I and my fellow karate students had our Nidan – our 2nd degree black belt – grading this past weekend. It was an emotional roller-coaster ride that was filled with all manner of unexpected twists and turns. In the end though, I passed the grading, and I feel… exactly the same.
And that’s a good thing.
See, in the days leading up to our Nidan grading, as my stress levels rose and I began to get inside my own head, I reflected on the road I and my friends travelled to reach that point. We had been preparing for this grading in earnest since February of this year. Our original grading date was May 3… and then COVID hit. When the pandemic struck, our classes as we knew it ended. Yes, they moved online, but there’s not a martial artist in the world who would argue that digital training holds a candle to the real deal.
So it fell to each of us individually to make a choice: how would we adapt our training in this new world?
For me, I resolved to practice my katas and techniques each and every week, and I stuck to that throughout the entire pandemic. There wasn’t a single week, including the ones where I was on vacation, where I didn’t practice my katas. My goal was to keep them as sharp as when we were training in-person. I also adapted my fitness regime, running 5km three days a week and adding yoga and strength training in between.
I’m not saying this to brag, but to say that, for me, the true test of readiness for Nidan was this: when nobody is watching, how do you behave? What choices do you make?
I’ll be honest, I thought I’d cheat, thought I’d go soft. But every time I was tempted to, something inside of me felt empty; a little voice would say “Come on, you’re better than that. You made a commitment when you accepted this belt. And now you want to go back on that?”
And I didn’t. I stayed with it, and so did many of my friends. When it was announced that we would be grading this fall, we received relatively little notice… but it was ok because we’d been ready the whole time. As the saying goes, if you stay ready, you don’t gotta get ready.
And so, in my eyes, we passed the test. For me, the grading was simply a chance to show our sensei that we’d been keeping the spirit of his teachings alive this entire time. These were choices we made for ourselves, based on a set of values that were ingrained in us in no small part through him.
Don’t get me wrong, the grading itself was hard, harder than I thought a socially-distanced grading during a pandemic could be. There was no physical sparring, but there was mental sparring in the form of theory and philosophy-based questions, and trust me: that was harder than getting into a ring and throwing a few strikes. We even broke some boards, which is not something that is emphasized in my dojo. But there was no better way to test the quality of your technique in a socially-distanced setting… plus, it was wicked fun.
But I digress.
The point is that the grading was hard, but keeping up our training and motivation levels during the months leading up to it was harder. And the fact that we did is what made it so rewarding.
Wrapping it Up
I believe that, when it comes to getting your black belt, regardless of level but especially any rank beyond first degree, the value that rank holds depends on the journey you took to get there. Mine was filled with highs and lows, ups and downs, and all manner of tests of personal motivation along the way.
The Nidan rank itself is only physically represented by a certificate, nothing more than a piece of paper; but that little piece of paper is a memento of the sweat, blood and tears that stain the path we all took to get there… and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
