Tuesday, October 20, 2015

7th Degree Black Belt Promotion

On September 26, 2015, I was honored to test for 7th Degree Black Belt in American Kenpo Karate under Grandmaster Larry Tatum at the 7th Annual Can-Am Kenpo Karate Camp in London, Ontario, hosted by Scott Southwell. Far more important than my promotion, was the opportunity to be evaluated by the one the best Kenpo Karate experts on the globe. For my testing, all of the techniques that I performed were called out in random order without any knowledge of which ones would be called. The techniques were challenging, as the vast majority of them included the extensions of the base techniques:

Five Swords
Triggered Salute (ext)
Repeating Mace
Locking Horns (ext)
Striking Serpent's Head (ext)
Buckling Branch (ext)
Calming the Storm (ext)
Leaping Crane (ext)
Crushing Hammer (ext)
Squeezing the Peach (ext)
Thundering Hammers (ext)
Cross of Destruction (ext)
Parting Wings (ext)
Hugging Pendulum (ext)
Snaking Talon (ext)
Twist of Fate (ext)
Griping Talon (ext)
Broken Ram (ext)
Encounter with Danger (ext)
Escape from Death (ext)
Leap from Danger (ext)
Capturing the Storm (ext)
Clipping the Storm (ext)
The Back Breaker (ext)
Thrust into Darkness
Deceptive Panther
Unfurling Crane
Bowing to Buddha
Broken Rod
Defying the Rod
Twisted Rod

I was also required to perform Long Form 4, Long Form 5, and Long Form 6.

Attached are some pictures from the testing.