State of My Arts

• Monday: Snowed out.  So instead I rode the exercise bike for 37 minutes, did some ab work, crunches, and kicks with ankle weights.
• Tuesday Beginner TKD: I taught the beginner adult class, with an emphasis on kicking combinations.  I worked with the green belts primarily on arc kicks, working on the speed of flipping the hip.  Also worked a 1-1-3 combination, sliding off to at an angle on the side of the techniques.  Then replaced the initial jab with a jabbing front leg front snap kick followed by the 1-3 (jab, hook).
• Tuesday Kali: This week I actually participated.  We did a double stick drill Heaven Six for a while with a couple variations (reversing one of the grips into an Earth grip); a single stick drill called Dangerous Play, which is a partner exercise on deflecting attacks from the six and seven angles; and a single knife drill called Palasut.  Kind of weird how we mix English and Filipino terminology (though I do know that a heaven grip is sak-sak and an earth grip is pakal).
• Wednesday Intermediate TKD: The theme today was close range fighting.  I warmed them up quickly with some one-step sparring without a partner, then got them going with the Palasut drill.  We introduce Kali and Hapkido into the TKD classes, so it makes for a nice change of pace.  We had an extraordinary number of black belts around tonight, so every student got an individual instructor.  I gave the instructors the mandate of working close quarters, but the types of drills were up to them: some did Ho Shin Sul (self-defense) against chokes and grabs; others worked knees and elbows; one worked some Wing Chun-style trapping drills.  So it was a nice melange, variations on a theme.  We finished up as a group working Sticky Hands, another Wing Chun-derived drill.
• Wednesday Advanced TKD: Quick warmup, then into poomsae.  My shoulder was sore, so my forms weren’t particularly good.  We went through the Tae Guk forms, and the master instructor crossed us up by having us kick twice any time a kick appeared in the form.  The black belts then moved on to black belt forms (Koryo, Keumgang, Taebek).  After that, we pulled out the mats and worked one-step sparrings for a while.  Finally, we finished up with some judo-type standing sensitivity/off-balancing drills — though it turned into a light takedown session with the guys I worked with.  I worked with a couple of lightweights to avoid hurting my shoulder, and that was fun.  Then we did the same thing from our knees.  I was working with a 150-pound guy my age, so I had fun submitting him.  He was still having fun, even though I caught him in a couple arm bars, a couple of triangles, and a couple of anaconda chokes.  Believe it or not, I was careful with my shoulder.

The shoulder was sore today after having done the Kali exercises Tuesday night.  It is feeling pretty good (though tired) right now.

As a bonus, the following is a fairly short video of the Palasut drill I mentioned several times.  There are a couple of differences between how they do it and how we do it, but this gives a pretty good idea of it.

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