I am pleased to announce that Rick Bates was awarded his 1st Dan Black Belt yesterday.

The panel consisted of an 8th Dan, a 6th Dan, 3 X 5th Dans, 2 X 2nd Dans.
The grading lasted for 3 hours, and this was all solid work and one of the hardest BB gradings Ive seen in a while. The grading started with a gruelling warm up followed by syllabus, striking, pad work, stick, knife, sparing (standing and ground), pressure points, chokes and strangles and lots more!

Rick got a back injury 1 hour into the grading, he refused to leave the mat (even though he was told to by a member of the panel) and battled on regardless. He impressed the panel in all areas and he received some really good comments. The standard of his techniques were great. For me the highlight was Rick applying a  kali choke with a stick to a back break take down and powerful choke on the ground, applied very fast and aggressively but skillfully with no injury to his Uke. The panels reactions was excitement, shock and they thought it was great and were very vocal, none of them had seen this before.

Thanks to Sensei Gary & Pat, who were on the pannel and also helped Rick prepair for the day.

Check out the photos that Sensei Carol took on the day:

http://94.229.168.31/~hakudakanco/gallery/?album=1&gallery=5

Well done Rick.
Barry