The tournament
I liked this tournament much better than the last one. Probably, I enjoyed better because it was smaller and I participated in it. I did alright. In my kata division, two green belts, a blue belt, and a purple belts. I went first and preformed Saifa because I worked on and improved it the night before. I beat a lady and won third place. My Sensei said that judges like to score conservative for the first person. For some reason, I went first in all three of my divisions.
My sparring is a different story. I don’t have sparring gear yet. Therefore, I had to borrow some from the dojo. I’m NOT going to do that ever again because they didn’t have feet pads that fit. I had to put on these things that were way too small. My feet wanted to burst out of them and be free. When I was looking for gear, they called of me first and so they had to wait for me to put the gear on. Thankfully, the head judge helped me put on my gear on because I was having trouble with it especially those feet pads.
My point sparring match was terrible. All of my training went out of the window. I reverted back to attacking with both hands instead of doing combos. I didn’t help that I didn’t know that it was a point sparring match until after the match. I know that we were tied at the end of it because of the helpers said next point wins. So, I wasn’t doing that horrible and could have gone forward. However, I lost to a white belt and was a runner up. After the match, Nyles came up to me and said don’t use two hands to attack, use combos.
My continuous match was much better. I sparred with a blue belt that was pretty good. The second half during the match actually started using my head. I know that one point I came in threw some stuff and backed out without her punching my vital areas. During the match, I did get a warning for contact. Of course she beat me; however; she beat a purple belt too. Therefore, I won third place too. After the match, Cory said that I lost because I needed more control.
8 comments:
The belt of a person is not important - their skill level is.
If you lost to a white belt, then train harder, but not because you are a green belt, just train harder because that is the only way.
I train Hojo Undo, Sanchin, and Tensho every day before anything else.
In fact, I am teaching my brother Karate and the first thing he is learning is Hojo Undo, Daruma Taisho, Sanchin Kata, and some Kihon Waza.
Most schools you learn what you learn in order to advance to your next rank.
That is not how I teach or train. If my brother has troubles with Sanchin for a week then we'll work on it for another week, if those troubles persist another year, then he'll be doing Sanchin for another year before moving on to anything else.
If a person lacks control, then I will have them punching and kicking to (not through) a Makiwara until they get it down, could be a month, could be five years.
If they develop superb control then I have done my job.
Let go of your notions of belts and tournaments and just train.
Thats too bad that you had to borrow sparring equipment, but it sounds like you did pretty good regardless. From here your sparring can only improve.:)
Congrats on the placements. I got the feeling that even for rusty you did really well.
Thanks everyone. David probably the white belt had better skills than me in sparring because I never spar and that was my second time that I sparred in gear. That would be nice to train until you are perfect at it and then move on. I'm catching up with my rank. Like tonight, I know more kata than the purple belts; however, their skill level is so much better than mine is.
I miss training with the Makiwara. I wish the owner of the building wasn't stupid so downstairs can hear everything that we do. That would be nice to train with some bags too.
There was a story I heard about Shihan Roseberry competing for the Judo Championship in Okinawa.
He was a brown belt at the time and lost to a black belt competitor, after which his teacher began scolding him in Japanese.
Later he found out that his Judo Sensei was upset, not because he lost, but because he lost to a black belt.
This may seem absurd to some, but understand the reasoning. He was told that his teacher was upset because he lost to the belt and not to the man.
There is a similar notion when someone of higher 'rank' loses to someone of lower 'rank.'
Instead of losing to the person that beat them all they see is the belt of the other person and feel ashamed if the other person was of lower 'rank.'
Of course the other person was more skilled, more experienced, rank has nothing to do with it, it is all in the training.
All the answers are on the training floor.
Take Nyles for instance, Nyles is a good friend of mine, has been for a long time.
He was supposed to have his Yudansha a few years ago, but he has been sitting at 1st Kyu forever.
He is very knowledgeable and very experienced, yet there are some black belts who do not listen to what he has to say because they feel he is of lower rank and that he should be listening to them, not the other way around.
I always listen to Nyles, even though I have been training almost a decade longer than him, he has quite a bit of real world experience from which to draw.
I don't see myself as being above him, I see him as a peer and we are always helping eachother out by offering advice, ect.
We both always listen to Sensei, but even Sensei listens to his students.
The person, not the belt, and their training experience, is more important than anything else.
Get out on that floor and work hard, if you want to do Makiwara training then either build yourself one, or use a tree, a fence post, whatever is there.
Are you talking about the Nyles that I know in the dojo? It's because he just got his first kyu last mounth with Cory. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm going to cheak. In this dojo, the brown belts can be considered black belts in my eyes.
If you really want to keep participating in tournaments, I would really encourage you to look into building up your own equipment. If you bought a piece of it now and then, it won't cost too much.. and you'd be sure that it fit properly so that your feet don't hurt.
I'm glad that you enjoyed your experience.. Yes.. Control is so important.. Keep working on it.
I finally bought all of my equipment on Saturday. However, now it feels that the feet pads are too big. I'm going to ask my Sensei.
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