State of My Arts

The congratulatory announcement went up today, and two of the candidates who tested for 1st dan/poom were presented their interim black belts.  The way we do it is that when a student is promoted to black belt, they are given an instructor’s old belt to wear until their personally embroidered black belt is presented to them.  It is a neat tradition.

Anyhow, within our dojang, my title is now Sa Bum.  1st dan title is Kyosa, 2nd is Kyosa Nim.  3rd is Sabum, and 4th is Sa Bum Nim.  It’ll be at least 5 years before I get to 4th dan.

But as far as my training went today, we’ve got a phrase: “Sometimes you are the windshield, and sometimes you are the bug”.  Today I was the bug.  I wasn’t feeling great at the start of Hapkido, just tired and creaky.  During class, I wasn’t doing things well.  Teaching the intermediate class went fine.  But in the advanced TKD I didn’t do as well as I should.  And now my back is locked up.  Oh, well.

Hapkido, TKD

Yesterday was my long-awaited 3rd dan test.  The short version is that it went well.  The longer version is below…

When I woke up in the morning, my back had loosened up a bit.  So that part was good.  The bad part is that my “trick toe” was giving me a lot of trouble.  I couldn’t walk without a limp for the first couple of hours.  Makes me wonder if I’ve got a bone chip in the joint that periodically floats into a bad position, or something like that.  Fortunately, my toe eventually felt a lot better.  I buddy-taped it for the test hoping it wouldn’t become a problem.

The test started shortly after 6PM.  I got there around 20 minutes early to warm up and stretch out.  I surprised myself by getting a bit nervous in the hours leading up to the test — I really psyched myself up to do an excellent job, and would be disappointed with anything less.  There were 11 of us testing: 2 for 3rd dan; 1 for 2nd dan; and 1 adult, 2 teens and 5 young ‘uns for 1st dan/poom.  The testing panel consisted of a 7th dan, 3 5th dans, and 2 4th dans.  There was also a large contingent of other black belts and a decent crowd of frends and family.

After bowing in, the test started with breathing exercises.  Next were stances, followed by moving blocks and punches.  Everything was very formal and traditional through this point, and my nerves were burning up a lot of energy.  When you’re working precision like this with extreme focus, it is tough to get into a groove.  The next section was kicking, which is something I’m good at.  I still wasn’t feeling comfortable, and by this point I was sweating profusely and was very out of breath.

The next section was our forms.  My mind was still working overtime, and I flubbed one of the student poomsae twice.  Not enough that you’d notice unless you knew what to look for, but I knew that I did an inside block instead of a knife hand attack.  The other forms went more smoothly.  By the time we got to the black belt forms I was again (unobtrusively, I hoped) gasping for air.  I was the only one doing the form Pyong Won, so I still didn’t get a chance for a short breather. 

Next up were bong forms.  The funny part here was that I was drenched with sweat.  A lot of bong movements have the bong in contact with the torso at some point, and every time I did one of those moves, it sounded like a wet towel smacking against a wall.  It also left the bong slipperier than a greased pig.  Not, mind you, that I’ve ever tried to hold a greased pig.  I was very pleased that I was able to make it through my forms without dropping the bong.

Next up, One-Step Sparring.  We’ve got 18 of them, and I had the chance to do maybe a dozen of them.  That section was fine, and I was partnered with the gentleman testing for 2nd dan.  We had the same partners for the self-defense portion.  Since both of us are testing for Hapkido rank, that part wasn’t any trouble either.  We continued with rolling and falling, followed by a bit more Hapkido-ish techniques: hip throws, Osoto-gari, kote-gaeshi.  I was finally able to catch my breath and relax a bit here.

Next up, sparring.  We got our gear on, sans chest protectors.  Our matches are free flowing, no called points.  I sparred the same guy and we had a fun two-round battle.  I pressed him hard and he was looking fatigued.  He had a kind of cotton-mouth thing going, which was turning his lips white, but underneath the white they were also turning blue, so he only sparred once.  My second match was with a 3rd dan who was there as an observer and who is the toughest sparring opponent in the dojang.  What ensued was a drag-’em-out fight; we both were giving fairly heavy contact with our blows.  I caught a few in the face from him, and I caught him back a few times.  He definitely got the best of me, but it was a fun battle.

Board breaking came next.  The younger ones went first, so it was probably a good 15 minutes of standing around.  I caught a clash on the outside of my left thigh, which left me with a bit of a charlie horse.  Due to a few factors, I decided to do my breaks with my left foot.  Most right-handed people are also right-footed, so people usually do their breaks with their better leg.  But my balky toe is on my right foot, turning kicks to the right aren’t working so well when the left side of my back is tight, and I had that thigh contusion that made it tough to use that leg for planting.  Anyhow, my first break was a 3 board jumping back kick power break.  That felt nice, my foot went through easily.  2nd break was a speed break — the holder holds the board with two fingers and you need to hit the board fast enough for it to break before it is knocked out of his hand.  That break was a jumping back hook kick, which took me two tries (on the first I knocked it out of his hand).  3rd break was another speed break, a knife hand through a smaller-sized board.  Again, that took me two tries as well.

We finished up with question-and-answer.  It was a bit after 9PM, so the test lasted around 3 hours.  During the wrap-up, one of the teens started swaying, and almost passed out.  He was probably dehydrated.  He had to sit down for a couple of minutes.  Afterwards, we all got lots of congratulations.  The others who were testing did really well as well.  It really was a good testing group.  One person who I didn’t know who was there watching a relative came up to me afterwards and told me it was a pleasure to watch me do the test, so that was a nice compliment.  The results haven’t officially been made public, but it was obvious that we all passed.  At some point next week I should be officially confirmed with my new rank.

Today I was a bit sore and tired.  But myself, my erstwhile One-Step/Self Defense partner, and the Hapkido instructor came back to the dojang at 7:30 this morning to review requirements for our Hapkido exam next month.   Training never stops!  We mostly talked through things and did some technique cleanup, nothing remotely strenuous.

The following photos are blurry enough to preserve my internet semi-annonimity:

 Back hook kick during the kicking portion of the exam

 3 board break, jumping back kick

 Speed break, jumping back hook kick

TKD

Well, I’ll be starting the promotion exam around 24 hours from now.  Tuesday night was teaching; I warmed up with the class and threw some kicks and punches, and did a few forms after class.  Weds night was Hapkido, followed by some individual forms work.  Today is a day off, other than the essays I’m still finishing up, and I’ll do a little bit of stretching as well.

Just to irk me, my back has decided to act up.  My low/mid back right along the left side of my spine periodically locks up on me.  I think it is a remnant of dislocating a rib a couple years back and not getting it back in place for a month and a half.  I may have twisted a little oddly this past Saturday, and it hasn’t loosened up on its own yet.  Wife of State has used her elbow a couple of times to help break things up.  It is just a nuisance injury, but it does affect how well I can do twisting kicks.

Oh, well.  I’m always going to have some sort of nagging pains.  Right now in addition to my back, I have a tweaked wrist, Osgood-Schlatter’s condition in my left knee, an incompletely healed shoulder, a toe that periodically pains me, and a callous on the bottom of another toe that might rip and start bleeding.  These are just the normal things that end up bugging me, and despite that, I’m feeling as healthy as I’ve been at any point over the last two years.  I think that shows how my last two years have gone…

TKD

Saturday was the “Super Circuit Saturday” class I had mentioned.  It’s one of the few ways to have fun while working out.  There was a decent showing, and everyone seemed to be working hard.

Sunday was a P90X lifting routine and the P90X Ab Ripper routine.  That was plenty.

Today was a test prep class.  Lots of basic kicks and punches with a stationary partner to use for target practice.  We always try to control distance and hit the dobok but not the person.  Then we did some Ho Shin Sul (self defense), followed by one-step sparring, followed by poomse.  I’m feeling pretty good about things, though I did have a couple of errors in my forms.  I’ll try to clean those up a bit more in the next couple of days.

I’m also working on a couple of essays that I’ll need to turn in before the test.  And that’s about it.  Tomorrow is a teaching night, and I probably won’t do anything other than review my forms.  On Wednesday, I’ll go to the Hapkido class and then help teach the intermediates (I’ve offloaded the primary instructor duties for that night to one of the other instructors).  I probably won’t stay for the TKD class, but I’ll leave that open.  Thursday will be a rest day, then Friday’s the day itself.  Should be fun.

TKD, Training

I already mentioned Monday.

• Tuesday: Taught the beginner class (big emphasis on basics: stances, blocks, punches).  Then I stayed for cardio kickboxing.  It was kind of fun.  Some movements I just couldn’t follow, but for the most part I didn’t look too silly.  Except for my pasty white legs.  Very reflective.
• Wednesday: Hapkido class (wrist grabs, punch defense).  Then I ran the intermediate class — sparring night.  Got the gear on early, and spent a large portion of the class doing movement/counter drills with techniques landing on the hogu (chest protector).  Then during the advanced TKD class we also did some similar drills, and I had a chance to work on my advanced forms again.
• Thursday: A one-hour massage.  Aah.  That felt really good.
• Friday: Hapkido class.  Lots of work on entries — I really need to improve on continuing my movement from entry through takedown/locks.  I’m entering okay, but then I don’t have an immediate plan and I’m spending too much time trying to feel balance and deciding what I’m doing from there.

Some more notes: On Wednesday, I joined in some of the sparring drills for fun.  But at one point when doing a back kick my feet shot out from under me.  I fell okay — more of a front fall than anything.  But I still tweaked my left wrist a bit.  Didn’t actually realize that I hurt it a bit until the following morning.

Tomorrow is “Super Circuit Saturday”.  We like alliteration — we’ve also got our Monkey in the Middle (aka Simian in the Center).  Anyhow, this is kind of a free-form circuit workout.  We’ll have the music going and a whole bunch of stations set up, from kicking bags to medicine balls to mats to jump ropes to weights, and so on.  It is always fun.  Back in March, I ripped my dobok pants doing squats during one of these classes.  Heh.  I’ll actually be running the class, so I’ll need to do some of the setup, and I’ll be keeping the stopwatch and bellowing out the order to change stations.  We usually do about a minute per station, and we’ll be doing that for about an hour.  Then I’ll probably have the class do a few lower-energy things, like breathing exercises.

Test day is one week from today.

TKD, Teaching, Training

Yesterday, I mentioned that there were a couple things I wanted to work on.  Well, tonight we covered some of them.  I got more work on Pyong Won, and we spent 15 or so minutes on bong forms.  We also did some of the 360 kicks that I wanted to do.  Not quite enough reps to satisfy me, but it was still good work.

I might go to the cardio kickboxing class tomorrow night for a little change-of-pace with my cardio.  We’ll see when tomorrow rolls around if I’d rather do that or Plyo.

TKD, Training

Testing day is right around the corner.  This week will be a good, hard, physical week.  Next week will be toned down a bit so that I’m fresh for Friday the 25th.

It kind of seems as though I’ve been turning this into a fitness blog rather than a martial arts one, but I suppose that’s just a reflection of my outlook on the matter.  I don’t have a tremendously athletic build, as I have a tendency towards stockiness (having once been over 60 pounds heavier than I am today).  So I have to work hard for what I’ve got.

Anyhow, on that theme, today was a lifting day (P90x Shoulders and Arms), followed by a 2 mile run with 3 pound dumbells.  I wasn’t sure how far I’d get on my run, so I was very pleased that I made it through 2 miles.  On an unrelated (cough) note, my left shoulder and neck are pretty well locked up and are pretty sore right now.

On the martial arts side, yesterday was a good test-prep class.  We spent a good amount of time doing One Step Sparring techniques.  I was partnered with the head of the TKD program, and there wasn’t anything in particular that I needed to clean up there.  He also took a look at my bong forms later in the class and gave me a couple of good tips there.  We also went through most of the other forms that I’ll be doing, which was a good review.  And, for good measure, we worked escapes from various grabs as well.

I still need a  bit of work on Pyong Won (4th black belt form).  I’m hoping one of these classes this week involve a bunch of kicking drills — a good ol’ kick the target class.  It has been a while since I’ve done a bunch of spinning back hook kicks, 360 kicks, jump back kicks, and the like.  Nice thing about being an instructor, I can always lead the intermediates in that sort of class and join in along with them.

Other than that, I’m feeling pretty good about things.  I have a couple of essays to write, and I should get on those soon.

TKD, Training

I was off of training for a few days.  In fact, I didn’t work out Thursday all the way through Monday, which means I had five days off.  It felt pretty good.

But then, it felt good to get back to it today as well.  I did the P90x Plyometric workout, which always leaves me gasping for breath.  Then I taught a decently-sized beginner class of 8 students.  I ran them through an aerobic workout, then on to a poomse section.  My thought in recent weeks is to do at least 10 minutes of forms each class as a group.  However, I think I need to spend more individual time with the students.  I’m seeing some small individual errors that are hard to correct in a group setting.  Maybe next week I’ll break down into individual forms work.

After class I worked on my two bong (staff) forms, as well as Pyong Won, the 4th black belt TKD form.  Just a quick 10 minutes worth of work, but I am a little rusty on those.  Well, in truth, I’m still working on learning Pyong Won.

On another note, I finally finishing reading Warrior Mind, the martial arts book written by one of the senior students of my instructor’s instructor.  It is an interesting book, and I’m promising a full review of it shortly.

TKD, Training

We had a small beginner class today — just four people.  There would have been a fifth, but he got the time confused and was dropped off an hour early.

But we did have a new student today, a high school junior.  She has dance experience, and was very good at visual learning, mimicking my movements.  I gave her a private class after running a group warmup, and we went through some dojang protocol, punches, kicks, and a couple of stances.  She did a great job, and hopefully she enjoyed it enough to keep coming back.

Yesterday’s intermediate and advanced classes were packed.  Some faces we hadn’t seen for a few weeks were back with the start of the school year.  Much easier to keep up the energy in larger classes.

TKD, Teaching