Sep
Today marks the return of full club kyu gradings since the start of the pandemic. The last in-person club kyu grading took place in September 2019 – a whole two years ago.
We have had students that were due to grade in April 2020…a grading that never happened, so this grading was a big day for some of our white belts who have been the club’s longest standing white belts at a record 2 years!
It was a bright and early starts at The Grammar in Altrincham and it was a brilliant atmosphere. I was really impressed with the determination and effort by every student who participated. The group of orange belts going to green were particularly stand out, especially in terms of kata.
We have a little bit of work to do on technical elements with a small number of yellow belts grading to orange before we see them again for their next grade. In particular some stances have suffered – most of which are down to the challenges of training via Zoom classes and a lack of space to train during lockdown.
A special shout out to Sophie who was the only student to grade to brown belt. She stood on her own, with her head held high and repeatedly performed her kata to the high standard expected to achieve that grade. Furthermore she didn’t give up and didn’t quit the ‘shark tank’ of 6 black belt kumite bouts.
Here are some photos from today’s grading. There is a password-protected full album – please drop me a text or whatsapp message for the password.
If you want any of the images in high resolution, please let me know and I’ll email them to you.
