Nick wrapped up his first session of taekwondo with a promotion (white belt with one stripe – even though he doesn’t have a belt yet) and the chance to finally get to break some boards. A friend told me that most dojos (we are just at the Y) don’t let students break boards until they are black belts, but not this one. And Nick was stoked.
The class started off the night practicing on these pre-broken boards. Nick had two and handled it with no trouble.
Then they moved on to the real thing. Kids could choose from different sizes. Nick took the second smallest (there were two larger ones) and assumed the position.
With one swift ke-hop the board was busted in two and the grin on my boy’s face was irreplaceable.
Unfortunately they were only able to break one board because they had to save some for the older kids who were coming in later. Nick was kind of sad as he really wanted to try his hand as something a little more difficult. And he got the chance. The instructor let all the kids attempt to break a board using a front punch (a very difficult task for little people).
Nick and the rest of the kiddos gave it their best shot but were unable to complete the task. Instead, they all sat around rubbing their knuckles and comparing their red spots.
Then the kids were recognized for their hard work this session. Nick earned his black stripe.
And a badge for his hard work. The instructor told him his kicks were much improved from the first day of class and that he was impressed with the work Nick put in to make them better.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t give Nick the patch because we never bought a uniform. However, if I do buy one (I wanted to make sure he was actually going to do it more than one time before I spent the $45) Nick will get the patch right away and not have to earn it again. Of course Nick came to me right after class to tell me he wanted to do the summer session even though just last week he said he wanted to be able to play and didn’t want to do taekwondo until the fall. We are still on the fence about what we will actually do.
1 comment:
You should enroll him. I did it for a long time (was working on my black belt). It's good for boys. It will give him self confidence. And I'm glad they're letting him break boards. We broke boards, although I hated it. Wait until it cuts him.
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