Had my 1st kyu grade test two days. All in all, it went pretty well and I’m happy with how it went. Manderbacka was judging the test and she commented that it looked “nätti” (“pretty”), which… I’m not 100% sure what that means, but I suppose it means it didn’t look ugly or awful. She did comment that I should do less, let uke do more. I was nervous in the test, so I probably didn’t want to give uke too much space or time, but I’m sure the comment also applies to my technique in general. Also, she said my technique had quite a lot of “mättö” (hard to translate, basically being a bit too heavy handed), but she did say that when you’re young, that’s the time for it if ever. One of the things she said that felt really nice was that my jiyuwaza looked like I hadn’t planned anything, that I hadn’t decided which techniques to use beforehand. The jiyuwaza was far from perfect, but it felp pretty good. I didn’t panic or get too overwhelmed by the attacks. There isn’t really anything I’d like to do differently, but it would have been nice if we could have show the jo katas more than once.
Now I can start studying aikido again, not just the grade test techniques. To start taking it easy again. I think I’m going to study jo kata 22, as it was removed from the grade test technique list and I didn’t practice it for the test.