Margie informs me I’ve already used this metaphor, but I’ll use it again: karate is a lot like golf. Every simple-looking move involves a dozen different nuances of stance, posture, feet alignment, balance, body position. speed, timing, etc. Just when you think you have one down, another problem pops up like in a Whack-a-Mole game.
Unlike golf, though, in karate you don’t have the immediate feedback of the ball flying off in some untoward direction. That’s a mixed blessing (or mixed curse), as what you have instead is either your own awareness of what you’ve done wrong, the gentle suggestions of higher-level belts to help teach you, the not-quite-as-gentle-but-more-informative observations of sensei as to what you need to do differently, or, on occasion, multiple of the above, (Eventually, in competition, you get another few sorts of feedback, some of them potentially painful).
The up side is that everyone, even the black belts, get coaching and have room for improvement. Everybody’s imperfect — just some of us are more imperfect than others. 🙂
And, that said, Katherine did her test this evening for her white/yellow belt. I think she did faboo (it’s caught on video for posterity), and expect it will be rewarded to her on Thursday evening.