Exeter Practical Martial Arts™ has truly come of age, with the first Adult Grading being held on the weekend just gone.
Students had already been put through 4 gruelling recap lessons with physical self-defence techniques and mental self-protection concepts being thrown at them for a total of 6 hours.
On the day they proved themselves to be more than ready for anything I could throw at them. Considering that 40% had never done any martial arts and 100% had never done any self-protection, the effort and knowledge displayed would have put many white belt gradings to shame. Only this wasn’t a white belt grading, they were grading to be able to gain their white belts and start learning the martial art of Practical Taekwondo™.
Students were expected to demosntrate knowledge of concepts such as the traffic light system, OODA Loop, distancing, and why we use ‘No’ and ‘Back’. On top of this they did pad work, forcing them to dig deep and keep going, no matter how much they wanted to stop.
Now all that remains to be done is to decide on who gets the grading award. The hardest decision of all.