons people competed with. I loved watching them all. Now granted, our numbers were a bit down this year. We had 150-175 competitors and were expecting in the 250 range. One person had an oar, but all other weapons were bo, chuks, or kama. Is this a trend or just an odd day?

Congratulations! Tournaments are a great way to meet people, see how well you are progressing and see some neat stuff! That said, there are definitely some issues with tournaments, these days. The "XTREME" presentations are definitely getting out of hand, both with the yelling, the overly aggressive posturing and the flashy forms. The tendency to play to that "XTREME" is probably why you are seeing less variety in weapons, too--I think bo, nunchaku, kama and sword are the most popular in tournaments because they are very flashy. It's hard to be flashy with sai or nunti. It's good to hear that your tournament actually had some contact, though!

[bushido_man96]

Congrats on your accomplishments! And having fun makes it all the better.

I agree with you about all the yelling, and think its a bit annoying.

As for the weapons, I think those three tend to be the most common. The ability to twirl them about is what I think makes them so popular; people just like to twirl their weapons around instead of really figuring out how to strike and block with them.