The grading went ok. My two jigeiko fights weren't spectacular. I managed a few kote-men nidan waza and got a few solid men cuts. However, my seme wasn't brilliant. Nerves turned my legs to jelly... it didn't feel like I created much pressure on my opponent. Anyhow, it must have been enough as I was one of the only three that passed out of 10.
Kata was a skin of the teeth job. Luckily I was Uchidachi for nanahome so didn't have to do the 'kneel down of death', unfortunately for my partner (a dojo mate) he fluffed the knee and has to retake the kata section again. I felt bad for him as he was 99% there.
I think this is a good opportunity to revisit my basics and try to develop a sharper seme and cut.
Luckily i've managed to find a vid of one of my grading jigeiko. I did ok I think, I just seem really slow! I was happy with the kote men at 2:07 until I realised I didnt kiai for the inital kote.
Maybe I should have attempted a few hiki waza? I didn't want to get into a in-out brawl or spoil the fight by blocking, so kept my composure. However, this allowed my opponent to get a few hiki cuts in.
Note for the future, don't break off and walk back to the middle otherwise i'll fail.
Congrats on getting your Nidan. Despite you thinking you passed by the skin of your teeth, you probably did better than you thought you did to those that were grading you. It's really easy to be harder on yourself than other people.
ReplyDeleteAs for taking the exam, I know how you feel. I usually get the jitters before, during and after the exam, which has definitely worked against me many times in the past. For my nidan exam, I was sort of nervous, but not to the degree as usual. I think that it had a lot to do with having a gameplan before I went to the exam. Basically, I was given lots of advice, but there was one or two things that was told to me for the preceding year so I just concentrated on those few things. It was a lot less to concentrate on and I was able to show them what I wanted to show them and just leave it up to them to let me pass or fail me. Luckily, they passed me.
Maybe taking that sort of approach might help. There are a lot of things to worry about, like seme, footwork, suburi and posture which only makes people like me even more nervous.
Thanks Christopher.
ReplyDeleteYes preparation definitely helps! I've worked hard over the last six months to prepare for the grading and really concentrated on my seme/distance. However, when it came to the crunch my brain fried and my plan for building pressure before the cut went to pot. Hopefully this will come together when I gain more experience.
I'm just glad the stress is over for now.
Dezza.