Below are the blogs that I wrote while being a blue belt and green belt. I've placed them in the order that I wrote them for ease of reading. To see the original comments posted by user, you'll need to go to the actually blogs.
First Karate Tournament
Growing up, I never thought of myself as a sportsman. I rode my bike, played badminton occasionally with my mom, and certainly did a lot of swimming as a youth, but I was never involved with a sport except as a spectator. So, when the karate tournaments came up after getting our blue belts, I wanted to make sure my kids got the experience of competing in a sport. At first, I was happy to just enter the kids into the tournament, but my husband pointed out that we started this as a family, so we ALL need to compete. Hmm…
Before I was ready to jump off of that cliff, I decided I wanted to attend the open karate tournament that our federation sponsors. Master Landry usually runs the tournaments and this one was no exception. Tournaments are organized into belt and age divisions as well as the type of competition. This tournament had weapons, sparring, forms, and breaking divisions with schools from all over Connecticut. Call me obsessed, but it was fascinating to watch the tournament especially with the variety of divisions. The highlight of the day was when one of the instructors decided that the judging wasn’t fair and approached Master Landry in an aggressive posture. We were at least 100 feet away in the top of the bleachers, and knew he was toast if he continued. Luckily some other black belts stepped in and held her back and escorted him out.
We learned a lot that day: 1) Never, ever get Master Landry mad unless you have a suicidal tendency, 2) When breaking boards, have someone who knows how to hold the board; actually hold the board, and lastly 3) always wear shin guards when sparring. The worst injury that day was when two black belt teens were sparring. They hit each other in the shins at the same time, not once, but twice in the same match; the result was that both were on the ground holding their shins. Until that day, I hadn’t worn my shin guards. Now I won’t spar without them.
The next tournament was a month away and was a Cheezic Federation tournament for Forms and Breaking. I decided, What the heck, I’ll sign up for it if the rest of the family does. It didn’t seem that scary, and there might have been an itsy bitsy bit of wanting to prove to myself that I could do well in a competition.
Come see what I've added to the Karate Forum as a new topic on Tournaments.
During that month, the instructors were preparing us for the competition which involved prepping us for walking into the ring, introducing yourself to the judges and then performing your form or break. We decided to buy some wood to practice with. Two very large shipping boxes ought to do it; we like to break lots of wood. I decided early on what breaks I wanted to perform and just worked on building up the amount of boards that I could break.
At home, I went up to 4 boards for the palm heel and 5 boards for the axe kick, but for the tournament went down to 3 boards for the palm heel and 4 boards for the axe kick. After some nasty attempts with the higher number of boards, I decided that it probably wouldn’t impress the judges if I broken something and had to be rushed to the hospital. My husband couldn’t settle on the type of break he wanted to do until literally 4 days before the tournament. The kids had decided that they didn’t need to sign up for the breaking competition, and settled on just doing the forms. That was fine, more boards for my husband and I to break!
Judges are impressed when you show power during a form and one way of doing that is by having a strong beginning yell. Since this is one of my weak areas, I started practicing my yell. After class I would try out different yells while in the car and ask my family what they thought, but let’s just say that I couldn’t even get a flinch out of my husband while he was driving. Then one day I was practicing my form and yelled a profanity after screwing up the form. It was a pretty powerful yell, so I tried out all of the cuss words that I knew while practicing the form. I sounded like a "kick your bottom", "without a backwards glance" Bad A$$. I finally found my yell, but needed to weigh my options here; would the judges be impressed with my powerful strong yell, or offended by my strong words. Since there are kids present at the tournaments, I decided it would have to be my rated-G yell that would have to do. I’ll save my Bad A$$ yell for idiot drivers.
On the big day, we got there early, paid our entrance fee, and waited and waited and waited. This gave me plenty of time to get extremely nervous and noticed that Master Needham (our top ranking instructor) was judging. I remarked to my husband that I felt sorry for anyone being judged by him. Our littlest was up first and didn’t get in the group that Master Needham was judging. She performed Pyung Ahn Cho Dan, and yelled at all the right places and performed the form perfectly for her age. Afterward, the judges line up the competitors and say what they ranked. My little sweety beat their pants off and got first place!
Next up was my oldest daughter who didn’t have anyone to compete against in the blue belt rank and also didn’t get in Master Needham’s group. Master Landry ensured the judges that she was able to compete against the green belts, and proved her right. My oldest was performing Pyung Ahn E Dan, and is a natural when it comes to forceful yells and performing karate forms. Not wanting to be bested by her little sister, she had to outperform and ended up getting first place against green belts! Ok, the kids have set the bar pretty high for us parents. My husband and I would never live it down if we didn’t do at least somewhat well. The kids bounded off to go collect their very first trophies.
My husband’s division was called next and he didn’t get in Master Needham’s group either. There were a ton of people in his group. While they were organizing his group, I heard my division being called. I wished him well and went over to my ring, and Oh Looky! Guess who I have as head judge!? Master Needham, of course! Just my luck, I was the only one in my family to get Master Needham as head judge. Ok, reality check, I’m competing for the first time at the age of 37 in a sport that I only started 7 months previous against other women who were my age, but were apprentice black belts, red belts, and one green belt, and to top it off my head judge is the top dog in our school.
What was I thinking? What was I thinking? Is it too late to sneak off now? Yep, Master Needham just noticed that I’m in the next group of competitors. Rats! Maybe I should use the cuss words. No, bad idea, but it would make me feel better. I sat there with my stomach all twisted up as I saw everyone else perform very difficult forms, and then was called up. Ok, I knew that I didn’t perform the form really well and I attribute it all to nerves, but ended up with 4th place. Of course, there were only four of us competing in my division. When it came to the breaks, I did better since I was able to pour all of the nervous energy out and break something with it. For breaking, I got 2nd place which made me feel a whole lot better.
Well, the kids stole the stage that day. When I got back to my husband, I found out it’s true that opposites attract. He placed 2nd in forms and 4th in breaking. Ok I’ll try anything once, but I’m not all that eager to sign up for another tournament any time soon. I don’t think my stomach can handle it. However, if the kids want to add to their trophy collection, I’ll be more than happy to be the spectator again.
- Wendy Austin (originally written on March 31, 2008)
Master Belts are Scary!
That’s right, I’ve finally said it. Master belts are scary! Most people believe the Hollywood version where the grand master or teacher is almost a parental figure. Let me tell you, that is just not true.
In my previous blog on tournaments, I explained how nervous I was when I found out that Master Needham was the head judge. Master Needham is scary. During one of our classes, we were line sparring and Master Needham joined one of the lines. When it was my turn to spar with him, he started out by grabbing my fist when I tried to punch him and finally stopped the match. Then he goes and hits me on the shoulder, and tells me to hit him on the shoulder. For the rest of the sparring match we just sat there hitting each other’s shoulders. I’m sure there was some meaning to this, but it was lost on me. I was too busy trying to determine how hard I should really hit him. He is after all the top belt at our school and should have some respect. I did get something out of it however, a very sore shoulder. Master Needham hits hard!
Then there is Grand Master Cheezic. During one of his visits, he talked about how sparring in the old days was without gloves, boots, or head gear. Then in a nostalgic voice, he said that it was quite the blood bath back then. Uh, gross! Speaking of gross, we found a video on a master belt that was able to hold up buckets of water from steel pins inserted into his forearms. It must be all of that Chi that I keep hearing about. Another Grand Master belt demonstrated how he is able to break a board with just his hand on the brick. Awesome, I would like to break things by just placing my hand on it! So, how would you go about training for something like that? I would love to be able to, but if I’ve got to do finger push-ups or something like that maybe I’ll settle for the palm heel instead.
Then there’s Master Landry, our own Master Belt who normally isn’t scary unless you get her mad, or she catches you off guard. While doing drills for speed, she was walking through the lines and correcting people on their kicks and punches. Perfectly harmless, right? She was in our row, and gave the next command. Thinking that she had gone to the next row, I turned my head away from her, and squealed like a little piggy when she grabbed my leg in the middle of the kick. I’ve got to keep remaining myself; don’t turn your back on an upper belt. Never, ever. Bad, unexpected things can happen.
I’ve found out that Black belts aren’t that much better. It really is true that Black Belts are just Master Belts in training in more ways than one. I think when they get into those Black Belt sessions with the Master Belts they start to cook up devious ideas for us Under-belts. I’m still trying to figure out why we need to learn how to roll around on the floor. I thought it was bad enough doing it from a kneeling position. One day we had to learn to roll from a standing up position. You’ve got to be kidding me. I stood there and looked down at the mat, and I swear that my body was at least ten feet from that ground. Never mind that I haven’t grown a single inch since I was 15, and I know the exact distance from my head to the floor. It was definitely ten feet that day to get to that mat. You know how I knew that I did the roll correctly? Everyone clapped and every spot on my back and shoulder hurt after doing it. Then the instructor remains us that we are doing this on mats on a carpeted floor. Imagine if we were outside on the asphalt. Hmm… Let’s leave it at that, just an imagination.
Then there’s the Black belt instructor that always manages to do kicking drills even when the theme for the month is something entirely different! I think of that class as my bottom toning session for the week since my backside is killing me for at least a couple of days afterward. The scary part is that he loves to practice the kicks with us and breaking them down step by step. After about hundred kicks on one side, I’m lucky to get my leg in the air; I’m not too concerned about whether I went to the 45° vs. straight, or whatever else.
The last scary thing a Black Belt did was during sparring. Sparring is always a little scary to begin with, but this Black Belt took it a step further. I went to kick him with a side kick (after all I had practice a bunch of kicks the day before) and then I was turned around looking the other direction. Not only was it disorienting, but I wasn’t sure if I was the one who spun the wrong way or if he had magically appeared behind me instead of in front of me. As it turned out, he just took my leg and spun me on my own foot while my leg was up in the air. Didn’t know you could do that to another person; much less have it done to me. Apparently, I wasn’t fast enough for him and he was having some fun with me. Oh, I can’t wait to be an upper belt and have this type of fun, but first I’ll have to learn their tricks.
J
- Wendy Austin (originally written on May 28, 2008)
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