Tonight was Rank Test. Testing for my first rank, Yellow Belt in Shotokan Karate.

Sensei asked us if we were “nervous” or “excited”. I said “excited”, in truth I was all kinda jacked up excited. I flubbed the very first question: Do not forget that karate-do begins and ends with Rei. I could hardly believe it… I was beside myself. A few rocky answers later we got through kicks pretty solid, I did lose my balance on one back kick, when my ankle gave out for some reason… but otherwise they felt pretty good after I pushed on.

In Kata though, I really blew it. I missed the first two attempts. I think doing it with the other two students really threw me off my rhythm. I couldn’t get into my own head for it. Sensei gave me a shot to do it once on my own and I nailed it. I even nailed Taigo Two which I had never done before after 5 seconds of instruction on what to do.

I have no idea what this will do for my score… i’m crossing my fingers that the fact that I was able to pull myself together and move past my mistakes to nail the forms gets me somewhere… ugh!

I did well on the self defense portion, no mistakes and I feel like I nailed all of them. I practiced these the most.

I feel the same as i did after taking the written portion of the test, confused… But no matter what happens pass or fail I learned a very strong message about myself and that is that I won’t give up. Honestly I feel best about that above everything tonight.