Songs of Doom

Of Gradings

June 8, 2005, 1:01 pm

This post for a change isn’t about Psi, isn’t about Jabber and isn’t about anything anyone will care about: it’s about me selfishly advertising my happiness.

As some of you will know, last weekend I undertook the delightful 250mile trip to Manchester to take my next grading in TaeKwon-Do. The grading panel consisted of Mr. Doulton, a 6th degree and Mr. Iqbal, a 5th degree. The grading itself was tiring and stressful for me but I didn’t underperform as much as I had expected to, which is very pleasing.

Results were in for training last night; I passed the grading, so have been promoted to Black Tag/Black Stripe (insert whichever terminology you’re happy with. If you practise another martial art, insert your final colour belt here).

Now I have to look to the future; the next step for me to work towards is 1st degree black belt. While it’s far from certain I’ll ever reach the level of fitness, technique and understanding required for the grade, I’m looking forward to the improvements I’ll certainly see while I try. Only recently have I begun to understand how far I have to go from techniques that hopefully look approximately correct, to the performance of techniques that comes from an understanding of their basis and a great deal of practise. It’s going to be a long road but in this case the journey really should be as rewarding as the destination.

9 Responses to “Of Gradings”

Hal wrote on June 8, 2005

Come on then, let’s have a go!

Cath wrote on June 8, 2005

Awww, gratz Kev :D

I might be ever just a tiny bit pleased for you ;)

Eric Muehlstein wrote on June 9, 2005

Hey, Congrats Kev. You need to find your way to Chicago sometime so we can spar… Hehe, I think that it’s probably time that you added some sort of korean flag / taekwondo easter egg to psi :-P

Eric Muehlstien wrote on June 9, 2005

Advanced Class with Master Park

I read an entry today on the blog of Kevin Smith one of the psi developers. He was just awarded his “black tag” in TaeKwonDo yesterday. I dropped him a little note … and started thinking of clever “easter egg” ideas for psi.

Yesterday was m…

Nick wrote on June 10, 2005

Congrats Kev!

You’ll be delighted to hear that Grand Master Choi has recently decided to change a few techniques; the release move in Do-San now has a new stance, for example.

I have no doubt you’ll reach 1st Dan, and be a pretty damn good one as well :)

Kev wrote on June 10, 2005

Thank you :)

Tony wrote on July 14, 2005

Nice job, Kev. Come down to AU when I have a couple more years to train, and we can have Karate versus TKD games. *goes to find a black belt to practise against*

prs1002000 wrote on March 30, 2007

Stumbled across your website whilst looking for TKD clubs and instructors. One search I did was for Mr Tariq Iqbal whom I remember from a class I did at Manchester Uni while visiting a friend there. I was wondering if you could tell me where he teaches currently, I would very much like to train there.

Kev wrote on March 30, 2007

prs1002000 : have replied to your email :)

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