One small step closer...

[serietah]

Do y'all have yellow stripe as a belt? or does it go from solid white to yellow?

We go from white to yellow then yellow with a green stripe, green, green with blue stripe, blue, blue with red stripe, red, Then there's red with one black stripe then red with two black stripes, then black. Per our curriculum it should take about 3 years, though we are absolutely not guaranteed that.

 

[Azulx]

We go from white to yellow then yellow with a green stripe, green, green with blue stripe, blue, blue with red stripe, red, Then there's red with one black stripe then red with two black stripes, then black. Per our curriculum it should take about 3 years, though we are absolutely not guaranteed that.

Oh nice! we only have 9 geup, y'all have 3 levels of red which is really cool. We use to have 10 but our instructor changed the color system. It "traditionally' takes a student about 27 months to get a black belt. Out of the 25 students that we have had since our club started only 3 are on that traditional path. 1 out of those 3 looks like they will be testing for green. So 27 months maybe the fastest but, really unlikely.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

That's a solid amount of time, with a steady progression
Out of curiosity, does your main instructor ever have other instructors come in to help teach? I know you are an assistant instructor, but it can be nice for newer geups to see/work with higher geups

 

[Azulx]

That's a solid amount of time, with a steady progression
Out of curiosity, does your main instructor ever have other instructors come in to help teach? I know you are an assistant instructor, but it can be nice for newer geups to see/work with higher geups

Hey Kempo, are you asking me or serietah this question?

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Hey Kempo, are you asking me or serietah this question?

Serietah, sorry. Although if you are in the same situation (1 sensei, most practitioners lower geups) the question could apply

 

[Azulx]

Serietah, sorry. Although if you are in the same situation (1 sensei, most practitioners lower geups) the question could apply

Yes, Basically it's me (Red belt) , the Senior Student who is also a red belt. My head instructor and his daughter (1st dan). Everyone else is yellow belt or lower. Actually we have a blue belt that shows up about once a month lol. I am an assistant, since I show up to every single class. We don't have guest instructors come in and help. I can't really see my instructor inviting someone else to teach his class. He is very serious about things being taught his way.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Yes, Basically it's me (Red belt) , the Senior Student who is also a red belt. My head instructor and his daughter (1st dan). Everyone else is yellow belt or lower. Actually we have a blue belt that shows up about once a month lol. I am an assistant, since I show up to every single class. We don't have guest instructors come in and help. I can't really see my instructor inviting someone else to teach his class. He is very serious about things being taught his way.

For a guest instructor it wouldn't necessarily be someone who is teaching the class, but a more senior student who can help look over and train with the lower student. However as red belts (I assume that's around 2nd or 3rd geup?) you and the senior student would be filling the role I'm referring to.

 

[Azulx]

For a guest instructor it wouldn't necessarily be someone who is teaching the class, but a more senior student who can help look over and train with the lower student. However as red belts (I assume that's around 2nd or 3rd geup?) you and the senior student would be filling the role I'm referring to.

Yes, Red is 2nd Geup, I am currently training to prepare to test for 1st geup on June 4th. There is a Green-stripe student (7th geup) who is showing promising potential. My instructor has let us know that he would like to enter him into our instructor program. So we do have some sort of system to develop assistants to help.

 

[TrueJim]

Just a fun little factoid about this kind of situation (where there's one senior sabumnim with a lot of low-geup students):

Our school started at this current location (having moved from another distant location) about six years ago, so the sabumnim had very few senior students at the time -- mostly just new, low-geup students. He needed to grow some senior students fast so he worked really hard at moving key students through the ranks quickly, which sounds like it could have worked out poorly...but it didn't at all. Of that initial class of students, three are now instructors: one of them beat a member of Team USA last year in sparring at a local tournament, and one of them recently because Virginia State Champ in her (senior) age group for poomsae.

The point being...if you work really hard at it, and have students who are willing to work really hard with you (as in, put in a TON of hours), it is possible to grow a good "teaching corps" within a couple of years. It takes a big time commitment though: a lot of extra sweat in those first couple of years.

 

[Flatfish]

The thing I'm finding hardest at yellow belt is sparring. We do non contact sparring during class (actual sparring classes will start when we have green belts, though I'm not sure I'll take them. I suck at sparring...) so it's not too bad, but I just don't have the endurance for even a short round. I'll get there, but it's frustrating for now. In my head I know what I need to do, but my body is like "ack, stop I'm too fat for this" lol.

Please don't give up on sparring. It's hard, in fact to me it's about the hardest thing I have ever done exercise-wise. But it WILL get easier if you stick with it. Try to relax and breathe which will go a long way towards not gassing too early. I think sparring is invaluable in figuring out what works when and what doesn't. It's learning to apply all those other things that you learn.

 

[serietah]

We've only been open 3 months but we had another master helping out during the first month. He had to go back to Korea to his own school though :-( I'm actually the highest ranking student (by about 15 minutes lol). We had a guest master come to our first belt testing but that's it. My master thinks it's possible I could earn my black belt in 2 years but I know he won't let me if I'm not ready. I train 6 days a week now since we started Saturday classes a couple weeks ago, so I'll take any chance to get ahead that I can.

We're still very small so we are ok with just one master and then me to help. For now! We've got a couple big things coming this summer to hopefully get some more students in. I'm excited to be a part of the school as it grows.

And as for sparring, we constantly repeat "never give up" so I won't! I'll get better with time I'm sure. But poomsae will always be my true love haha

 

[serietah]

Last night Mom and I both got our green tips for yellow belt one step sparring, and today we actually got our black tips for the entire curriculum. I'm a bit of an overachiever so I learned the Korean terms for this belt like a month ago haha. I'd helped Mom learn them too and we surprised our master by getting them all correct. It was awesome! Now we are technically ready to test for our green stripe belts, though we have 4 weeks til the next test day.

Today was also the schools second belt test day, but only 3 white belts were ready. They are kids I've been helping teach for the past month or so so it was awesome to help with their test. They did great, really made me proud.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Congrats!

 

[serietah]

Tomorrow I test for my green stripe belt! I am ready, not really nervous (maybe a little since we have to spar this time), just excited. We recently had a new student join from another school and he started at green belt so I've been working hard so I can catch up. It'll be tough but I think I can do it. I'll need to be ready to test for green belt at the end of July...fingers crossed. First hurdle is tomorrow's test though.

 

[Flatfish]

I have a feeling with the enthusiasm you display here, you'll be just fine. Let us know how it went.

 

[serietah]

Passed! I underestimated myself in board breaking (side kick) and moved the board down about an inch, then kicked about an inch too high. Arrrgh!!! But I nailed it the second try. I think I did well in sparring, and I am confident my form was good. I'll see about posting some video once it's edited for length.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

You should never doubt yourself, it always (mostly) ends up backfiring
Congrats on passing! You seem to be flying through the ranks!

 

[Flatfish]

Congratulations!

 

[Buka]

Congrats!

 

[serietah]

Here's the video my overachiever mom made of our belt testing lol. The beginning is a slide show of photos my uncle took during the test. My test starts at 12:00 minutes. During my form I was unusually nervous but I am happy with how I did..EXCEPT for chambering before each punch. I had just been working on correcting to a higher chamber and I completely forgot during the test. But I'm a perfectionist when it comes to tkd so I'm working on small detailed stuff that normally we wouldn't be focusing on at this level (like keeping my shoulders relaxed and down, breathing with each chamber, etc).

I'm the one with "instructor" on my dobok. For those of you who have watched my yellow belt test video, I hope you can see some improvement in my technique since then My goal is to fly through green stripe and test for green belt on July 29. It's possible, as I've learned the first 10 steps of taegeuk ee jang already and only have 8 more to go, then work on "perfecting" it, and learning the new one step sparring. I'm confident I can make it, and my sabumnim said he wants me to achieve that goal too so we'll be working extra hard.

Anyway, thanks for all the support as usual and I hope some of you can take a few minutes to watch my part of the video (the whole thing is almost 30 minutes long, so feel free to skip ahead...And feel equally free to skip the board breaking part at the very end as I failed miserably the first time lol) and feedback is always welcome.