Interim Grading 2026

Adult classes have been fairly quiet recently, unfortunately any students had things come up at the same time and over half of my adult students had to stop coming either permanently or for a period of time. It has meant I have had many classes with only one or two students at a time. On the plus side I have been able to work really hard together with those students to build their skills and develop their Aikido. Hopefully we will see people start to come back over the next couple of months as we build up to the next Club Anniversary Demonstration in August.

I had three students who have been attending a lot over the last three months take part in a grading. This is not a usual grading and I am not sure if we will continue this next year. We will see how the numbers in the adult classes are then. The students did really well and took on the challenge to pass their gradings and improve on their last performances. I feel I am getting more and more used to running gradings, but I will pass the videos onto Narita Sensei to get his feedback and learn how I can do better.

On the flip side, the kids classes are going really well attendance wise. I regularly have over 6 students and sometimes up to about 12 in one class. The older kids are developing very quickly, so I will have to seriously think about if I need to separate them from the younger kids in the future. We are also doing tag tests for the kids this week, I had two of the students promoted to red belts - 8th Kyu! Doing the badge challenges is also having great results as I can see the kids really recognise their own potential as they know what skills they have and what they are trying to achieve.

Well, over the next few months we will really busy with Mori sensei seminar and Summer school activities.