TurboNurse

So I passed my testing although it could have gone much better.

I made silly mistakes that I don't normally make in my patterns.  I messed up on the second and fourth patterns.  Little mistakes but still.  They're not mistakes that I make.  It's amazing at how being sick messes with your concentration.

I went in with that foggy head feeling which is never good.  My saving grace is that at that point, I thought I was starting to clear up.  I wasn't coughing and my nose had stopped running for a bit.

We started with patterns.  They weren't my best, as stated above.  I feel alirght about them though.  As we were starting our patterns Mike started to give me a hard time about something and then Mr T (Michael) jumped in on it.  It was a good time.  It gave me an idea for a new comeback.  haha!

Next up were our kicks.  This is where I was really starting to know that I wasn't at my best.  I was giving it all I had to make them look good.  Afterward I was talking to my husband and he said it looked like I was just hopping instead of jumping.  While I was doing the kicks it felt to me like I should be jumping.  I had a couple of good 180 back kicks in there.  The rest were just meh.   They didn't feel as good and smooth as they typically did for me.  I know I'm capable of much better.

After this we broke out into several different areas.  First up was splits for me.  I ended up being right where I thought I would be.  I had made a goal at my last testing to get to 180 degrees on the machine.  I made it to 170 which is actually not as far as I had gone on my last test.  Needless to say, I'm still working on that goal.  Last testing I was at 172.5-ish.

Required knowledge was next.  No worries here.

Last up out of this part of testing was breaking.  I really enjoy breaking.  A lot.  My breaks were a jump turn kick and an outward knife hand.  This was the only area I felt confident in yesterday.  I was able to perform both breaks on the first try.  My jumping turn kick was either high or low.  I'm not sure because I didn't look to see how the boards landed when I broke them.  I'm wondering if I went a little high from where I measured.  The outward knife hand went really well.  That one I broke straight down the middle and across the knot in the board.

We all regrouped one last time to do our pushups, situps, and squats.  I was nervous about this one because of the pushups.  I wasn't worried about getting them all in, what I was worried about was going down far enough.  I feel like I'm getting better and stronger at them but still have some room to improve.  One thing I can say is that I'm thankful for all of the pushups I've been doing while at work.  They felt easier this time around.  I had to do 35 of each in 2 minutes.  It was close on the pushups because I was trying my hardest to go down as far as I could.  I heard the 30 second buzzer go off and just did 5 real quick to make sure I got them in.  They were 5 really crappy ones but I got it done.

I surprised myself on situps.  At the last testing I was required to do 30 and I remember just barely making it over that in 2 minutes.  This time I did 44!!  My goal for next testing will be to do 50+ in two minutes.

Squats went OK.  Apparently I had a real odd form going on them.  Not surprising since I wasn't feeling well.  I don't even know what I was doing but I remember people around me telling me to not bend my back.  I'm wondering if I was arching it or something.

All in all I did pass.  I could have done better if I weren't sick so I'm not fully satisfied with this round of testing.  The good part of it is that I gave myself a lot of room to improve for when I go for my blue belt so I will have to excuse to show progress.

Now this cold can go away any time.