Today was a wonderful day of training. I managed to work through my strength training program without too many issues. I did however limit my cardio training for the day, but other then that I would call training today a total success.

We managed to hit the gym early in the morning so soon after returning home we went to sleep for the day and when we woke up at 5:00ish every muscle in my body was in repair mode from the AM workout. The plan for tonight was to attend class at the south branch however one of our friends was in town and we decided to spend time with them instead since this was the only real opportunity we can spend with them without tossing our scedual off too far.

At the moment it is raining a bit so I am waiting for it to stop before I start working on my poomse practice. At the very least I want to knock out all of my poomse two times each. I also need to start working on Palgwe Pal Jang, the last of the color belt poomse. Normally I start working on my new poomse as soon as I recieve the correct rank however between working with Jennifer on her forms and other issues I really have not given Pal Jang much time and effort at this point. I am hopeful to learn it this week so when I start attending black belt class I will not feel like such a failure for not being properly prepared. This week will not be a easy week for many of my classmates.

This is the last week of the session and infact the last week of our Taekwondo year at many of our branches. A number of my classmates are hopeful that they are prepared for thier next promotional test and this week will be extremely important for last minute preparations. I was thinking about attending class with Jennifer this week, but after realizing what is going on I think I will be more useful to my own classmates so I will attend classes at my regular branch. I am extremely happy that our assistant instructer will be on the black belt pretest for this session as well. She will be pretesting for her 3rd dan which is a extremely high honor in many respects.

They say 1 of 100 people statistically make it from white belt to black belt. When I first saw the number I thought it was a bit high, however when I think back on it from everywhere I trained I can think of more people who dropped out of programs then actually recieved thier black belts. For those who make it to black belt the road is even harder. When you talk to many people who take a traditional martial art you will find that the goal of many is to just get "thier black belt" and they work hard for the average 3-5 years it takes to achieve that goal. After they achieve that goal instead of raising the bar they decide to stop taking classes and for the next 30 years of thier lives they talk about how they are a black belt in such and such style. At the next test thier may be around 20 people testing for thier first black belt at Kims Academy, however if thier are more then 5 people testing for 3rd dan or higher I would be amazed.

At the moment my goal is to earn my danbo, or my "basic black belt" I know that with recent events I am more behind then I hoped to be, but the goal itself is still achievible. My long term goal however is to earn my Master Rank in TKD within the next 11 years. Some people may think the goal is too long and I need to focus more on a year or two but for me it is perfect. A important aspect of goal setting that many people forget is writing out a blue print for achieving that goal. For me the blue print is fairly simple, work hard and do what needs to be done to earn the other ranks from now until then and in the mean time helping anyone put in my path to help along the way. (There really is a little more to this, but I think I will save that for another post.)

In any event I think I have bored those who read this enough for one post. I wish you all well and I will post my weeks training on the calander page and I will also post my blue print for earning my black belt this April sometime this week.