Non-stop Taekwondo

Today we ended Rank Camp with the "rank" part of it, which is to say Maddie advanced roughly three month's worth of training all in one week.  Combine that with Monday's testing, and that's six months of training in three months.  Not that this is a race to get to that third degree belt - that's still two and a half years from now, if things continue as we move forward.  But Maddie didn't get this picture with the Edges when she got her second degree black belt last time, so she wanted to do this now today after the testing.

It was a great afternoon.  At 1pm, she and all the other students were wearing their taekwondo gis and ready for testing.  They started out with the usual in-place punches and kicks, and then were ready for some "rolling," which is a different form of sparring they've been doing now, part of self-defense training but also using a bit of jujitsu.

Maddie seemed to have the upper hand pretty easily with her opponent, but they were doing a lot of work together, particularly with one segment where instructors called out different defensive and offensive positions, challenging the students to get in those positions the quickest.  One by one, teams were eliminated as the slowest until there was only one.

Maddie and her friend beat the rest of the room pretty well, the two of them very focused and doing a great job together.  They were helping each other through the last fitness test too - this is the thing we've been talking about this week, where Maddie was working to outdo her previous numbers of jump ropes or "Roman Soldiers" in a certain amount of time.  Perhaps it was just all the parents being there and added adrenaline, but Maddie crushed all her previous numbers this week big time.

It was a great testing, and a good conclusion to the week.  Believe it or not, many of these students were ready to come right back to class tonight for another two hours.  They enjoy this so much!  Maddie and I went to grab some boba tea, and we also dropped off squirrel 61, and got right back to class again tonight.

She's doing great here, and we're glad of that.  The temperature was super hot outside, but the temperature was okay inside the studio.  I got some work done today - we've got our messages for KidPak figured until the middle of October or so. 

We watched "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" tonight, the Tim Burton version, which Maddie ultimately likes better, although this is the one she was raised on, the only one she's ever known.  We watched both of these this week, and of course now I want some chocolate!

We read tonight from "Leia" and we said our prayers afterwards.  We get to sleep in tomorrow - a little.  Yes, we've got taekwondo in the morning again.  It's non-stop around here!