State of My Arts

Well, the cold I mentioned the last time was a bit more serious.  I finally went to a doctor the day before Thanksgiving, and her diagnosis is that it started as a viral infection, then I got a secondary bacterial ear infection and another bronchial infection as well.  I got put on three prescriptions and am now feeling a lot better, but not back to normal yet.  When I take a deep breath, I start coughing.  Ears are still a bit clogged as well.

It turns out my health problems could be worse.  My Hapkido instructor was out sick with pneumonia, and his symptoms started the same way mine did.  And the guy I was working with at BJJ on Monday had basically the same thing as well, though he went through two separate courses of antibiotics (one of which was the same I took).  So I guess this sort of thing is going around this area.

But, not being one to allow such minor complaints stop me, I started working out again on Monday.  I went to BJJ class, which was a normally-structured class: warmup, techniques, then sparring.  One of the techniques was a half guard sweep, which I should really remember because my half guard is atrocious.  Tuesday I had a family thing to go to, so I did the P90x Chest & Back workout instead of teaching TKD and going to BJJ.  The P90x knocked me down for the count.  I had to pause it twice to catch my breath (and push the nausea down a bit), and even then I couldn’t do nearly as many reps as I normally do.

Tonight was the class trifecta: Hapkido class followed by teaching the TKD intermediates (greens and blues) followed by the red and black belt class.  The Hapkido class wasn’t too physically taxing.  But then I kept the intermediate class pretty high energy since we had two visiting teenage 2nd dans who just moved into the area and are looking for a new school.  Hopefully they had fun.  Anyway, I joined in with most things and gave myself a pretty good workout there.  Then the next class took most of the energy I had left.

Being out sick for several weeks allowed my inner glutton to surface.  My caloric intake remained about the same (until Thanksgiving), but without exercising I put on some weight.  My BJJ partner thought I felt more like 225 than my current 200.  And tonight I told one of the black belts that I put on 6 or 7 pounds in the last few weeks, and she said “Oh, is that all?”.  I’m taking that to mean that I look like I put on more like 15.  Okay, she didn’t really mean it that way, but it makes a better story that way.

Regardless, I need to lose some weight, so I’m trying to eat less without necessarily counting calories.  Trying to get from the 201 I weighed at today down to 194 by Christmas.  Then I’ll screw it up by gorging on cookies, but at least I’ll have gotten down to a better weight before I do.

BJJ, Hapkido, Health, TKD, Teaching

Before it completely disappears from my mind, I need to give a quick recap of the Portland seminar that was two weeks ago.

The alarm went off at 4:15 AM on Friday.  Quick breakfast, and was picked up for the drive to the airport.  Got there, went through security (slowly), got to the plane on time.  Uneventful flight, one connection in Salt Lake City.  We got in around 12:30 local time, having covered 3,000 or so miles.  It was around 1:15 when we made it to our hotel, which gave me just enough time to unpack my uniforms and rest a bit before being picked up to go to my Hapkido test.

Grand Master Garrison is an amazing martial artist, having trained for over 50 years with some fantastic martial artists over the years.  He’s an old-school type of teacher: if you do something wrong, he’ll let you know in no uncertain terms.  So it’s pretty intimidating when he’s got his eye on you.  The testing panel had around seven 3rd-dans-and-up observing us.  There were 4 of us testing, one for 1st dan, 2 for 2nd dan, and 1 for 3rd dan.

So, that sets the stage.  It is already becoming semi-legendary in our dojang that he took issue with how we came to attention (some of us had fists, some open hands), how we bowed (too deeply), and how we came to ready stance (hands too close to the body and not strong enough).  We went through a number of basics, from horse riding stance punches to moving punches and kicks before we got into more of the meat of the test — movement, locks, throws, falls, and various defenses against punches and grabs.  I came under fire for my 8-point-balance breathing exercise (completely stance and then extending arms), front stance (too much weight on the lead leg), and kote gaeshi (leaving my chin out).  My throws were considered pretty decent.

The four of us were kind of mentally and physically drained by the end of the test, which lasted a bit over an hour and a half.  Most of us stuck around in the parking lot afterwards, rehashed things, and had some food.  Then it was time for the evening session.  By the time that was over, I had been up for 18 hours, travelled 3,000 miles and had 4 hours of martial arts training.  We wrapped it up with dinner afterwards, and I had one of the oddest-named meals I’ve ever had (a Communications Breakdown Burger).

The following day we had a morning session and an afternoon session.  Over the three sessions, we covered a variety of things.  The main focus of the techniques were Tenkan variations, Kote Gaeshi, Osoto Gari, and Tai Otoshi.  The school has a very strong judo focus to it; Grand Master Garrison was an Olympic-caliber judo player in the 60’s, and two of his senior instructors are excellent judo guys as well.  I personally want to get as much exposure to judo as possible, because it is just fantastic stuff, and serves as a great base for just about anything you’d like to do in close-quarter combat.  And I think my new favorite technique is Harai Goshi, even though I’ve hardly ever done it.

Another highlight of the seminar was a talk by one of the instructors who is a police veteran and SWAT team leader.  I personally have never been in a physical confrontation, and it is good to get information from someone who has been there.  He talked about a couple of his favorite techniques.  He likes Kote Gaeshi; once he had the guy in the beginning of the lock and the guy reached behind his back for a gun in his waistband.  He cranked on the lock and flipped the guy up in the air.  As he was coming down, the police officer aimed the guy’s elbow right on the curb of the street.  Really messed up the guy’s arm, but the gun was no longer a problem.  He also likes inside leg kicks and a front heel kick to the chin.  He also tries to avoid any techniques that might lead to exchanging bodily fluids, which eliminates punches to the face.  Very interesting stuff.

We wrapped up the weekend with a dinner party at the Garrisons’ house.  Lots of people, lots of food.  It was a good time, though pretty exhausting.  We got up a bit before 4 AM the next day for the flight back.

We finally got the results of the promotion exam this past Friday, and all 3 of us passed.  So now I’m a 2nd dan in Hapkido.

Hapkido

Now that I’ve hit 3rd dan in TKD, I’m reflecting a bit on where I’m headed.

In TKD…

I’m continuing to teach, that’s a given.  My training will continue as it has been.  I’ve been emphasizing low, centered movement, but I’m still working on improving that.  I also had the chance to watch part of a video from my black belt exam where I was sparring.  To my own eye, I looked slow and fairly immobile.  Some techniques were good, but my movement was only middling.  I need to work on quickness and slipping techniques.  My body type isn’t really built for that (6′ 195, large thighs), but I think I need to improve in quickness and balance.  Added core strength would be a plus.

In Hapkido…

Okay, this one is really easy.  2nd dan test in 2 weeks.  Many of the same principles I mentioned in the TKD section also apply here.  I need to transition from entries into techniques more fluidly.  We’ve been doing a lot of countering drills, feeling the balance and shifting to a different technique when the opponent’s energy changes.  It is great stuff, but I still find it difficult to quickly recognize the balance and positioning, and then figure out my best more from there.

In BJJ…

Finally going to start it back up!  It has been 10 months.  I’ve missed grappling, so I am looking forward to going back.  Here, quite simply, I need need to work on not injuring myself.  I’m going to try to work on technique and fluid movement without relying on muscling my opponent around.  Easier said then done… once the blood starts flowing in a grappling match, my competitive instincts take over.

In Kali…

Well, something has to slip.  I stopped it leading up to my promotion exam, and I didn’t miss it.  I think that means I’m not ready to be a student.

In Fitness…

P90x has been great.  However, for 2/3 times per week, I’m not sure it is the best use of my time.  The number of reps in the workouts is high, but maybe I’d get better results by splitting those reps across more days.  I think I’ll do the Plyo workout periodically.  Maybe I’ll try out kettleballs sooner or later.  If the weather cooperates, I might going jogging more often.  I went for around 2.5 miles on Sunday, and it was almost fun.

BJJ, Fitness, Hapkido, TKD, Training

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

This past week, the head of our Hapkido program, a 7th dan in Hapkido (who also holds rank in a bunch of other disciplines) approached me about the possibility of testing for 2nd dan in Hapkido in the middle of October.  As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I”m currently prepping for my TKD exam. 

The TKD exam will most likely be around 3 hours in duration.  The components of the test will be: kicking and punching in multitudinous ways; forms (8 Tae Guk forms, plus 4 black belt forms); bong (staff) techniques including 2 forms; Ho Shin Sul (aka self-defense, usually from various grabs); board breaking; sparring; ukemi (rolling and falling); and Question-and-Answer.  I think I got everything listed there.  I think there are 8-10 of us testing, including a few young ‘uns going for junior black belt rank.  Should be fun.

Back to the Hapkido exam.  Nothing is really set yet, so it may not even happen.  In the middle of October, a group of us will be flying out to Portland for a Hapkido seminar.  We tend to go out there once or twice a year.  We’ll fly out on Friday, train that night and all of Saturday, then fly back on Sunday.  Our instructor’s instructor is a 9th dan in Hapkido, and gives us enough to think about in those two days of training to last several months.

Anyhow, I’ll be waking up around 4:00 in the morning that day, flying from Philadelphia to Portland, and then it might be that I hop off the plane and take a promotion exam an hour later.  We’ll see.  As I said, it may not even happen, so I’ll just take whatever comes.  But even if I do test after a 3,000 mile cross-country flight, it probably won’t be as uncomfortable as my first dan Hapkido test, when I tested with a dislocated rib.  Falling was not comfortable that day.

Hapkido

There have been a few bits of news and notes around the dojang.

• Master Morgan’s book has been released, and I have my personally autographed copy.  In his note to me, he makes a crack about me needing a haircut (I’m bald).  It is neat to have a book written by someone you have trained with, if only once or twice a year.  I haven’t started reading it yet, but I will do so fairly shortly and give a recap of it when I’m done.
• As I’ve mentioned previously, this weekend is the children’s tournament at our dojang.  Last I’ve heard, there are only expected to be 25-30 competitors.  I put a couple students who aren’t competing on the spot during class, and just kind of got mumbled “’cause I don’t want to” responses.  Disappointing.  Friday night is dojang prep and ring setup.
• I’ll be testing for my 3rd dan in TKD in September.  It will be my last TKD promotion exam, as subsequent ranks are presented when the head instructor deems they have been earned.  The 3rd-to-4th guideline for time-in-rank is 5 years, so this will be my final promotion for quite a while.  2nd dan Hapkido isn’t really on the radar, either.  Purple belt in BJJ will require me to actually start up that training again, and wouldn’t happen for a few years once I do start back up.  Phase 1 Kali certification might happen at some point.
• Speaking of BJJ, I do miss grappling.  My shoulder is getting a lot stronger, but getting it caught in a Kimura or an omo plata would be a very, very bad idea.  I had been thinking that maybe I could restart in August, as my next doctor’s appointment is on August 5.  But with the upcoming TKD promotion exam, maybe I’m better off holding off on BJJ until after that.
• Sometimes, class attendence is weird.  This week, my intermediate class had exactly 4 students.  Last week, there were 15.
• I missed last night’s Hapkido class because I got stuck at work.  Can’t remember the last time that happened.
• The red belt I had written about a while ago has been coming regularly to Hapkido classes.  It’s good for him and he is enjoying it.  He might still be a bit frustrated with TKD, but he’s fitting in nicely with a different focus to his training.

BJJ, Hapkido, TKD, Training

Periodically our dojang will change the training schedule up a bit.  Usually this is due to changing demographics within the school.  For instance, a couple of years ago there were a number of juniors and seniors in high school — but now those students are off to college.  When I first got my black belt, there was a black belt-only class on Friday night.  A black belt couple from out of town would come to the dojang for that class and stay nearby for the following morning’s class as well.  All told, there were usually a dozen or so in class.  It was the high point of my training week — I was a new black belt training alongside a dozen other black belts and working on advanced techniques.  Maybe nine months after I got my black belt, attendance had dropped to the point where the class was no longer sustainable.  The out-of-town couple had stopped coming, some others had other regular responsibilities, and the remainder no longer made it as high a priority.

Similarly, there was a poom (junior black belt) class that regularly drew 10-12 advanced children, though maybe a year later it was down to three or four.  Ditto Friday night Hapkido, which had been down to maybe 3 regulars for a number of months.

Most recently, the Monday night Hapkido class fell by the wayside.  Monday was the “advanced” Hapkido class, though the Hapkido program was small enough that it was the same people as in the other, all-level, Hapkido classes.  The schedule change in the fall added a black belt TKD class immediately prior to the Monday Hapkido class, which made for a pretty tough double workout, and most opted to just participate in the TKD class.  In addition, the regular Monday night Hapkido instructor had been having shoulder and medical insurance issues, and he could no longer come to class.  We have several well-qualified Hapkido instructors to fill that void, so it was most likely due more to the schedule change than anything else.

But as one falls, another rises to take its place.  Recently, we’ve seen a strong growth in the Wednesday and Friday Hapkido classes.  Both of those classes are taught by an instructor who lived and trained out in Portland, Oregon (where a number of us periodically go for seminars) until he met one of the black belts from our school, fell in love, married her, and moved out here.  Anyhow, he is a fantastic instructor, a 7th dan with over 30 years of experience.  He runs a very traditional class, and gives us a bit of a different take on Hapkdio than we’ve been used to.  Those Wednesday and Friday classes are up from maybe 4-5 students to 10-12.

It is interesting how different classes wax and wane.  This week, I switched teaching duties with another instructor for the beginner classes (I taught Thursday instead of Tuesday).  The Thursday beginner class was very small (six people) — I’m not sure if the Thursday class is normally that small, or if I caught it on a light day (the Tuesday class is normally at least 10).  The following class, a green belt and up class, was very well attended.

Overall, adult participation has been very light over the last month, though it did pick up noticeably this week.  Here’s hoping for a great summer of training.

Hapkido, TKD, Training

I mentioned several weeks ago that I worked with one of the red belt candidates during the promotion exam.  He was very tense and rigid.  This is common when he is training — all of his muscles are continuously engaged.  His kiyap tends to be an explosive release of pent-up air, rather than a quick contracting of the abdominal muscles.  I’ve worked with him on several occasions on relaxing during techniques, and while he works at improving these things, they do not come naturally to him.

Things came somewhat to a head during his promotion exam.  He has high standards for himself, and takes his training seriously.  But the dark side of that occurs when he doesn’t live up to his own expectations.  And when that happens, he has a lot of negative self-talk.  He was even verbalizing some of that under his breath when I was his uke for wrist grabs.  I told him to relax, breathe, and slow down.  All of those suggestions were probably as welcome as a tornado in a trailer park.

He was promoted at the conclusion of the exam, obviously frustrated and disappointed by his performance.  At the end of the exam, the black belt panel gets a chance to offer some critques and suggestions of things to work on in the future.  The comments by the other instructors involved the same concepts I have mentioned.

Two days after the exam, I got an email from him saying that he was going to suspend his martial arts training due to some personal (family and work-related) issues that he needed to work through.  He felt that his martial arts training wasn’t helping him in those areas.  He was also frustrated at his inability to get his basics straightened out.  After sitting on the email for a day or two, I wrote him back.  The gist of my email was that if he needed the time for personal issues, that obviously came first.  But as far as training, I didn’t want him to stop due to frustration.  All of his technique issues (short-arming punches and punches, slow turning kicks, poor balance at times, clenched kiyap) are due to the same lack of relaxation.  I also suggested that if TKD wasn’t meeting his needs, that perhaps he might try Hapkido at the dojang, or possibly yoga elsewhere.  I received a “Thanks” email in reply, but no other communication from him.  I knew that at least one other instructor had spoken with him about his discontinuing his training, so there were other voices in his ear.

But, much to my surprise (and pleasure), he came to this past Saturday’s TKD class.  He was in a much better frame of mind.  He has decided to start taking Hapkido, which should definitely help him move more fluidly.  He is going to scale back the TKD to just Saturday morning, which is usually a high-energy class.  Hopefully he’ll be able to begin to apply some of the principles he’ll be learning in Hapkido during the Saturday class.

Yesterday was his first Hapkido class.  I didn’t get a chance to speak with him afterwards (since I was busy teaching a class), so hopefully it went well for him.  It was a tough class for a new student to jump into, as it turned out, since we were working a lot on a counter to kotegaeshi (wrist turnout), which is tough when you don’t know how to do a kotegaeshi in the first place.  We’ll see how he does with his new martial arts focus.

Hapkido, TKD, Teaching

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

This past week I was able to rejoin some of the advanced TKD classes.

• Monday: Class focused on Hapkido-type drills, and I took part in ones that weren’t troubling for my shoulder.  I did a few very low soft rolls on my good side, but I didn’t want to take any falls.
• Tuesday: In teaching the beginner adult class, I focused on one-step sparrings.
• Wednesday: In teaching the intermediate adult class, the focus was on poomsae.  In the advanced class, the focus was again on poomsae; due to the way the class broke down, I worked with three pre-teen red belts on Tae Geuk Pal Jang, the last of the student forms.
• Saturday: This week, the Saturday class was a Kali class.  I actually did some two-stick hitting, though I was very careful of my bad arm.  Not a particularly intense cardio-type of class, but it was fun to be working sticks again.

In addition to the classes, I used the exercise bike (I think) four times this week, for between 35 and 40 minutes at a time.  Things are going pretty well.

Hapkido, TKD, Teaching, Training