Testing Reflections, 5/13/2026, Aikido

I know this is very late, but I had been waiting for Sensei's written feedback, but I think I'll have to remind him about it.

Testing for 5^th kyu, and these are my thoughts on how testing went.  I hope to add Sensei's thoughts from the testing at the end.

The first thing I got reminded of in testing is that things got sped up and the attacks came a lot faster, and at odd angles from some of the ukes.  I also felt like the techniques were chunky at times.  My work schedule (it was 3:00 pm – 11:00 pm at this time) and a hurt back also limited some training time.  At times I felt some ukes were being overly compliant.  A few times I didn’t feel like I had finished a technique and uke was falling down.  I don’t like that, not one bit.  I goofed on some weapons stuff, but got it fixed pretty quick.

Sensei mentioned that if something got botched to just adapt and finish with whatever is there.  I did this a few times.  At the end, though, he wanted to see shomenuchi kokyunage or iriminage.  I wanted to show both, but at one point I was messing up the entry for iriminage and ended up not doing either of the techniques.  My partner just kept batting me on the head with shomen until I finally did an ikkyo.  We were also allowed to ask for any technique we wanted to do.  Others did kotegashi I think.  I went with nikkyo from a same side lapel grab attack.  I got it a few times, but also botched it and did a modified armbar takedown that was more Hapkido or Taekwondo or Defensive Tactics-like than an Aikido technique.

I met with Sensei afterwards.  He said I was the only one that ended up getting all the weapons material correct.  He said my iriminage 5^th kyu technique was solid.  He said despite how I felt about testing I passed very clean.  That felt good to hear.