& Trophies

And I'm back from the black belt test. Not exactly the portrait of the ideal martial artist, but I passed, which is what's important for the moment. Got some nice trophies; at least, they should be nice. My dad video-taped part of it, and took still pictures for other parts. Unfortunately, the digital camera he was using for the still shots doesn't really take pictures at a precise time (you can't expect it to take a picture within like 1/10 of a second after you press the button), so he wasn't able to get too many good still pictures; the slow shutter speed of the camera made for some sweet motion blur shots, though. I'm posting the four best still pics right now; none of them are of me doing anything (although you can see me holding boards in a couple of them):


Awesome motion blur (the best of the 42 pics, in this regard). This is a four-corner break, where you do four separate attacks in quick, fluid succession, and usually with less boards than you'd do with each attack individually; this is a front snap kick with one board. I'm the one holding the board she's kicking.


Another person's four-corner break; side kick with one board. Again, I'm the one holding the board.


And another. Apparently this shot is the leg returning to the floor after breaking two boards with a side kick. By this point I was taking a break from holding, between the twice I got kicked in the fingers by one woman, and the fact that I'd just done my four-corner break and power breaks (several individual attacks with lots of boards).


Three board power break with a middle knife hand strike. Both holders have pretty pathetic looks on their faces :P

I don't yet know how the video turned out; it looks like it's gonna take a fair bit of work to extract video from this thing with it's A/V out and encode it, and I don't really have the time to spend until like next weekend. But if it turned out well, there are three clips I want to post online: me breaking three boards with a punch, the master instructor (the 7th degree I mentioned last post) breaking seven boards with a back kick (awesome), and another instructor (the one who teaches at my school, 4th degree) breaking four bricks with a side kick (pretty cool looking).