Kudo is a contact combat sport, it’s aim is to achieve safety, it’s one of the styles of mixed martial arts. For this particular experience, I joined Kudo classes in order to learn some basic self-defense and also to be fit.

LO1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth
Throughout the lockdown period, I had gotten very lazy and had no physical activity going on, so soon enough I had gained a lot of weight. I always wanted to learn self-defense because of the way I had seen it in the movies and just the idea of knowing how to fight for myself, so I joined Kudo. Initially, it was a lot of work, I wasn’t able to stretch as much nor did I have that much of strength and stamina. I had to be taught from the basics due to zero background knowledge in self-defense. Every class, we would do exercises and then the instructor would come to me and always fix my posture and help me push myself. I lacked a lot in stamina so I would do some extra rounds or just push myself or attend more classes sometimes.

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
As I had gained a lot of weight in the pandemic it had become very hard for me to stretch and exercise as freely as I used to be able to. The key challenge for me was to be able to push myself through the exercises we were asked to do, as I already didn’t have much stamina I was quicker to give up during planks or even basic sit-ups. However, I pushed myself, the instructor would come to me and motivate me into pushing myself out of my boundaries and eventually I started to get better over time.

LO4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
Being committed was a major challenge for me, the classes were comparatively quite far, getting ready and going there just began to become a lot of work for me. In fact during one of the lockdowns, I used it as an excuse to not go to the classes and that they weren’t safe. However I wanted to achieve at-least one certificate, that was the only thing that got me to resume going to classes. There were a lot of pauses I had taken in between, I used to get tired, not want to work, but there also came a point where all I wanted to do was go to classes, it was a huge release from the stress at school. Then I continued, gave the exam, went to a few classes after the exam and then I had earned my certificate.

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