5th kyu

Back on the 19th September I attended Vale Farm with MiniMe for the Kilburn SKC purple belt grading (5th kyu) under the guidance of Sensei Eric Pich and Sensei Ohta. Grading under Sensei Ohta is can be very nerve wracking as his standards of karate are so high and his demeanor can be seen as very harsh. However, I have always enjoyed grading with Sensei Ohta and it certainly seems to bring them best out of both me and MiniMe.

I was more careful with my warm up this time following the problems this caused me at our last grading and this certainly helped as I went through our basic syllabus without any problem or comment. Next came the kata under the watchful gaze of Sensei Ohta and we performed Hein Sandan in a group of 6. During the earlier warmup, with Senei Natalie, MiniMe kept making a mistake during the end sequence of blocks and through watching MiniMe trying to correct this I then managed to make the same mistake during the grading. On the plus side this was not picked up by Sensei who was more focused on another Karateka who was obviously affected by nerves and was having some real problems.

Finally we progressed onto ippon kummite where I only had the problem of my opponent announcing that he was going to perform mae geri but then promptly attacked with a tudan punch. He realised mid punch that he had made a mistake and my gadan barai blocked the attack anyway. Again, Sensei was concentrating on someone else who was also having nerve problems so my opponent repeated the attack correctly without any issue.

As usual I was able to circle through the floor below and enter the room to watch MiniMe go through his grading. MiniMe seems to always perform at his best when he is under pressure so he put in a faultless performance through basics, kata, and kumite. We both met downstairs to receive our grading results and we had both passed our grading so were awarded 5th Kyu.

Our next grading is fast approaching at will take place at Vale Farm on Friday 12th December 2008. This is likely to be our last Vale Farm grading as 3rd kyu (brown belt) and above grading takes place at Willesden Sports Centre. This again takes place every 3 months but will typically be held the week after the Vale Farm gradings take place and also has the benefit of a training course run beforehand. If we both pass our 4th kyu grading (purple and white belt) this coming Friday then we will probably attend the training course on the 19th December 2008 and then watch the brown belt gradings afterwards to see how the format works.