My First Brown Grading!

I am now a Brown Sash!! Absolutely awesome. I think it was well taking the year out between my purple and this as now I at last feel like I know my stuff properly...and hopefully it showed in my grading! Well I'm told it did so that's a good thing. So yeh - the event kicked off as ever starting from the lower grades working towards the higher grades. In all fairness I have to say that the quality of people at each grading definitely seems to have gone up since last time I remember - and I'm not an instructor - I don't have to say that! Actually that's balls - they tell us if it was bad!

So Tim decided that as part of our grading we should get to spar the others as they are progressing through their gradings. Its so much fun watching these videos back afterwards...and kicking yourself for where you screwed up. My first sparring was against Max (going for his Orange Sash). My lack of recent practice showed with me leaving my guard far too low for almost the entirity of the grading. A very worrying habit! This was punches, no kicking.

Pete's and my second challenge was a tag-team on Andy who was going for his purple. Poor bugger...now we had warmed up and were a bit more psyched for it! It made for a more acrobatic and fun match all in all, especially as kicking was now allowed!

This was a whole lot of fun, though I did feel guilty about the way Andy's helpmet kept managing to get tangled up in his hair! It must of hurt, but probably not as much as the punch after the double flying front kick hehe!

So following a wee bit of sparring it was time to do our shizzle! First we did our Thunder and Lightening Fist Set. Then Tim made us work through Shaolin Chang Chaun (Longfist), followed by Tong Long Fung Yang, then finally Sern Yen Kuen - the one we were supposed to be grading on!! After that we were thoroughly knackered and still had to do the advanced handstrike combinations. To be honest by this stage I was finding it hard to concentrate - I think I could have done with a more sugar-filled breakfast. But then Sijo hadn't been there at the start, so he'd walked in only partway through our gradings and wanted to see Sern Yen Kuen and the Thunder and Lightening Fist Set again! Woah...then I knew what knackered was. It was wicked to finally hear that we had got our grade though - especially after the year of work that went into it. I am one very proud Brown Sash! The rest of the videos are up at www.soton.ac.uk/~kungfu. Hung Leng!