First of all this is my 500th post. And unless I'm mistaken that makes me a martial talk black belt.
Also from the 19th to the 22nd I was testing for my brown belt in Cuong Nhu. There in lies the irony. I have a little story I wish to tell about my brown belt test. In Cuong Nhu when you take a green, brown, or black belt test, you have to take a written exam. They are over things like martial arts history, history of the style, knowledge of the style (who is currently in charge), and knowledge of Cuong Nhu philosophy. You know, those fun little sets of wisdom I throw out there every so often. You don't? Ohh well. I got an 81%, and needed an 80%. So I barely passed that part.
We also have to do a paper for brown and black belt tests. The subject is up to the tester, I did mine over the eight codes of ethics. I had to have atleast 2 pages, I ended up with three and a half. Not sure how I did on that though. I think the idea is more that you can. But, what ever. There is also two minutes of public speaking required at every rank after green. Again, I think that is mostly about the knoweldge that you can.
For the physical test the following are required: 200 lunge punches (not as hard as it sounds), 100 knife hands (also not as hard as it sounds), completion of a series of kicks, doing the throws I know three times, do all 12 katas that are required for my rank (easy as pie with how I train), three rounds of two minute long continuse sparring. The first two rounds made me mad. Vinny (a relitivly low rank) was sprring at a hundreth of his normal pace. And Jordan (who isn't too far behind me) did the same. The last round was against Deena (same rank as Jordan in Cuong Nhu and a black belt in Tae Kwon Do), she pushed me. Normally she is marginally agressive, and highly skilled. At my test it was just violence.
The only chink in my test was boards. I had to do a set of three boards, no spacers. I hit it 8 freakin times, I didn't get butkis done. So I'm on whats called "probation". Meaning I didn't pass, but didn't fail. So I have a month to do break boards in class, and I pass. If I don't get that done in a month then I have to re-take the whole thing.
