The Jen Diaries

This past weekend I was ranked in karate, was 41 feet in the air crossing 452 feet of trees, and squeezed in 4 hours of work in order to celebrate orbiting around the Sun for 26 years. I was up at 6:30am for Kyu testing, which is the opportunity to be ranked at kyu: white and brown belt ranking.  The rankings are as followed: White belt: 8th kyu, 7th kyu, 6th kyu, 5th kyu, 4th kyu Brown belt: 3rd kyu, 2nd kyu, 1st kyu Black belt: 1st degree, 2nd degree, 3rd degree, 4th degree, 5th degree (highest degree). As of saturday I was not yet ranked since starting again in February. Obviously my goal is to become a black belt but we were reminded Saturday morning that it was not a Pass/Fail test and it is not as important what rank you are but how strong your mentality and spirit are. You are your own opponent. Shotokan founder Gichin Funakoshi has said that:  [...]mind and technique become one in true karate. We strive to make our physical techniques pure expressions of our mind’s i

I got picked up at 3am for our drive down to Memphis. Tournament day had begun! Five of us in a car for seven and a half hours would be the first testament to how much our bodies could handle in the next couple of days. I slept most of the ride over, although very uncomfortably, but it was not bad and what better way than to get close with my fellow karatekas than by being stuck with them for more than 36 hours? We get there 5 minutes before practice begins. Just enough time to change into our kimonos (or guis) and for me to wrap up pretty much all of my toes to prevent blisters from emerging again (let me know if youd like to see those ) aaaaand I’m ready! We were close to 40 people. Some came all the way from Nebraska, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota and Georgia. The day was broken down into 4 parts: 10 am - 12 pm: practice drills, three time sparring, closing in on an opponent, counter attacks. After a quick warm up, the leader of the practice demonstrated three differ

After going back to practicing karate for two months, I decided to do something terrifying. Something I despised as a child: KARATE TOURNAMENTS! The thing is, tournaments are scary! Everybody has opponents they don’t like facing for fear of getting their ass whopped! I'm thinking the more I do it, the more I will get used to facing and controlling this fear which is basically what karate teaches you. Karate instills ethical principles and can have spiritual significance. It is also practiced for self-perfection, for cultural reasons, self-defense and as a sport (side note: In 2009, in the 121th International Olympic Committee voting, karate did not receive the necessary two-thirds majority vote to become an Olympic sport (see: IOC factsheet ). That would be amazing to watch! Also, did you know there are 50 million karate practitioners worldwide?) The type of tournament I'm taking part of is called  Jiyu Kumite which tranlates to "free sparring"