One Month Left

I’m just about one month away from my black belt test!! I genuinely can’t believe how far I’ve come on this journey. I hit my one year mark a few days ago, which was absolutely surreal. When you first start the test, 13 months sounds like a lot, but you don’t realize just how long it is until you are in the thick of it. Now that I’m only a month away, I have most of my numbers completed, with only meditation and blog posts left to finish (and I’ll only have two more posts left after this one). I’m not super surprised that meditation has taken me this long because that has been a difficult one since the beginning. However, now that I’m done with almost everything, I don’t have to spend much of my time completing all of the small requirements, and I can spend my time focusing on the really important things. Nowadays I work a lot more on all of my katas. During the test, I spent so much of my time doing Chinto Kata and getting 1,000 katas completed, that I didn’t have the opportunity to spend much time on my other katas. So now I’m focusing on the katas that I need to perfect on my test day. I also have been doing a lot of conditioning with my dad. We do sprints across the mat, nonstop kicks on the heavy bags, and light sparring. I get no break between any of the rounds so that I can get my cardio up. It’s not easy but I know that it’s very important for me to do so that I can be in the best shape possible come October 3rd. 

My current Challenge progress as of September 9, 2026.