Made it... just!

Congratulations to Simon, Ian, Smart and Brian who all successfully graded to 6th Kyu (white belt) on Tuesday. And thanks to Andrew for coming along and helping out. It was a great to have his support and hopefully he got something out of it too (all this will be remembered during his black belt grading next week).

This was the first grading that I had run without Tony presiding over me and so I wanted to make sure that the guys were put through their paces and demonstrated a reasonable level of competence - I don't want Tony worrying about me running more gradings without him.

Of course, this grading was only for the first belt in the syllabus and so as I have stated before, the idea is to give everyone every opportunity to perform at their best and not to try and knock them about, physically, psychologically or emotionally. I hope to do that later. Despite this I didn't want to start my grading history by letting everyone pass just because they turned up, which, by the way, is a minimum requirement!

Things started off quite well. We went through the basic foot and hand movements (unsoku and tandoku undo) and breakfalls. The majority of the class were fine. This is interesting as I only introduced the movement kata at week seven. It shows that with a bit of homework there is no reason why you can't master at least the foot movements in a few weeks. There are club members who are still struggling with this after months of training - what is going on there?

Unfortunately when we got down to the five techniques of the randori no kata that are required for this grading things went a bit to pot. I even tried to make things easy by demonstrating each technique one at a time and having the class follow. Most of the class went to pieces and some didn't seem to remember the techniques at all! I decided that there was a combination of nerves and a general lack of memory having not practiced the techniques for a week (or more if they missed last week).

We took a break and had some free play and Andrew and I demonstrated some of the kata required for black belt; this was also a cheeky opportunity for Andrew to have a bit of a practice under the pressure of an audience and a chance for me to get more of a look at his technique.

After the commercial break we went back to the kata and I got each of the students to get up and demonstrate their five techniques in front of everyone else. Now they seemed to be settling down and pretty much all the guys performed adequately with only a few minor mistakes that we will iron out as time goes by. Phew, I can honestly say that I was thinking that I may have to fail some of them up to that point.

I gave Andrew another opportunity to show off by asking him to teach a technique of his choice for fifteen minutes. This gave him a chance to practice his teaching skills - something I think any aspiring blackbelt should be thinking about - and also another chance for me to see how he stood up to the pressure of the audience. He sensibly chose oshi taoshi, the basic pushdown technique, often known as ikyo. This was sensible because it has a simple breakfall that he knew all the guys would be able to do and it has plenty of variations for him to play with so he could show off some of his depth of knowledge. He did well, spoke well, kept control of the pace of the class and demonstrated well, although he could probably think more about what beginners would struggle with in the technique rather than just thinking about demonstrating the technique well. The technique was also helpful to the students going forward as it is the next technique in the randori no kata after this grading.

We finished up with a bit of fun, avoidance of multiple attackers and a bit of a painful pressure point lock on the wrist. I was happy to say that all the guys pulled it out the bag and although there was considerable variation in the ability they were all acceptable for this first grading.

I hope they now continue to train as the world of aikido is only now about to open up to them.