On his way

My Asher's on his way now toward his black belt. He's been preparing, technically, since day one back in June of 2010, when he fell in love with karate and announced his intention to earn his black belt. Next weekend, though, he'll have his first "official" black belt testing mandatory progress check.

Between now and the end of January, Asher will need to maintain his class attendance and grades and write an essay. He'll also have multiple more mandatory progress checks and need to train for those. As part of this, he'll need a training partner to help with some of the checks and, hopefully, be available to offer advice and moral support...a partner who's done this already is ideal. Last week, he asked a second degree black belt from Karate West who's offered Asher encouragement and advice in the course of normal classes. Fingers crossed that Chris' schedule works out (he's a busy high school senior), but already this partnership is helping Asher and we're so thankful.

More specifically, Chris has been encouraging Asher in his sparring abilities (the area Asher feels is his weakest, particularly because everyone in his class is larger than him (most of them a good bit larger, lol) so has the advantage in reach and strength). Being also half-Asian and on the smaller side, Chris really relates to Asher and is thus far a terrific role model. He encouraged Asher to try sparring in a regional tournament, and Asher actually agreed! (This is a pretty big deal. Like I said, sparring is not something Asher's felt positive about in the past, so agreeing to participate was huge.)

So. We spent our afternoon today at The Ranch in Loveland watching and participating in a regional karate tournament. Asher only signed up for one event, continuous sparring. Unlike traditional sparring, the participants don't stop for judges to assign points earned (the judges keep track during the two rounds then average the count) and the divisions are based on weight instead of age and rank. That second part was what swayed Asher. :) (If he'd done traditional sparring, he'd easily have been up against boys Noah's size or bigger as it was grouped 13-14 year old boys with advanced belts. With continuous sparring, he was up against kids weighing more than 66 lbs and less than 78...much less intimidating.)

In the end, Asher didn't place and was a bit frustrated by the outcome. But. We talked about it and he knows that the purpose of participating in the tournament was for the experience and for the training toward his black belt. When put that way, he very much succeeded today.

He stepped outside of his comfort zone, got some fabulous training time and tips from Chris (who was also competing in events of his own at the tournament and graciously came over to chat with Asher and put him more at ease and then helped Asher warm up for his match), and learned a bit more about sparring. Definite win! :)

(This is Chris (in blue) and Asher warming up before Asher's division began.)