The First Two Months: My First Stripe

Most martial arts as well as individual dojos (dojo is the room/area where martial arts are practiced, but often refers to the people training there as well) have different belt rank systems, not only in colors/stripes, etc., but also in the process of advancing in these belts.

At Performance Martial Arts Academy in Roseburg, they have a series of colored belts, but they also manually apply "stripes" (with athletic tape), to signify progress within some of the belts. Each stripe signifies demonstrated ability to perform a specific set of techniques, usually a variety of guards, passes, or submissions.

At first, since we had just started there, I was figuring on skipping the first upcoming stripe test. But the test date was delayed and ... I like a challenge, so I decided to go for it.  Daniel and I are in the adult class together, so we both drilled during open mat and at home and both passed our first stripe test! Stephen's test was a couple weeks later and he passed as well. Such a simple, small thing in the big scheme of things, but a happy accomplishment nonetheless.