I forgot to update this the other day.

My last adult session was on Tuesday night. It was pretty hardcore. For the last few weeks, as I think I've mentioned, I've been losing the will to fight. Not as in 'I will never fight again! I hate it now!', more of a 'I will fight again, but right now is not the right time for me'. I know that seems a bit weird, but that is how I felt.

So, obviously, after a rigourous warm up, we were instructed to put on our sparring pads. Obviously. I should probably explain that the next competition is on Nov 11th, and it's the grand finale were all the league winners will come to light, so it's understandable. We all lined up in usual fashion and faced our opponents. The first few I went up against weren't anything special so I could just take it a bit easy for then. I then came up against my older brother, who I mouthed 'I don't want to fight' to, assuming he'd understand and take it easy on me, at least for that one fight. What I didn't realise was that our master was standing behind me watching us, he was cheering my brother, Brian, on as he did a lot better against me than he usually does (Brian later told me that he felt horrible with every hit he landed, haha, poor guy).

If that wasn't bad enough, my next opponent was Joe, the 2004 World Champion. I've trained with Joe a few times, but have never fought him before. He'd been off for quite a while with injuries and personal issues, but wanted to get back into training seriously. Of course I couldn't just sit back with him. Not only would it have been a stupid idea, he wanted to see my skill and as such really pushed me (just like Nathan, why must everyone do that, haha). He was impressed by my performance and was proud of me (or so he said), and I was just frustrated. Joe also told me if I didn't take gold at the next tournament, we would be fighting for 2 hours straight. Thanks, Joe.

I don't know why I'm suddenly so frustrated all the time. I get the feeling it has to do with the fact that I want to be able to close in on the higher grades. We all train with the idea of getting better in mind, but obviously in our school we all train hard, so everyone progresses loads, not just you. It may sound harsh, but I want to go up against the higher grades, not those closer to me, me fellow green tags, etc.

Having said that, when I first started fighting, I used to have problems with one of the guys my grade. He predominantly uses side kicks, and for some reason they would always land. I haven't fought him in months. I train more and harder than he does, so I'd hope I'd win in a fight with him now, but I should probably make sure I can before setting my sights so high.

On Friday Nath told me we have a grading on the 1st. I had no idea. I am so unprepared, and work is a killer, so I can see myself failing. Seems an odd time to have a grading (at least to me), so I think it might to do with the fact that he wants to show us all off at a higher grade in the next competition, a sort of 'look what we've been doing and how quickly we've progressed' kind of thing to the other schools. Can't blame our master, really.

This morning is squad training so I'll leave this entry for now. At some point I should probably read back through it, might give me some fighting spirit back.

Ciao for now.