Carl is a brand support executive at insure4sport and a student of the martial art Kenpo.
I have been writing to you about ‘Kenpo – the beautiful but brutal art’ and my progress through the Kenpo belt grading system, In my last blog post I wrote about watching ‘the highest ranked Kenpo black belt in the UK’,. This time it’s my time to shine!
On Saturday I finally passed my grading and successfully moved on to my yellow belt! It was a long, hard, gruelling day which started at 11am with training. We trained until 4pm, at which point we then started grading which finished at around 6:20pm.
I feel like a pressure has been lifted off my shoulders as I have been working towards this belt for so long but injuries, sickness and work commitments have meant that I have not been able to go to training as frequently as I would of liked to. But now, 13 months on from the date I started Kenpo, I have finally been graded on my yellow belt.
Although I have been graded before for my white belt, this one really feels like the first stepping stone towards becoming established within the Kenpo grading system. I have already set my sights on the next belt available and I am definitely looking forward to learning everything I need to know to be graded with an orange belt. I am aware I will have to up my intensity levels to prepare, and with sparring now being a required element of the grading I can’t wait to get started.
Hard work, commitment and perseverance has driven through this past six months. I will not give up and will keep on going at this. I’m finding Kenpo helps me in many ways from building my confidence to keeping the stress of day to day life at bay when I train Kenpo. I have noticed this more recently as mentioned I have not been attending as much as I used to or as much as I will be moving forwards.
Leave a Reply