State of My Arts

My workouts are feeling good again.  I still have clogged ears, but everything else has seemingly returned to normal.

Last Friday was a gup test, and I was one of five on the testing panel.  9 students tested, and they all did a great job.  It was a good 2-hour test, and even the young ones maintained focus throughout.

I finally taught the beginner adult TKD class tonight after 3 weeks away (2 weeks sick and 1 week with a family commitment).  We pulled out the mats and worked on rolling and falling.  Four students had never rolled before, so it was good to get them some experience.  We went through front rolls, back rolls, side falls, back fall, front fall.  So we ran the gamut there.  At the end, myself and two other instructors did a couple simple takedowns, and I gave each a hip throw.  Just a litle application of techniques there.

BJJ has been going pretty well.  I still stink at it, but some things are coming along.  Yesterday’s drilling focused on collar chokes, and it is kind of crazy how many variations there are.  Today’s drilling was half-guard sweeps and half-mount passes.  I’m pretty pathetic in half-guard, so it is good to drill that.  Sparring has been a bit of a struggle.  Blue and Purple belts at my size (and some of those smaller than I am) pretty much have their way with me.  Some of the stronger and more experienced white belts battle me to a standstill.  But I managed to get a gi choke on a newly-minted purple belt today (okay, I outweigh him by 45 pounds).  Then he came back with a nice armbar that opened up for him when I was defending a choke attempt.  Last night was about my toughest night: one of the bigger blue belts ran a clinic on me, probably half a dozen different submissions in 10 minutes.  But it is all fun and a good learning experience.

BJJ, TKD, Teaching

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

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

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

The start of the school year inaugurates some changes in the dojang.  We’ve got a number of black belts who have been around during the summer months, but most of them are now off to college.  Most of the area high schools start classes on Monday as well.

Attendance always drops off a bit during the summer.  The last two weeks, the intermediate adult class has been decimated.  Last week, there were three students.  One of those students is now working in China for the next 15 months.  This week — exactly one student showed up.  This is a class that has had as many as 15 students, though most often is 8-10.  The beginner class this week had six students.

Overall, we’re a very top-heavy dojang.  We have a lot of black belts, including a lot of instructors holding advanced rank.  But over the last 4 months or so, we haven’t really had any new students join the adult classes.  One of the cardio kickboxers has had a couple of TKD classes, but that’s about it.  The next most junior students are a couple of white belt with yellow stripe boys, and they’ve been here for a number of months already.

Obviously, this has been a very difficult last couple of years for the dojang, with our head instructor contracting leukemia around two years ago, and ultimately passing away earlier this year.  The instructors have remained devoted to the dojang, but we’re just lacking new bodies coming in the door.

Hopefully the start of the school year will bring in some new students.  But it certainly isn’t all bleak — the class after the class-of-one had 18 students, all red or black belts.

TKD, Teaching

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

Beginner Class:We had around 8 or so students this week.  I started them off with ho shin sul (self defense) from wrist grabs.  At the white/yellow belt level, we’re more concerned with teaching escapes than we are with teaching joint manipulations.  We moved on to basic techniques moving up and down the floor.  Finally, we spent the remainder of the class working on poomsae.  4 of the students are still learning the first form (Tae Guk Il Jang), and we had several others working on different poomsae.  I primarily worked with one of the students on her 4th form (Tae Guk Sa Jang).  Good solid basics class.

Intermediate class:Boy, you can tell when it is summer, because the classes are hit-or-miss for attendance.  We had 3 this week.  All females, as it turned out — 2 mothers of teenagers, and one aged 11-12.  We did a fairly quick warmup, then I let them choose what they wanted to work on.  The most senior wanted to work on problem kicks, which we had done the previous week.  But it was good work for all 3 of them.  We worked back kick, back side kick, and back hook kick.  The primary issue with the hook kicks this week was that they weren’t continuing the hip motion through the kick, which was bleeding away most of the power and leaving their kicks short of the target.  I was trying a few different drills to help them keep going with that hip.  Finally, I worked one that seemed to help.

Normally, a back hook kick is designed to hit a target that is right in front of you.  In partner work, the holder will hold the focus paddle nearly head-high straight in front of the person doing the kick.  Instead of that, I moved the holder 90 degrees.  So the kicker might have a left leading leg, and be kicking with the right leg, the body rotating clockwise so the back faces the target briefly.  I moved the target so that the paddle was held on the right side of the kicker — so the kicker has to turn 270 degrees instead of 180.  They were leery of the drill to begin with, but they started to get the hang of it.  Then I had them do the normal hook kick, which seemed much easier to them at this point, and there seemed to be some improvement there.  We’ll see how they continue with their kicks.

Finally, we spent 15 minutes going over poomsae.

One final note — one of the women was accidentally wearing her teenage son’s dobok top (they got mixed up in the wash).  During warmups, I had them doing a few variations of pushups.  I was doing the pushups with them, and the one woman kept adjusting her uniform.  I decided to do my pushups sideways to the class, rather than facing them so that I wouldn’t be looking straight at her.  At the end of class I asked her if she was wearing her son’s dobok again (last week they swapped tops right before class).  She told me that yes, that was the case, but the story was even more interesting.  She forgot to pack a sports bra (she came straight from work), and was actually wearing a strapless bra under her oversized uniform top.  She was hoping we weren’t going to spar.  Heh.  I think she’ll have the right equipment next week.

TKD, Teaching

I had thought I’d work on basic skills this week, but instead I focused on “problem kicks”.  For the beginner class, I did a side kick clinic.  The most common issue with side kicks from beginners is that they are still rotating as they kick.  The result is a kick that is much more like a roundhouse kick than anything else.  So the trick is to get the students to finish their rotation prior to kicking out, making sure their bodies are aligned correctly, ensuring that they are hitting with the heel while turning the ankle inward, and they rechamber their leg after the kick.  So there’s a lot going on — it is definitely the toughest of the basic TKD kicks to do well as a beginner.  The class made good progress, though, so it was time well spent.

For the intermediate class, the most common problem kick is the spinning back hook kick.  The tornado arc kick is often an issue as well, but I focused on several varieties of hook kicks.  The thing I was trying to instill into the class tonight was rotating the torso to get the spine all twisty before putting the feet in motion.  The students at this level mostly rotate all parts of their bodies at the same rate, which limits the amount of torque you can get on this kick.  I like to try to work on these types of refinements relatively early on so they don’t end up practicing a kick a certain way for a couple of years and grooving patterns of motion that will be tough to break.  They worked hard on this tonight, with mixed success.  I also worked on front leg front hook kicks with them, but emphasizing throwing the body forward a bit as the leg is extended out — kind of just skooching forward.  Not a sliding advance, just a small body movement to gain a few inches.

TKD, Teaching

Finally, a post.  Things are going well in my life and my training, but I just haven’t gotten around to posting in a while.  So here’s a bit of a recap.

When I teach, I generally am teaching the subjects that resonate the most with me at the time.  This week, it was rolling and falling.  The beginner class was pretty small at seven students, so we pulled out some of the mats and worked on rolling and falling.  Two of the students were white belts who had never done it before, and several others had only done it once.  I’m not sure if my instructions on soft rolling are improving, or if the new students were just naturals.  On the surface, they didn’t appear to be naturals, so maybe I can feel good about my teaching.  After rolling for a while, we worked on side falls, which also went well.  Finally, we worked on takedowns from a padded baton attack.  The students attacked the black belts and got practice falling safely.  Then we reversed rolls and had the students take the black belts down so they could begin to feel how to off-balance an opponent.

The intermediate class this week was primarily run by the secondary instructor for that class.  The Wednesday Hapkido class overlaps with the intermediate class by 15 minutes, so I let him do the warmup so I could stay for the full Hapkido class.  He was having so much fun running class that I let him stay with it for most of the rest of the class.  He was running a lot of moving kick/punch drills.  I took over the last fifteen minutes for 1 minute max pushups and situps, then for some kneeling wrestling takedown fun, and finally a few minutes on doing a scissors sweep from guard.  I might be adding some more ground work in the coming weeks.

The previous week, I focused on forms and one-steps.  The week prior to that was a high-rep upbeat class with a lot of kicks.  Spinning back hook kick is a common trouble spot for most of the green belts, so I think there’s a good chance I’ll focus on that with them soon.

TKD, Teaching

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