On Saturday we elected to run through the Nidan test with
Surprisingly, Sensei picked a Heian kata for Mike and I to do which both confused and panicked us. Upon closer inspection, the syllabus does say that they will pick from Bassai Dai, Kanku Dai, Jion and Empi as we expected. The sparring went fairly well, but the basic combinations were jerky and labored and just plain sucked.
I was leading with my shoulders AGAIN, despite my best efforts not to. After the correction was made I was able to suck it up and fix it but I have to be able to handle the test stress like it was taking a walk through my living room if I have any hope of not screwing up like that next month.
Sensei was right… we do just have to relax. After one has done as much training as we have over the last three months, this should be so natural that it just falls out of us. Right now we’re trying to squeeze an elephant out a garlic press with the amount of effort we’re putting into this. That needs to stop.
Hopefully Dry Run #2 will yield a little better results. 😛
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