Six students from the Kuon Ji JuJitsu Association have passed their black belts.
Junior students, Ethan Harwood and Joe Irving, from Clayton Club, and Liam Oldale, from Oswaldtwistle, all took their junior black belts.
Senior members Andy Hodge and Ryan McCaffrey, both from Oswaldtwistle Club, took their senior first dan black belts.
Clayton Club resident instructor, Nathan Dunn, went one further and took his second dan black belt.
The gradings were held at Blackburn Kickboxing Gym under the watchful eyes of the Association’s senior instructors Tony Gregson, Allan Emmett and Max Robinson, along with Simon Jones and Ray Parker, as well as representatives from the UK Martial Arts Council, UK Governing Body for martial arts.
Association head coach Tony Gregson said: "They have all trained continuously for over five years, putting in hours of hard work and practise every week. Our training is hard and only the best few students ever make it to the black belt grade."
After a nervous start, the juniors soon got into their stride and performed well, going through many techniques, katas and combinations before being asked to cope with attacks from all angles by other black belts.
On the senior mat, Ryan McCaffrey (16) stood up well to a testing grading. He was put under pressure all day.
Andy Hodge (40) had to show a great deal of hard work, putting in more than 150 throws in a pressure situation before his technical grading had even started.
He followed this with demonstrations of various combinations and counters before moving on to empty hand and weapon kata demonstrations, including the samurai sword.
In addition to the techniques he had learned over the years, Andy then had to fight his way through multiple full contact sparring bouts, Randori sessions and also ground submission fights against other senior black belt grade students.
Nathan Dunn was the last person to enter the grading mat taking his second dan black belt. In addition to knowing all the techniques that had been before with the first dan black belts, Nathan had to turn everything around and perform it all left handed, which is no easy feat.
In addition he also demonstrated his skills with various weapons, including, the Tonfa, Nunchaku, Sai, Bo Staff and Katana (sword). "His grading was excellent to watch," said Gregson.
