five years spent practicing, learning, building community around myself, so beautiful
here on the mats, ponytail swinging, laughter,
saturdays from nine to ten-thirty, then eight to ten-thirty,
then eight to eleven, time stretching farther as i grew
in height and muscle and patience,
five years spent practicing, learning, loving how my newly tender, ever beautiful
body pushing through on the mats, holding planks for thirty seconds,
fifty, can i hold it for two minutes, try, try, try, breathe
and as i grew i finally could, brown belt swinging below me,
five years every saturday with my community.
five years where i belong.
five years and today i took five years and laced it into eight hours of muscle and power and trying and learning.
five years spent wondering about this moment.
hey, five-years-ago girl of wide eyes and stiff white belts, we did it, dear, we did it,
i'm a black belt,
it only took five years.
Comments
I love this, I have been working towards my black belt for the past 4 years and in 2 more I will be testing for my black belt. Keep up the good work!
Thank you so much!! Ooh, and a fellow martial artist! What martial art do you do? I'm in shaolin kempo karate and I really like it, even if it's kinda intense sometimes :D
We have mix of different styles that make up or own style which is Soken Go Kai Do Ryu!
ooh nice! do you ever compete in tournaments? i started last year and I really enjoy it - but competing with the black belts is going to be so much different haha!
I've competed for 3 years almost 4, I love tournaments I do all categories that I can! Do you compete in twin state tournaments?
no, I prefer the in-state competitions lol, less driving involved! I do forms (patterns) and weapons and sometimes point sparring, but my dojo doesn't train in breaking so we don't compete for that, but we still win a couple grand champs every year! i've never gotten first in a multi-dojo tourney but I hope to this year!!
Oh nice! I compete in forms, weapons, sparring, breaking, and grappling. I hope you win this year! I have mostly only done twin state tournaments and it's been a lot of fun this year they added grappling and I took first. I think they are adding breaking this year, I have done it in a couple other tournaments but didn't place well because of my timing.
mmm, i've heard timing is super important and also pretty restricted as to what you can do in tournaments, especially around here. it's super cool you took first in grappling!! we don't compete in that but it is part of the four ways of fighting of shaolin kempo that fred villari brought together. it would be fun to have a jiu-jitsu technique section though!
Adding jiu-jitsu would be pretty cool my dojo has a class for it but it's on the days I'm not there so I can't join right now, once I start working there in a few weeks I should be able to though. Yeah board breaking is a tedious competition, I think they should make it a little less restricted so when you compete it's not quite so stressful!
whoa you're going to work there?? that's super cool!! my dojo has a leadership program that I really really love (i'm one of the team leaders in it) where you can teach classes and help out a lot with birthday parties and summer camps and stuff - we have to be there pretty early Saturday mornings to teach 3 or 4 classes before our own, working w/ 6-9 year olds, and sometimes it can get annoying, but the pedagogy is so interesting and it really helps with my patience and empathy skills!
That's awesome! We have a leadership program at our school it's called storm team but they haven't had a meeting in months unfortunately. I agree working with younger children can get ignoring but it also can be a lot of fun!
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