Yellow Belt with Green Stripe Test

I made it through my testing tonight, but not without some bumps and bruises. I made it through the first part of the test and all of my self defenses and front grabs. I didn't realize we were also doing wrist grabs - not too bad, but I burst a vein on the top part of my wrist- which stings. I then only had to perform my poomsae, Taeguk I Jang, once! (meaning I did it correctly the first time) I also got to skip the sparring (yea!) because I wasn't testing for a new belt - just a stripe.

Then came the breaking (ominous music in a minor key starts to play now).
I'm not a big fan of breaking. Call be a wuss, but it hurts. Really hurts. It's like whacking your hand/foot against something by accident, but you are doing it on purpose and hitting the object with everything you've got. Being an adult, I'm supposed to use 1 inch boards. This round I was supposed to do a strike with my hand that at least my instructor knew that there was no way that I could do it. So we tried a simple hammer fist. I did that testing for my orange belt.... piece of cake I'm thinking. I just couldn't do. After the 3rd try with the right hand, I switched to the left, then we switched boards to a smaller one and went to the right again. I finally broke that one. The result of all of the pounding can sort of be seen in the following photo:



I also failed at the kicking breaks. I tried two different kicks- both of which I have done before. Just not the night for me.

So, besides the breaking it was ok. I've asked if I can use the breakable non-wooden boards for next round. I guess I'm just not that cool.