State of My Arts

Well, I’ve kind of taken some time off from posting.  Never fear, my training, teaching, and weightlifting have been proceeding splendidly.

Here’s my teaching recap:

• I had two wisdom teeth removed 3 weeks ago, the only two that have come in.  I was just given novocaine, so I concentrated on my breathing while the extractions were going on.  So that week I missed a couple of days of training, then had my backup run the Wednesday class.
• The following week was the final week before a promotion exam that occurred on July 31, so the classes I ran were focused on testing requirements.
• The promotion exam itself was good.  It was on the smaller side (I believe 8 tested, half of whom were youngsters who train in the children’s class).  I was invited to be on the testing panel, which is a nice honor, since there were several higher-ranking instructors there observing the test as well.  The two that I focused on did well on many things, though they each have some things to work on as well.
• The following morning, a large group went off to Avalon, N.J. for sunrise beach training.  I’m not much of a beachgoer (and don’t fancy meeting at the dojang at 4:30 A.M. for carpooling), so I volunteered to run class for whoever might show up for class.  I had half a dozen show up — an college-age 1st dan, a teenage 1st dan, a poom (junior black belt), a young red belt, a late-teen 3rd gup (aka blue belt/red stripe), and a teenage green belt.  Cardio warmup followed by forms, followed by various body weight upper body exercises.  The last half an hour or so, we spent alternating sparring and getting down on our knees and grappling.  Since we’re not a grappling school, that part is usually a bit more about having fun than it is in serious grappling.  One of the younger girls arrived in tears, and left giggling.  So that part felt pretty good.
• Last week, I focused on poomse during my classes to give those who were recently promoted a chance to learn a new form right away.  I also did some slow-motion no-gear sparring with the beginner class, which is pretty fun.
• I ran yesterday’s Saturday morning class as well.  I’m third on the list of instructors for that class, and as the top two were away, I had my chance.  There were 20 or so this week.  I did some kicking to get the heart rate up, then focused on ab work for awhile.  Then more kicking drills, working on crescent kicks.  Usually, we’ll focus on either axe kicks (the power of the kick is downward with the heel), or hook kicks (the power of the kick is horizontal to the ground, hitting with the heel), but we don’t often isolate crescent kicks (the power of the kick is horizontal, but hitting with the inside or outside of the foot) in our style.  I do love the bent leg variation of the outside crescent kick — what we sometimes call the Billy Jack kick (last 10 seconds of that clip).  The last half an hour was spent on one step sparring.  It was a good, productive class.

TKD, Teaching