Quote:
Marc Abrams wrote:
The more advanced one becomes, the less "roughness" should be applied when throwing. I cannot think of a reasonable explanation as to why roughness should be "introduced" as you get more advanced.
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I'm in agreement fully with this, but to recount a recent experience. I was encouraging one of the kids I train to come to more advanced classes. Geez, she's probably better described as a young adult now, wow, time flies, but I digress. She came a few times but stopped coming to the "adult advanced" class. She was eminently qualified, perfectly capable of keeping up, but she stopped coming. I talked with her privately later and she told me she was afraid of the harder, rougher throws. That surprised me as I didn't really see them that way. But... I started to realize she had been in kids or beginning classes for most of her training. And while she had trained in more advanced throws, it was the overall intensity level of the training that was scaring her. Or maybe more accurately, it wasn't that anything was more rough or hard, but that it was more intimidating and faster paced than she was used to. Comfort levels. So it was her fear more than anything. She was in her comfort zone working with the kids and teenagers and was intimidated about having to step up the practice into a higher level of intensity, speed and power.
So now I'm trying to push the intensity a bit with her in my classes with her to get her feeling more comfortable taking the ukemi. She has the ability to take a faster, more "robust" ukemi from a bigger throw. She just needs the practice and confidence in herself to relax into it. Most of us have had the experience of getting hurt doing a big fall not because of the roughness of the fall, but because of us being tentative or unsure of our ukemi. That's sometimes the bigger hurdle.
Just fwiw.
And to the OP... Most sensei ask you to test because they think you're perfectly able to take the test. And most would consider it a responsibility of a good sensei to push the students when they need a little push.
but I ain't there and can't know what's really going on. So I could be posting like one of our local profuse posters and whistling out my hind quarters hoping I'm sounding good. Lord knows I don't want to sound like him, so best of luck and I hope you can work it out.