28 Days Before the Test - So Much to Do, So Little Time

When I signed in to my blog and looked at my countdown clock, I did a double take.

28 days.

Back in October when my test date was just getting set, I was thinking, "Oh, five months. That's so far away. I have plenty of time!"

Today is February 11th.

.......

Just where did all that time go?

Everything is starting to come together as it should be. I've been reminding myself that there's always going to be things that I need to work on or that I'm not happy with. My perfectionist side has been rearing up the past few months, but I think I'm doing better at pushing it aside and not putting myself down for every single thing that I do wrong.

At this point, I'm concentrating on upping my stamina and fine tuning my forms, basics, and kicks at home. Sparring and self defense are two areas that are hard to work on without a partner, and I have expressed to my instructors that I want to get more comfortable with both so that they become more reactionary. At this point, I'm still thinking and analyzing too much instead of just reacting.

We focused on sparring at Tuesday night's class and Mr. G announced that we're going to be working on both sparring and self defense almost exclusively in class until my test.

If there is one area on my test that I'm the most apprehensive of, it's freezing up and going "deer in the headlights" when I'm asked a question. The combination of being afraid to say the wrong thing and wanting  to have the answer fully answered in my head is not going to cut it. The black belts start thinking of what questions (mostly opinion questions based on previous training, but also some technique "why's?" and philosophical questions) weeks and months before the test, so my instructors have been working with me on answering impromptu questions more quickly and having me just start talking the answer out instead of standing there looking like I don't know when I'm actually just deep in thought.

Four more weeks. *Takes a deep breath* Okay.