Introduction + Advice for Grading

[nevets2001uk]

Hi all,

My name's Steve and I've just found this forum after a fair amount of hunting on the web! I started kickboxing a couple of months ago and am enjoying it a lot. Been going at least 2 times a week and have learnt most of the basic moves without too much trouble.

I'm looking to take my first grading on the 7th August and have been advised by my instructor to try for the red belt. We had a run through of the required criteria and I feel confident in most of it, although I need to work on my co-ordination for some of combination moves!

I've got a few weeks to prepare for the grading and was wondering if anyone had some advice for good practice techniques and ideas on ways I should prepare?

On another note I was hoping for some advice for a personal project I may be undertaking. I and 2 friends who started kickboxing alongside me have noticed a lack of good kickboxing specific websites on the Internet (unless we’ve just not looked hard enough). We were thinking of making our own site to provide tips and advice along with videos and pictures of how the moves should be performed, an online reference for all things kickboxing really. This is partly to help reinforce some of the moves and stuff in our own minds. I was wondering though if anyone here may have ideas for things to include in such a website? What would you like to see that hasn’t been covered much etc?

Cheers,

Steve

[Python]

Kickboxing has rank??

Somebody fill me in here, please? Kickboxing is a sport, not an art. I know people in the past had ranked in Kickboxing, but I never understood why, and didn't bother to question it. But are there really that many people teaching kickboxing as it is a martial art?? Have I been that clueless??

Steve, I am not trying to knock your website plans, infact it is probably a good idea. But, is 2 months really enough time to gain the knowledge necessary to have a website that gives tips and techniques? Especially on an area you only really just begun? OH, btw, there are many kickboxing websites out there, just gotta search....but i don't really know how many discuss technique, so it may be a good thing. But my first thought is showing the techniques, even in sequence, would be no better than seeing them in a book. So, would you put animation into it, or would it be video clips?

Just my thoughts, bro

Peace.

[nevets2001uk]

Python, thanks for your reply.

You make a perfectly good point about my lack of experience. Our aim is to initially display beginner advice and detail the basic moves we have been taught. We have covered some of the general punches and kicks many times and I feel confident we can demonstrate them correctly. As we learn more moves and get a better understanding of kickboxing we would look to extend and update the information. Also we hope that as more people visit the site who have higher experience they can also share their advice on forums and with guest articles.

We do intend to include video clips of the moves being performed as we also feel pictures can leave a lot of blanks when trying to understand a complex sequence. We would also use pictures to better illustrate specific points along the path to completing the move (i.e. feet positioning and where the leg should be bent etc).

To try to addresss your first point, I can say that where I am learning kickboxing it is primarily being considered a sport. The grading system is used as a measure of your knowledge and experience. To Grade at Red Belt I'm expected to show that I understand and can perform a certain number of moves and a certain level of fitness etc.

Cheers,

Steve

[Harry]

Somebody fill me in here, please? Kickboxing is a sport, not an art. I know people in the past had ranked in Kickboxing, but I never understood why, and didn't bother to question it. But are there really that many people teaching kickboxing as it is a martial art?? Have I been that clueless??

My place does belts, I personally think it helps.
Instead of thinking, "Ok, I can roundhouse at knee height, I'm never going to be able to kick at head height"

The belts break it down into chunks, you have smaller goals to acheive, and it becomes more manageable.

Its like revising for an exam, if you sat down and said "Ok, im going to revise all of 1900-1917 of Russia's history", you'd probably just give up.
But if you said "Ok, I'll revise the bolshevik revolution, and then" e.t.c., you break it down into more manageable chunks.

This is what I feel the belt system does, whilst you are still striving to one day kick that high and hard, you have goal intervals to keep you steady and to boost your confidence in your skills.

That didn't make much sense I know, It sounded better in my mind.

I'm not saying that you can't get good without belts, I just think it helps alot of people on their way to being good.

My name's Steve and I've just found this forum after a fair amount of hunting on the web! I started kickboxing a couple of months ago and am enjoying it a lot. Been going at least 2 times a week and have learnt most of the basic moves without too much trouble.

I'm looking to take my first grading on the 7th August and have been advised by my instructor to try for the red belt. We had a run through of the required criteria and I feel confident in most of it, although I need to work on my co-ordination for some of combination moves!

Im a whitebelt at the moment,I've been kickboxing for 3 months and a half.
Are you sure you should be taking red belt first?

(Im assuming your grading system is similar to ours, white, red, yellow, green, orange, blue, purple, brown, black)

I've got a few weeks to prepare for the grading and was wondering if anyone had some advice for good practice techniques and ideas on ways I should prepare?

A few tips would be just to reinforce your balance, when your making cups of tea and waiting for the kettle to boil, just practice holding kicks and bringing them back, concentrate on technique for now though, power can come later.

If red is your second belt, It might be an idea taking the white belt, my white belt was very simple stuff.

Roundhouse off back leg
Frontkick off back and front let
Cross
Jab
Uppercut off back arm.

Then the combo's were

Jab, cross roundhouse
Jab, cross front kick off back leg, front kick off front leg.

The grading was great though, we got a 4 hours course before we graded where they taught us new techniques, things like fake low kicks into jumping roundhouses, spinning hook kicks, spinning backfists e.t.c.

Either way, Good luck

[nevets2001uk]

Thanks for the advice Harry.

All sounds very reasonable to me. Your grading system sounds similar to ours, although I haven't heard of the green belt in our route. To be honest I was a little surprised when we were told we could go for the red belt but our instructor has explained that he's pretty confident we have the skills already.

The way our grading seems to work on the day is that we will have to demonstrate all the white belt stuff before moving onto the red belt techniques so if we fail miserably at the red stuff he can still award us the white belt if we've covered that correctly. We only have the chance to grade about every 3 months anyway so our instructor suggests we try for the higher belt.

I'm practicing a lot at the moment as it's less than two weeks away now! It's mostly the combinations that I'm a bit flaky on. Got to tidy those up a bit and I've been told I should be alright.

Cheers

Steve

[Harry]

The way our grading seems to work on the day is that we will have to demonstrate all the white belt stuff before moving onto the red belt techniques so if we fail miserably at the red stuff he can still award us the white belt if we've covered that correctly. We only have the chance to grade about every 3 months anyway so our instructor suggests we try for the higher belt.

Thats cool, well there is no way you can fail the white belt, so it looks like a pretty good deal.

Good Luck and let us know how it goes.