My Martial Art Aims for 2012...

I am a planner. I like to write down my plans; it works for me to do this. I’m much more likely to achieve my aims when I have written them down. Here’s what I’ve come up with for 2012…

Aims:


1.To improve personal fitness and overcome repetitive shoulder injury
2.To continue to develop and improve martial arts skills
3.To improve teaching and leadership skills and gain further teaching experience.

How to achieve it….

1a. Develop a new personal fitness plan. When I was preparing for my black belt test earlier this year I developed a very detailed fitness plan which I followed very diligently (In fact I wrote a whole blog about it – Countdown to Shodan – some of you may remember!) I found that having a plan helped to motivate me to exercise and train regularly at home as well as at the dojo. Since taking my shodan test last June I have let my personal fitness training slip quite a lot and so I think a new plan is needed to get me going again.

1b. Get some physio for my shoulder. The one problem with exercising when you are older is that you don’t heal very quickly after injuries. This is a pain! I injured my right shoulder about 3 months ago during training and it still isn’t completely healed. It gets a bit better with rest but as soon as I train it gets set off again. Everyday activities can set it off as well such as housework, particularly activities that involve pushing or rotational movements of the arm e.g. cleaning windows. I can’t effectively do push-ups and excessive punching against a pad leaves my shoulder throbbing. Sometimes my shoulder aches even when I’m not doing anything. I have decided that some physiotherapy may be the answer – what do you think?

2a. Continue to train regularly. I will certainly be attending my twice weekly karate classes and weekly kobudo class as usual. In addition my instructor is planning some additional ‘higher grade’ classes in 2012. These will be smaller classes where we can concentrate on specific topics such as bunkai, teaching skills, weapons training, self-defence techniques etc. I’m looking forward to these more targeted classes.

2b. Take advantage of other training opportunities. I like going to seminars and courses so I’ll be on the lookout for some of these in 2012. My karate organisation will be hosting several of these during the year which I will be attending but I will also look for things outside our organisation. I know Iain Abernethy is doing a seminar in my neck of the woods in the spring-time so I may see if I can get onto that. I find seminars very inspiring and motivating. I like meeting new people and being introduced to new ideas and approaches to training, it all enriches the martial arts experience.

3a. Take a sports leadership award course.  Though I have been awarded my instructor’s certificate I feel this is a role that I need to grow into. I feel that I have the technical skills and knowledge to pass onto others (at a basic level at least) but I feel that my generic teaching and leadership skills need development.  Sports leadership awards teach those generic skills such as planning and organising lessons, motivating people, maintaining safety, adapting activities, organising competitions etc.  I think that developing these skills would significantly improve my confidence with teaching and leading karate sessions.  I’m currently enquiring about such a course.

3b. Gain further teaching experience and attend instructor training courses. To maintain my instructors licence I have to attend at least 3 out of 4 instructor training courses per year run by my organisation.  I’m not exactly sure what happens on these courses or what I’ll be expected to do but I’m looking forward to attending them.  

As far as teaching experience goes, I have already had my first experience of teaching a class- all by myself!  My instructor is currently on holiday in Vietnam and needed someone to cover the last class of the year in his absence, so he asked me (actually he asked our 3^rd dan instructor to do it but he couldn’t so it got delegated to me.) This was a bit of a Baptism of Fire since the Saturday morning kids class is actually a triple class: 9.00 – 10 white to orange belts, 10-11 green to brown belts and 11-12.30 brown and black belts (mainly teenagers).  But I survived! I’m also teaching the first class of the New Year on 3^rd January- just a 1 hour session this time. 

Hopefully during the year I will be able to continue helping my instructor with his schools programme which is good fun and very rewarding. However, I need to make sure that not all my teaching is with beginners or children so I am considering whether to volunteer to help out in one of the senior classes at one of our other clubs to get some experience teaching adults and senior kyu grades.

Well, that’s my proposed martial arts plan for 2012. Have you thought about what you want to achieve with your martial arts in the coming year or are you a ‘take it as it comes’ sort of person?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Another assessment sneaks up on me....

Just when I thought the testing was all over for a couple of years, Sensei suddenly announces that I will be taking my Instructor’s assessment on Monday!

Actually it was Monday just gone so I have already done it….but he did suddenly sneak it up on me with about a weeks’ notice. Though the date did arrive rather more quickly than I had anticipated I have actually been preparing for it for a couple of years.

As many readers will know I have been assisting with teaching in our junior class regularly since I became a brown belt.  This started with partnering people without a partner, to going through a junior belt syllabus with a couple of kids, to organising pad work, teaching break falling, to teaching kata and basic kumite skills.

The original intention was that I would be assessed for an Assistant Instructor certificate which at the time was available for brown belts who were assisting with the 9^th – 4^th kyu grades. However, my own black belt training and testing got in the way of thinking about an Assistant Instructor assessment, so it never happened.

Once I became a black belt I moved my focus back to teaching a bit more and my instructor started taking me along to taster sessions that he was giving at local primary schools. I got the chance to teach these young children and we started an after-school club at one of the schools. To give me greater experience my instructor has allowed me to ‘front’ these classes, planning and teaching the classes myself, with him assisting me -a strange feeling that!

Anyway, my instructor decided I was ready to take the Instructors assessment and set the date for last Monday. We decided that it may be best to go for the Club level Instructor (level 2) rather than just Assistant level Instructor (level 1). This will enable me to teach up to 1^st dan level and teach independently at some future date if I want to.

The assessment involved teaching both the junior and senior classes on Monday evening. I had to demonstrate knowledge and skill at teaching an entire grade syllabus to the class, chosen at random by my instructor. For the junior class 5^th kyu (blue belt) syllabus was chosen and for the senior class the 1^st dan syllabus was chosen. Of course I was also being assessed on my ability to organise and control the class, meet individual children’s needs and deal with any discipline issues as they arose.

In addition to the practical teaching there was also a short oral exam where I was questioned about such things as our Association and Governing body structure, ethics and code of behaviour for clubs in the SSK, administration and record keeping, health and safety in the dojo, teaching children and people with special needs, emergencies and first aid and what I need to do to maintain my Instructor’s licence.

All in all I thought it was a comprehensive but fair assessment.  I was a bit nervous to start with but after doing a full seiza bow with the junior class and starting the warm up my nerves kind of disappeared and I just got on with it. The kids knew I was being assessed and were wonderfully behaved (as they generally are anyway). Most of the kids I had were red, yellow and orange belts so the blue belt syllabus was a bit new to them – adding to the challenge! This meant that I didn’t complete all sections of the syllabus in the lesson but I wanted to leave time for a game at the end to reward the kids for being so good!

It was then straight into the senior class with another seiza bow and warm up. Most of our 1^st kyu students are preparing for their black belt test in December so after I had taken them through the basic kihon sections as a group they disappeared to the back of the hall to practice all their partner work together and with Sensei.

This left me with a group of about 8 children ranging from green to brown belt to take through the 1^st dan syllabus – so another challenge! There was no way I was going to cover all 15 sections in the time available so once I had covered all the kihon and kata/bunkai sections, Sensei asked me to skip to the kumite sections. We then had about 15 minutes of jiyu and shiai kumite.  I’m not too confident with the refereeing of shiai kumite but I just had to do the best I could with what I know about refereeing, which quite frankly is not a great deal at the moment!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I passed the assessment and I’m now a fully licensed club level karate instructor for the SSK – the first new instructor since the organisation was formed 2 years ago.  I feel in no way ready to take on the commitment and responsibility of running an independent club – I still have too much to learn myself.

So for now,  I will continue my own training towards nidan, continue assisting my instructor to build up my skills further, continue with the after school club (which I may take on independently next year, with my instructor as mentor, overseer and grading officer) and cover classes when my instructor is away…..it’s all an interesting and challenging part of the journey…..

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Black Belt Testing – entrance or exit exam?

People are often tempted to compare the abilities of a black belt student from one martial arts system to those of black belt students within other systems. In addition, people often have fixed expectations of what a black belt student should be able to do, this often results in much discussion or argument over the quality of a black belt test.

For some, the new black belt student should be entirely proficient in all aspects of their chosen art or be able to prove themselves in a fight. For others the new black belt student is considered to have just learnt the basics of their art and now their real training is about to begin. This begs the question – is the black belt test an entrance or exit exam?

In case you are not familiar with the concept of entrance and exit exams let me offer you some examples: A medical degree is an entrance exam; at the end of the course the student holds a degree qualification which then gains them entrance into a programme of higher medical training. A medical degree alone does not allow a person to become a fully qualified, fully independent doctor. Likewise a Law degree provides a standalone qualification but it does not allow the holder to practice as a lawyer; it is merely an entrance qualification to higher levels of training.

On the other hand, some training programmes lead to qualifications that allow the holder to go out and work as a fully functioning practitioner in that line of work. For example, qualifications in nursing, plumbing or electrics; these are ‘exit’ qualifications and the student has to pass ‘exit’ exams that prove they are fully competent in their subject and safe to practice. That isn’t to say that there aren’t further more specialist courses that the practitioner can take, there generally are. A junior doctor who has completed a programme of higher specialist training will take exit exams that allow him/her to practice as an independent practitioner.

So, this brings me back to the question, is the black belt test an entrance or exit exam? Does it merely allow you to enter into a higher level of training in your art or does it mean that you are a fully functioning practitioner who has mastered all the techniques your art has to offer?

It depends on the art and the system that you train in doesn’t it? In most systems of karate and other traditional arts I would argue that the black belt test is an entrance exam – it shows that you have learnt the basics and you are now ready to enter into a programme of more advanced training.

However, I think that in some reality based systems the black belt test is treated more as an exit exam and that there is an expectation that black belt students can defend themselves in a very confident and expert way and will have become proficient ‘fighters’.

It may be that the bar is set higher for black belt testing in some systems than in others. I don’t think that this matters too much as long as you are not making direct comparisons. In the same way that you can’t compare degree qualifications from one university with those from another, neither can you compare black belt qualifications of one martial arts system with those from a different system either.

So, if your system of training treats the black belt test as an entrance exam at what point of training do you exit? 3^rd dan? 5^th dan? If you are a traditionalist then you probably believe that there is no exit exam, that training and the pursuit of perfection in your art is a life-long programme with no end-point.

Then again, you may, for practical reasons, assume that there is an exit point at say 3^rd dan. At third dan you may feel that the practitioner is sufficiently proficient in the full range of their art to be able to teach it as a fully qualified instructor. If you treat the black belt test as an exit exam then you may feel that the practitioner is suitably qualified to teach at 1^st dan or 2^nd dan.

The point though is that you understand what the black belt test in your system really represents in terms of achievement and proficiency in your art. It doesn’t really matter whether it represents a basic qualification or an advanced one as long as you understand where it fits into the entire continuum of your training system and you don’t make too many comparisons between systems without understanding where their black belt qualification fits into their system.

So, is your black belt test an entrance or an exit exam? Where would you consider the exit point to be in your system?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Some post grading challenges...

Before I took my shodan grading I wrote a post called ‘Six things I’m looking forward to post black belt…’  I thought that if I knew exactly what my aims were post black belt then I could hopefully avoid the dreaded ‘black belt blues’. Well, so far so good. No signs of depression or loss of enthusiasm yet!

I thought I’d let you know what I’ve been up to in the last month and whether I’m making any headway with my aims…

1.       Being liberated from grading. That feels soooo….good! I’ve not even looked at the 2^nd dan syllabus yet – no point. It’s just fun to turn up to training and see what happens that session – no expectations, no hoping we are going to focus on something I particularly need to do. It’s just about training in the moment. I’m learning a new kata, Sepai, which is quite interesting but I have at least two years to learn it (along with 2 other kata I need to learn). I’ll probably research the history for Sepai soon to add to my other kata histories.

2.       Consolidating the basics.  The basics are never far away are they? We haven’t spent a lot of time on basic kihon in the senior class in the last month but in the junior class where I assist with teaching then, yes, I’m consolidating the basics! But more on teaching later…

3.       Learning to spell! To me this is about putting things together more, thinking outside the box a little and developing a greater sense of strategy in a self-defence situation. This is not something we have particularly touched on in class recently other than we have been exploring a few ‘street’ type defences in the last couple of weeks. However, I don’t believe that all learning should take place in class so I have been reading and thinking about self-defence at home. Like I’ve mentioned before I think it is important to understand the nature of violence in society and add some context to your self-defence training. I’m currently reading ‘Facing Violence – preparing for the unexpected’ by Rory Millar and this is making me think a lot, so expect some blog posts on this theme soon!

4.       Learning some ‘off’ syllabus stuff. Well the street defence stuff we’ve been doing is certainly off syllabus. It’s very different to the kind of self-defence things we do that are part of the syllabus. We’ve also been doing a little bit of aikido – some defences against knife attacks. I have to admit I find some of the aikido techniques very complicated but that may just be because I’m new to it. I think karate is much simpler and straight forward – that’s got to be an advantage in self-defence.

      I’ve also returned to my kobudo classes which have taken a back seat in recent months. It’s nice to get back to swinging the tonfa again and I was surprised at how much of the syllabus I could remember, though my ability to manipulate the tonfa has somewhat deteriorated at the moment!

5.       Spending more time dissecting and understanding the kata and bunkai. Apart from starting to learn Sepai and running through all the kata I know as a sort of workout we haven’t looked at kata application in the last month so no progress made here at the moment.

6.       Spend more time teaching. This is where most of my energy is being focused at the moment. I’m keen to do the assistant instructors qualification so my instructor and I have increased the pace a bit with teaching. I now quite regularly start the junior class off with a formal seiza bow and warm-up and have taken the majority of the students for 20 – 30 minute sessions of kihon or kumite training.

I’ve also assisted my instructor with some ‘taster’ sessions at a local primary school during their ‘sports week’ recently. This was an all day affair where we gave 7 separate half-hour karate sessions to the different year groups. This was really fun, though exhausting, and the pupils (and teachers) joined in enthusiastically. I’d be quite happy to do this kind of teaching again.

Keeping busy and looking for new challenges seems to be a recipe for preventing the black belt blues. My next challenge is on Saturday as I help out at a kyu grading session as the ‘caller’ i.e the person who does the counting, makes sure everyone knows what they are doing and (for very  junior grades) gives the odd demonstration of the technique. This will be a test of how well I know the junior syllabus! I’ll let you know how it goes…..

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.