A couple of weeks ago, I got a message from a friend that I haven’t seen for almost two years now. She used to train at the dojo when I was in middle school, but she quit a few years ago. She was reaching out to me to see if I could help her out […]

Over the weekend, the dojo hosted a kata tournament. I was one of the judges for the tournament, and it was my first time judging with score cards instead of flags. Judging with flags is a lot easier for me, so the idea of using a score card made me nervous. However, it actually went […]

My school year started almost two months ago, and in some of my classes, I have free time during the class period. Sometimes I try to finish my homework during that time so that I don’t have to do it at home, but most of the time, I use my free time to read my […]

As I approach the end of the first month of my test, I am feeling much more comfortable with my daily numbers than I did when I first started. It has still been an incredibly difficult month, because even though I was already working out before the start of this test, it was not anywhere […]

This past week, I have been more focused on getting my pushup and situp numbers in. Very quickly into the test, I fell behind on my pushup and situp numbers, so I have been working towards getting them back up. Assuming that I stay on track with what I am doing now, I should be […]

After finishing my second week of this test, I feel a little better about how I am doing on this test than I was last week. The first week was hard with trying to find the balance between school, teaching classes, regular karate classes, homework, and also getting in all of my numbers. I think […]

A week ago, I started my first day of my year-long black belt test. I don’t think it has fully sunk in yet that I am actually doing this. I started karate over eight years ago, and this has been my goal ever since I started, so actually beginning this test is surreal. There were […]