November 2 through 6 - Week in Review

The goal of the week was to prepare everyone for the upcoming testing on Saturday November 7, 2009. We had eight members testing and everyone was excited.

A turn of events took place when the first tester that was preparing to begin his evaluation.  The testing material remained the same but instead of one feeder, there were four!  This came as a great surprise as our first tester took the floor and initiated his performance.  For the weapons evaluation session, each of our participants had to execute the eight angles of attack against a mirrored attack then follow up using the Jeet Kune Do concept of ABCs (Attack By Combination). The empty hands evaluation portion involved Muay Thai techniques according to their current skill challenge and finally ended with a cardiovascular round with stress induction.  When the last of the seven completed their evaluations, we had a small intermission to enable everyone to catch their breath.  During the intermission, the conversations, praises and congratulatory comments filled our humble school with confidence and strength.

As everyone gathered back onto the mat to close out of testing, each tester was called up to receive their new rank. Achievements such as this is rare to witness.  The challenges placed in front of them were not of mechanical movements, but with true dynamics consisting of the weapon, empty hand application and stressed induced environment with multiple opponents.  Although there were set techniques to utilize, the freedom to move around many feeders only created not only an atmosphere of confidence, but the sense that the skill was truly theirs.  It was an immensely challenging test, but everyone did an excellent job and that they found more within themselves than what was realized.

Bravo to our test takers!

Level 2 Achievements:  Alex Ignacio, Ron Gapuz, DJ Paet, Jason Watson, Nick Webb
Level 3 Achievements:  Lynne Dalina, Mary Justis
Level 5 (Intermediate) Achievement:   Tony Ignacio