State of My Arts

Tonight we had our first promotion exam since the passing of our Grand Master.  Two of our 5th dans ran the exam, which was conducted in two parts.

The first part was for the younger students.  Seven students started the exam.  There were three green belt girls who train in the adult classes, and thus have been in my classes since they started.  In addition, there were three green belt boys and one blue belt boy who all train in the kids classes.  All the students were within a couple years of the age of 10.  The three green belt girls, all regulars in my Weds intermediate class, each had great tests.  One of them is a bit of a hoot to watch because she’s rubber-flexible, and as she’s moving all of a sudden bam! there’s a foot up above her head.  Their testing involved sparring, board breaking, forms, one-step sparring, self defense, and basic techniques.

I mentioned that 7 started the exam; 6 finished.  The last one was doing a jumping side kick with the rear leg, and his feet went out from under him.  His entire body landed on the floor at once, which included his head.  He got some ice and some asprin, but wasn’t able to continue.  He stuck around for a bit with his mother (a nurse, who well be testing for her second yellow stripe next week), but they eventually left.

The second group was the adults and a teen.  The highest ranking student was going for his 1st gup (top rank prior to black belt), though he was mightily hampered by a hamstring that he’s been going to physical therapy for.  There were two adult blue belts testing for red belt; one adult and one teen testing for green belt; and two more adults going for second green stripe.  Fortunately, they were all able to complete the test.  And, again, they did well.

Since there was an odd number of students, I helped out as a partner for one-steps and self defense.  I partnered with one of the red belt candidates, who gets very physically and mentally tense.  I was trying to get him to loosen up, but his mind was racing faster than his body could follow.  He still had a solid test, but he still needs to work on relaxing during  his techniques.

It was a good night of testing.  I believe there were 16 black belts conducting and observing the test, which is a solid turnout.  And I’ll be going back in tomorrow morning for the Saturday morning class.  And that’ll be followed by tennis.

TKD

Several weeks ago, I was participating in a TKD class led by one of the master instructors.  One of the things he said stuck in my head and has been bouncing around since then.  The gist of it was a clear differentation between kicking stance and fighting stance.  In our world, fighting stance has a left or right lead leg, with both feet facing forwards, knees slightly bent, weight on the balls of the feet and hands up.  Kicking stance is more of a narrow back stance, weight more even distributed between the ball and heel, and the back foot is almost perpendicular.

Now, this was nothing new, it just struck me funny this class.  Why are we kicking if we aren’t fighting, or training to fight?  We’re by no means running a reality-based system, but we are more grounded in fighting practicalities than many TKD dojangs.  I talked this over with a couple of other black belts, and we didn’t necessarily have a clear consensus.

The best argument for a “kicking stance” even existing is that it allows focus on the kick without really concerning ourselves with details external to the kick itself.  Though we have used a different kicking stance for white belts, which is a front stance.

I guess one of the problems I have with it is that it seems to promote lazy kicking.  Rocking back from the heel to the ball of the foot slows the delivery of the kick.  And it also allows for a bit of resting, physically and mentally, between kicks.

Anyone else using different stances for fighting and kicking?

TKD

Yesterday was the last day of my diet.  I was finding that all sorts of food was looking good.  I’d see a television commercial and want whatever it was advertising.  There was one brand of dog food that looked mighty tasty.

Here’s the final tally:

Day 0: 200.8 17.3%
Day 1: 199.0 17.3%
Day 2: 196.8 17.9%
Day 3: 194.6 17.6%
Day 4: 194.6 17.5%
Day 5: 194.0 17.1%
Day 6: 193.2 16.9%

Multiplying that out comes to 2 pounds of fat lost.  This is more reasonable than the last time I did this diet, where I had the flu and ran a 103.8 fever.  2 pounds of fat would be around 7000 calories, and I’m sure my caloric deficit was at least that much.

On a related fitness note, I’ve hung up a doorframe chin-up bar and I’m trying to do one or two every time I notice it.  The movement doesn’t seem to destabilize my shoulder (the way pushups do somewhat), so I figure the movement is fine.  My body is built with a larger lower body (big thighs), so body weight exercises like chin-ups and dips have always been tough.  I’m hoping to improve that a bit as I get healthier.

Fitness

Well, I finally got around to adding up the nutritional values for my diet.  I just used today’s diet plan, so maybe other days differ.  Here’s what I got:

58 grams of carbs (27%)
111 grams of protein (52%)
20 grams of fat (21%)
860 calories

Wow, I hadn’t realized it was that little.  I am kind of glad I didn’t add it all up before I went on the diet, otherwise I doubt I would have even attempted it.  Actually, I did cheat a little — I had more lettuce, green beans, and asparagus today than the diet called for.  So push it to closer to 900 calories.

My energy level has been pretty normal.  I’m drinking lots of water, and still exercising.  Today I played an hour and a half of tennis (though I was admittedly feeling a bit dizzy after intense points).  Yesterday was an hour and a half of TKD (primarily high kicks and jumping kicks).  Friday I did a Power 90 (phase 3-4) cardio workout (40 minutes), 6 minutes of a good ab workout, followed immediately by an hour and a half Hapkido class.  On Thursday, I slacked and only did physical therapy (which takes nearly an hour and a half).  Wednesday (the first day of the diet) was an hour Hapkido class, an hour of TKD teaching, followed by an hour of an advanced TKD class (lots of jumping).

I’d better lose weight on this diet with everything I’m doing.  Frankly, I should be able to lose weight even if I double everything I eat.  Today I weighed in at the same weight as yesterday.  Only one more day on the diet, and hopefully my body hasn’t kicked itself into starvation mode.

Fitness

Today is the 4th day of my 6-day diet.  I just had my protein shake with 3/4 of a cup of black berries.  The following is how my weight has progressed over the course of the diet:

Day 1: 200.8 17.3% (Before starting the diet)
Day 2: 199.0 17.3%
Day 3: 196.8 17.9%
Day 4: 194.6 17.6% 

I weight myself first thing in the morning for consistency.  At the start, I was a little higher than the 198-ish I had seemed to stabilize at after the first time I did this diet, due to a weekend of overindulgence.

As I’ve mentioned before, the fat percentages are always a bit iffy.  The scale is only so accurate.  So I normally pay more attention to trends than day-by-day values.

6 pounds down in 3 days is great.  I was pretty darn hungry yesterday.  One of these days I’ll figure out what how many calories I really am eating.  I had been thinking 1500, but it might be closer to 1200.

I’m hoping that after this diet run that once my body restabilizes, it’ll be somewhere in the 195 range.

Fitness

Wow, it has been a while since my last post.  This one is more or less to let you know that I’m still around and still training.

This past weekend was one of food indulgence.  So now I have some weight to lose.  I’m going back on my 6-day diet, and I just finished my grocery shopping for that.

Training has been on a bit of a hiatus; between family obligations and a long weekend, I only trained Monday and Tuesday of last week.  Last night was a back-to-basics class, which was good.  Tonight I’ll be running a similar type of class for the beginners.  We’ll be running a promotion exam in 10 days, so we’ll be making sure everyone is up-to-date on their requirements.

The dojang roles have now been more clearly defined.  My late instructor’s most senior TKD student (5th dan) is officially in charge of the TKD program.  He ran that basics class last night during the black belt class last night, and he’s the final word on how we do things in that art.  Our 7th dan Hapkido instructor is officially leading the Hapkido program, no surprise.  And one of our other master instructors is in charge of the Kali program.

Our schedule will be changing slightly in three weeks.  The changes are mostly to push the kids classes a little later in the day.  4:30 was a struggle for parents and instructors.  Well, instructors who aren’t me, anyway, since I don’t help out with those classes.  I’ll still be leading the Tuesday beginner adult class as well as the Wednesday intermediate class.  A kali class will be replacing the Monday night Hapkido class, which had fallen off the map anyway as it immediately followed a high energy black belt TKD class.  People just ran out of gas and weren’t staying for that Hapkido class.

Now I’m off to do a cardio workout prior to teaching my class tonight.

Fitness, TKD, Training

Well, I can’t really do a book review of a book that I haven’t read yet, but this does deserve some notice.

Periodically, some of the black belts from our dojang travel out to Oregon to train with a 9th dan and his students out there.  The 9th dan, Grand Master James Garrison, had three senior students; my late instructor (Grand Master Wilson) was one of those three.  The second of the three fell in love with one of the black belts from the East coast, married her, moved out this way, and is now running some great Hapkido classes at our dojang.

The third of those senior instructors just had a book published.  Warrior Mind: Strategy and Philosophy from the Martial Arts can be purchased via that link at Amazon.  The author, Dick Morgan, is a 7th dan in Hapkido, and holds rank in other disciplines as well.  He’s been with Grand Master Garrison for several decades.  He’s also about six foot five and has had a hip replaced, though that didn’t seem to slow him down for that long.

He’s a really good guy to work with at the seminars.  Obviously he’s very knowledgeable, and he keeps you on your mettle by not letting you get away with sloppy technique.  He’s also got a different body style, which is great for training variations of techniques.

So I’ll be looking forward to reading his book.  As I understand it, the book is more about mindset than anything.  I’ll be getting an autographed copy sooner or later.

Hapkido