New grade; old belt

Today was a good day. In as much as I ever feel proud, I really feel it today.

The morning was karate training - a very intense and hard session; definitely feeling "the ecstasy of sweat". At the end of the lesson Kancho was speaking to the class, and said how good it was to have me over, and gave a potted history of my training - as a boy and again the last few years, managing, as he said, to get myself "back up to speed". He then asked me what was my current grade. When I said shodan (first black belt) he said "I'll bring you up to sandan” (third dan).

Really not what I had expected from the morning. I'm guessing that might be at least part of why we went through quite so many things, and why at one point during kata he had half the class - and himself - facing the other way, which was towards me; I figure he wanted to get a good look at my performance of that kata.

So...

The sweat feels the same.

The mistakes are the same.

The never-ending search for improvement and development is the same.

But it feels really really good to have this external validation of my effort and progress. I'm pretty stoked.

Oh, and the belt is the same too. ;) That's the point of the black belt: all dan grades look the same (in that respect), distinguished by their skill, not by the thing round their waist. That's just one more thing completely missed by the folks in McDojos - who put increasing numbers of stripes on their belts to display what dan rank they have.

Blackr; Flickr.