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 I really enjoyed this years Tiger Challenge. Going into it I was nervous. I had never judged before and to be frank I had never judged anything performance related either ever. I was nervous and started to second guess my own abilities as a brand new black belt. Do I know enough to be competent to judge? That was the main question I kept asking myself. Eventually I asked some other judges who had plenty of experience and they all gave me the same answer. Trust your head judge and yourself. It was reassuring to hear the same advice from multiple people. I also did my bed to mentally disconnect from “knowing” the form and tried to watch each student as if I had never seen the form before. That helped a lot as I could focus more on what I should be expecting from these student at their level, rather than viewing it as someone who knows what the form should be.  Overall I really enjoyed the judging. And the support we had this year was really good and I think this was one of the ...

It has taken me a lot of time to figure out how I wanted to write this blog. I know my effort and accountability so far this year has been atrochise in my opinion. I'm not setting the example I should be as a martial artist, let alone a black belt who has committed to following the code of ethics and has been in a mastery program for 3 years continuously. It is embarrassing honestly. I have completed on of the most important goals in my life. So why am I struggling to take things further now? I believe I needed to recover. Simply to just rest after all the strain and effort I put on my mind and body. Now is this a pretty lame excuse for my "progress" this year so far? For someone reading this who is not an athlete, martial artist, or accomploished one of their goals. No, because rest is needed. But to someone who has been through and accomplished things, yes this is a pretty boring reason since it represents mediocrity as I could have been progressing better by simply cha...