I’m still not sure why they are called ‘British’. We had Dutch, Danish and German clubs there ?

So last weekend was the EMTF British National competitions. Although i’m not really a big competitor any more i do still attend the British (and European when possible) competitions every year. It’s as much about the social aspect as competing. It’s a great way to get to know people from the other clubs and meet the chaps from the EMTF.

This time was my turn to drive. Unfortunately we got stuck in traffic twice on the way up (We decided on the M5/M42/M6/M1 route to Bedford as opposed to M5/M4/M25) which means the journey in total took 8 hours (including a couple of stops). Food that night was courtesy of the harvester next door to the hotel. A pint and burger taste so much better after a long slog on the road. Up bright and early the next day we soon realised that it was another hour on the road to get to the sports centre. More driving . . . The hall itself was a decent size. Enough for ten rings plus spectators. Although there wasn’t a dedicated warm-up space for competitors which was a bit of a shame. The other shame was the smell. The hall was next to a stable (agricultural college) so there was a constant smell of manure and urine for the entire day, not too pleasant really. Still, being a black-belt (god i hate that phrase) mean’t i was kept busy for the day. i firstly had the Pleasure of helping Master Uberlander from Germany run a ring for Hyungs (kata). It was also nice to note that our score were almost identical all the way along so i must be ‘seeing’ the same things as him. Later i helped Master Preston run a ring for sparring.  The day started in backwards fashion with the gup-grades first. There were a lot of gups from our club competing and nearly all (if not all ?) of them won something, whether for hyungs or sparring. Then we sat through the masters forms . Some great displays. Then lastly we got to the dan-grades forms. This was me.

I had decided beforehand to only enter two categories; Traditional (Japanese) and Chil-Sung (Korean). I normally enter chang-bong (staff) too but i didn’t really fancy it this time around despite it being one of my best categories. I was trying to do the weekend on a budget. I also was not bothered about winning anything. Normally people only compete with forms they feel very good at so as to have the best chance of winning something. This time around i fancied doing something different, a risky prospect indeed. For my traditional form i choose Jin-To. This particular form is great to perform but technically quite hard. It involves having to balance on a single leg with arms outstretched then snap the hips around 90-degrees and throw a (good !) front-kick. Not once but three times. Of course the risk is of loosing your balance or fluffing the kicks which is so easy to do. Especially on the soft competition mats (wooden floors are much easier for keeping balance on). The form started well enough for me until i got to the first balance point. As i pulled into the correct posture i though ‘Christ this floor is wobbling !’ Of course it was my legs, not the floor. This mean’t i couldn’t hold the positions for as long as i would have liked to. I also almost made a mistake towards the end. I managed to stop myself in time but i knew the judges would see the stall. With no fewer than 14 people in our category (unheard of) i knew it was not good enough. Still i took a risk and i enjoyed the performance, trophy or not.

Our second category of Chil-Sung was called immediately after. Once again there was a lot of us, 10 i think ? This mean’t once again we had our work cut out. The judges then announced that we would be performing one at a time (you usually go in pairs). Now i was crapping myself ! For this category i again took a risk with one of the Yuk-Ro (Joon jul) forms. Most clubs don’t know these forms so i was worried that the judges wouldn’t either. The form itself is quite complicated so required complete concentration from start to finish. To my surprise the master running the ring did indeed know the form so i was allowed to compete with it. Big sigh of relief . . . Having made a mistake in the first performance i was determined to do this one well. I love the form and wanted to do it justice.  The form passed in a bit of a blur but i had the feeling i had done reasonably well.  When the placings were called i had managed to scrape third place ! The master also called me over at the end and said a personal well done, this was just as good as getting the trophy.

Although in the past i have picked up golds and silvers this trophy was definitely my hardest won one yet. No i didn’t win any of my categories but i took a risk instead of playing it safe. It felt good. I’m very happy with my overall performance considering.

The competition didn’t wrap up until 7PM and by the time we all got to the restaurant that night it was 10:30PM before we sat down to eat. Most of had eaten literally nothing all day (I had three wine-gums i found in my car). We were all on our last legs. But MAN did that pint and Chinese buffet taste good ! After eating all notions of clubbing went out the window. We were all totally knackered. We stocked up on a few goodies from behind the bar and headed back to the hotel. I had planned to sit down and enjoy a quite cup of sake with a couple of the chaps. The next thing i know there’s 23 people in our room ! I get a bit twitchy around that many people in that small space so decided to sit in the quiet next door for an hour until they dispersed. We even found a novel way of heating sake in a hotel-room. Instead of using a hot-water bath like usual we simply filled the kettle up and hit the button ! Steaming hot sake in seconds, bloody brilliant.

For the trip home i planned to head back the same way we had come. Back up to Birmingham then down the M5. I basically wanted to avoid the M25 (in hindsight it was fathers day so any road would have been quiet quiet). This caused a slight upset as some others had to head a different way. Sorry about that. Still we all made good time so no love lost.

Looking forward to getting back to training now. Competitions always leave me feeling enthused and proud. Regardless of how i have personally done.

Hopefully some pictures to be added

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