Tonight was the night.
The senior students knew it.
The junior students could sense it.
Did they know it?
Fundamentally, there was no difference between a regular class and one that had a student examination after it.
The format and lessons covered were the same, the layout of the dojo was the same, but as the clock on the wall got closer to 10 PM, things started to shift.
Time was running out.
There were two parts to every formal test for rank in the dojo.
The first was a technical demonstration: could the testing student repeat the movements that they were responsible for knowing?
Not perfectly, not yet, but at least at eighty percent and without any fatal flaws or openings in the movement.
This was a test of repetition, perseverance, and attention to detail.
It was the second part where things got more interesting.
When the testing student was asked to leave the floor for a bit after the first part of the test, that is when things changed.
Swords were taken down from the walls, the hanging artwork was rolled up and put away.
One of the portable training mats was put up against the mirror.
As soon as the student was invited to come back in and they stepped out onto the dojo, that is when the second part began.
They would be attacked by the senior students of the dojo as the teacher watched from the corner, and it was this part of the test that I at first thought I understood.
I had long since understood the hierarchy in the dojo and how one interacts with a training partner. As in, while both have total commitment, there is a difference between how one throws a punch at a white belt and a black belt.
Training should be adjusted to something slightly above the person’s current level so they feel that pressure to grow and adapt.
Beyond this does not lead to good training, and below this robs the student of the experience.
And that is what I did when I participated in these tests with the other senior students.
Give a good attack, take good ukemi.
Occasionally the teacher would step in and take my place, which meant clearly I was failing at something, which required me to step out for a moment and not watch the test, but rather watch my teacher.
What was he doing that I was not?
That is when, over time—and later rather than sooner—I noticed what I was doing incorrectly.
That is where I realized that when my teacher stepped in for me, and when he would move around behind the person taking the test, he wouldn’t attack.
I always attacked—wasn’t that the point?
Especially if the person taking the test let me move into a blind spot?
My teacher would exist there behind them. In those few seconds, he would drift into the side of their peripheral vision before slipping back out.
The test was not the attack; the test was whether they noticed somebody was behind them.
Are they keeping track of the people around them and who is moving out of vision and who is staying in vision?
Some students taking the test noticed this right away and made the adjustment in their body posture.
Others took a few moments of the teacher shifting in and out to catch the moment, the teacher leading them to a place of deliberate weakness so they could see it in a safe environment.
The test was not just about the student taking it; it was also about what the senior students could create for the student taking it.
A transmission.
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