1st kyu

They say a picture says more than a thousand words. So let's start with the pictures.


Graded for our third brown belts yesterday, and we both got them.

A HUGE thanks must, as always, go to our sensei Tony Grunwald. Without him we would never have reached this far! He is a great inspiration for us both and we are so lucky to be able to train for him. His expertise and passion for karate does rub off a little bit on us. Like he is sprinkling a bit of karate fairy dust over his students. :-)

This time we got our first "temporary grade", which means we have to refine some parts of our techniques and then show them again for the examiners board. Feels a bit like we have disappointed our sensei, but the head of SSKA was ever so nice about it (which was a bit of a surprise for us, really). "This is only a small remark to know what to improve for the black belt grading, so I don't have to fail you there on it" he said (or something very similar, I might have been a bit tired at the time.) A bit later when Clare asked a question about the brown and black belt training sessions, if we were allowed to join them with the "TG", he again said that this was not a big deal, it is like a question mark in the margin, nothing to worry too much about.
And I will take his word for it and be happy with my new belt!

I can live with the fact that I had a remark on my stances. I think I know what went wrong. Got a bad man-flu (Yes, a bad one, even! Imagine! ;-) ) and I was completely knackered half way through the grading and from there I _really_ focussed on hips and fingers. (Which I consider being my two weakest points right now) So my stances probably went out the door... Next time I will not have the flu and I will know to think a bit more about the stances. And I will have focussed a lot on that in training of course!

Clare got more or less the same remarks about stances and considering her broken foot that is something that will improve as the foot gets better. Considering that she had something going wrong in her back during warm up and couldn't get off the floor for ten minutes, she did bloody well I'd say! I am so proud of her!

So congratulations to us both, and I will be a bit proud and happy this week. Until the discomfort have left the body. The black, green and blue toe nail will probably take a bit longer to heal. Can't speak for Clare, but I can imagine her back will not be back to normal for a little longer than that. At least it takes the focus off the foot problem for now. :-)

After this week of being a bit happy and proud, the humble focus will be back on! First on improving the remarks, then on improving everything and learning a bit more. That is what it is all about, improving and bettering yourself.
There is a kata competition coming up in May. It is a little bit tempting to try and get a team together for the team kata. Clare and myself, plus a third person. Anyone interested?? :-)

And for the overseas people out there interested in what a 1st kyu belt looks like in SSKA, here it is - a brown belt with two white stripes: