Tips on Karate Gradings. Part 1, Preparation.

Some advice you might find useful when approaching a karate grading exam.

I know this is going to be different between styles and organisations, but perhaps there is some useful common ground.

I base this upon my own experiences of gradings as both a student coming up through the ranks and an examiner.

There is the physical side of it and the psychological side; getting both of those right improves your chances of success.

Physical.

You have to set a goal and a proper timeline and work realistically with both of them. Part of that is geared towards being in peak condition, but you need to be honest with yourself about how much time you have to invest.

A few points:

·       Priority should be given to attending classes and courses that give you both maximum training opportunities and maximum feedback potential. Particularly, look out for courses with the people who are liable to be your examiners, you need to get a realistic view on what it is they are actually looking for.

·       Improvement is expected. An example; if you did kata ‘A’ for your previous grading and then you are expected to perform it again for the current grading, you’d better make sure that it is not ‘the same’ kata; as you are supposed to have stepped up to the next level. The quality should not remain static.

·       Physical conditioning is important. You need to be fit. If you are blowing hard five minutes into the grading exam, you are going to really struggle. Aerobic training can be good for your overall fitness, but a large part of what you are liable to do in the grading can be anaerobic (high intensity bursts), train for that as well.

A word about physical limitations.

We are not all the same; it would be wrong for examiners to impose unrealistic physical targets in a totally uniform manner.

A typical example would be someone in their middle years, coming to karate later in life being confronted with having to perform high kicks. For some people, outside of surgery, this is not going to happen. But, rather than just miss out on that part or make desperate attempts to reach a target that is just a physical impossibility (a demoralising experience for most people) I would advise the student to hold on to the integrity of the form and the basic mechanics of the kick, but keep it at a manageable level where structure is not compromised.

Psychological.

Linked to the above; you get a huge boost from feeling that you have really done the physical groundwork, but still sometimes students will say, “I’m just not ready”. The truth is that nobody is ever truly ‘ready’, it’s a sliding scale and ‘I’m not ready’ is often used as a get-out clause and the projected grading target date gets pushed forever back. Not a great approach. You have to define in your mind what ‘ready’ really means. If you hold on to that clause for too long you are actually sabotaging your own project and blunting any psychological edge you may have gained.

Motivation.

There are many ways of boosting motivation. One I found useful was to seek inspiration from my peers. If you are lucky enough to be part of a group of people preparing for the same grading, that can be a huge source of inspiration. In the spirit of positive competitiveness, you can use each other as a yardstick for motivation. For example; when I was working my way up the kyu grades, if I was aware that one of my contemporaries was training twice a week, I would train three times a week.

Pre-testing testing.

If your Sensei is preparing you well, it is highly likely they will introduce some manageable stress situations to help you prepare. These can vary, anything from mock-gradings to scrambling your syllabus order, getting you to do things in reverse (mirror) or pushing your limits through intense sparring.

Feedback and adjustments.

Feedback opportunities are invaluable and can be introduced in many ways; verbal feedback, comparative feedback, visual feedback (try filming your performances). Use the feedback as a direct call to action, don’t just sit on it, if there’s something not going right, set about changing it.

Know your stuff.

It gives you a massive psychological boost when you are confident that you know your stuff. The reverse of that is that any doubts you have about knowing the content of your syllabus will drain away your confidence.

Primarily, know the sequences. If you are going to be struggling to remember the order, or even the names of what you are doing, then you really shouldn’t be grading. Knowing that stuff is an early part of the preparation process, not a late one.

Wildcards.

Now, this hardly ever happens and I don’t want to worry anyone but what I am going to call ‘wildcard events’ can really throw you. It’s worth knowing this now, as part of the preparation process.

There are minor wildcards, which are more likely to happen than major wildcards. A minor wildcard event is when the order of what you are expected to do is adjusted, changed or bits are left out (for whatever reason), it’s not a huge issue as long as you keep your ears open, brain switched on and remain cool.

An example of a major wildcard event (I have only seen once) was when an examiner asked two of the candidates to perform their paired kata back to front (i.e. what’s normally done right side, done on the left side). To this day I have to wonder about the examiner’s decision to do that… overt confidence in the students? Or, just being cruel?

The antidotes/vaccines for wildcards are, good preparation, know your stuff and don’t make assumptions.

A word to instructors.

This one does happen:

Instructors, think hard before you put your students into a grading. If they are just not ready don’t put them in as some kind of ‘Hail Mary’ pass¹, a wild punt with the hope that magically things will just fall into place. It’s not fair on the student and it’s not fair on the examiner. I wonder how many examiners feel resentful that they have been forced into the position of being the bad guy for failing a student for their grading? This is the club instructor ducking their responsibility and dumping it into the lap of the examiner.

In Part Two I will look at the grading itself.

1. ‘Hail Mary’ American football term, for a long pass made in desperation (chuck it and pray). Not to be confused with a ‘hospital pass’ in rugby, which is usually a desperate pass made to someone who is probably stationary and already heavily marked and thus takes on the full force of incoming tackles.