When I received my senior black belt, I was proud of my achievement. I was excited to move on, to have passed my testing. Since then, I’m not sure how long it has been. I’ve still enjoyed taking lessons for Karate at the same location I’ve always gone to since I was a kid. I’ve learned more katas, self-defense techniques, and ideas. I’ve learned from the three basic sets (blocking, knee, and elbow), Short One through Long 2, and Tiger set, and learned a wide range of defense techniques. The way the katas were set-up made it easier for me to learn new concepts, such as defense, counterattack, and utility of stances such as horse-stance, forward bow, and cat-stance. Through it I also learned Point of Origin, toe-heel stance, and many more important basic concepts. I didn’t even know there were some many knife attacks and ways to defend knives. Even though I will be extremely scared in a dangerous encounter with knives, I will at least be prepared to defend myself from fatal injury and death from common knife attacks, something that I could not say before training after receiving my Senior blackbelt. I’ve since learned that you should protect your heart and vital veins from being cut. Other techniques that are unique from others include defense against 2 people, and ground defense. Before, I didn’t even know these were in the curriculum. These techniques were interesting to perform and widened my knowledge of techniques and concepts in the martial arts world. I’ve learned different ideas, not just simple movements and techniques. I am beginning to understand what makes up defense techniques, such as: pushing the circle, moving to a safe corner in a “square,” and point of origin. I’ve even learned variations of simple blocks/ kicks, such as an angled block that serves as a half-way between an upward block and side block. As of new weapons, although the only thing I’ve learned about is club/s sticks, I never knew there were so many techniques that could become of one weapon. I’ve also begun to realize that I need to have better self-control, even though before I had trouble making contact. I will practice more in the future in order to protect myself and others from injury. Especially with more elaborate techniques, I’ve since realized its extremely hard to improve/ practice anything without doing so on another human. While attending classes online, I couldn’t understand direction or position in techniques in order to be fully effective. Even though I’ve learned and added so much, I still have much more to learn, and I’ve only just started. I hope I will be able to learn more knife techniques, because I think those will be the most common and most dangerous out of the self-defense I can learn. I believe I have more to improve on, such as self-control, and hope to learn more about weapons and learn self-defense techniques that I can use to protect me and those around me.
