Aikido Grading

Grading for aikido ranks is generally a very helpful affair although it's still tense. I arrived just as the white belts were starting out but didn't really watch them as I was distracted with talking to my friend who was grading for her 2nd kyu (black belt). It's always nice to have a friend to go through these milestones with. It's also we had a pact that we would uke (attacker partner) for each other which was possible since we were grading one after the other.

Turned out fine on the whole. I uked (partnered) for my friend as her first uke. I think I ended up making 2 mistakes as uke but corrected them immediately and fortunately these didn't unnerve her. I have to say my friend was quite composed, far more than I was when I was doing my grading at her level.

When it was my turn, I had three very nice guys be my ukes one after the other after sensei (instructor) made my friend step down as uke as she had just completed her grading. Usually at this level the gradings are longer, so ukes tire out and sensei changes them. The last guy I had was a very nice shodan (dan grades are the grades beyond black belt) and he was great as he's got beautiful ukemi (partnering techniques). We ended with tanto (wooden dagger) techniques which were a surprise...shows you how much I've been paying attention at gradings! I should have realised there were going to be these techniques.

The funny thing is now I actually like the freestyle (respond how you want to an attack) section best which is the bit I used to be the most wary of. It's partly that I'm less nervous than the last time, and partly that I know I can't forget a technique since I'm allowed to employ any aikido technique that I know. Whereas now there are so many more techniques that I can be tested on, I could easily forget some of them on the spot.

And of course the best thing about it all is that it's over and generally while I don't think I did that well technically, I'm unlikely to fail. So I'm pretty happy.