State of My Arts

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

My TKD and Hapkido instructor is an 8th dan Grand Master in TKD, and a 5th dan in Hapkido.  He’s an amazing martial artist, and has an amazing amount of energy and personal dynamism.

Unfortunately, he’s also been battling leukemia for the last 17 months.  He’s been in and out of the hospital a number of times over that time span for chemo treatments.  Last year, it was hoped that they knocked the leukemia into remission, but the blood tests eventually proved otherwise.

Today he went into the hospital for a bone marrow transplant.  His donor is a 9/10 match — apparently he’s got an unusual type for one of the markers, so there weren’t any perfect matches.  He’ll be in the hospital for at least a month in a clean room, and afterwards he’ll have to be very careful about avoiding germs, so we’re not sure when he’ll be back.

While we always prefer to have the Grand Master around, we do have an impressive cadre of instructors, and I number myself in those ranks, albeit much lower.  Leading a number of the Hapkido classes is a 7th dan Hapkido practitioner (along with dan ranks in TKD, Judo, and Aikido) who trained under my instructor’s instructor out in Oregon for 30 years, until he met and eventually married one of the female black belts from our school and moved out East.  We also have an excellent 3rd dan Hapkidoist who is an excellent teacher running some of the other classes.

For TKD, we have two 5th dan TKD instructors; one 4th dan; several 3rd dans.  And so on.  In TKD, a 1st dan is considered a “master of the basics’, and really kind of signals the transition into advanced training.  At 4th dan, a TKD black belt is considered a Master, which is pretty much the earliest that one could run one’s own school.

So the fact that we have quite a number of upper belts means that training goes on at a high level.  But we’ll all be looking forward to his return and we’ll be keeping him in our thoughts.

Teaching

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

Last night was another night of teaching the intermediate class.  Nothing particularly out of the ordinary (warmup then poomsae), except I introduced the class to shrimping.  MarksTraining had a good post on this very subject today.  In short, shrimping is a way to move yourself into a better position when you are on the ground.  The Tae Kwon Do-ists in the class have hardly spent any time on the ground, and the movement was completely alien to most of them.  Even some of the students who had done it before looked pretty lost.

One thing that is interesting with the shrimp movement is that there are two variations that I’m aware of; two leg pushing and “killing” a leg.  The videos in the post at MarksTraining show the two-leg push variation; both hands and feet start near the same place, and you push your butt away with all four limbs.  The other way is to straighten the bottom leg and to not use it in the motion.  The idea is that that leg is trapped (such as in half guard) and there isn’t enough space to bend the knee.  Shrimping with a dead leg allows the leg to pull out from a pretty small opening.

In BJJ, we don’t really spend time shrimping, except periodically as part of the warmup.  I’m not even sure I remember our BJJ instructor really explaining the shrimp (aka hip excape) movement in enough detail to know which way he prefers when we’re going up and down the floor.  I prefer the two-footed approach shown in the videos.  But, like any sort of movement exercise, the application is going to be dependent on the situation you’re in.  And in the middle of grappling, you just do whatever works.

Back to the intermediate class, I’m a demonstrating type of instructor, and I obviously couldn’t do much demonstrating with one arm in a sling.  Still, I was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t able to convey the idea a little better.  Not that we spent more than about 4-5 minutes on the subject.  After shrimping, I had them do a crab walk.  One of the instructors dubbed shrimp + crab as “the crustaceon”.  Heh.

BJJ, TKD, Teaching

The last two days have been much the same, as far as the shoulder goes.  Yesterday, I spent much of the day not wearing the sling.  I ran the warmups for the intermediate class, doing a number of kicking drills, then working on wheel kicks and spinning wheel kicks.  I was pleased that I could still demonstrate them, even with an arm in the sling.  The remainder of class was primarily kicking drills and sparring with a little poomsae mixed in.  The final 10 minutes of class involved single and double stick Kali drills.  I took part in the single stick drills, but obviously not in the double stick ones.  I also rode the exercise bike and did my calisthenics.

Today, I was much lazier.  I spent much more of the day wearing my sling, though I left it off during the commute to and from work.  When it is 15 degrees outside like it was today, it is good to zip up the coat.  My legs were tired, so I took a pass on the exercise bike.  Not sure if it was due to overdoing it yesterday, or underdoing it today, but my body is aching enough that I took a couple of Tylenol this evening.

But still, it is going well.

Health, TKD, Teaching

I haven’t posted a shoulder update in a couple of days, because there is becoming less to write about.  I’m gradually doing more and more.  I’ve been able to tie my own shoes the last few days.  I’ve spent more and more time out of my sling, because it doesn’t hurt me to take it out.  I haven’t taken any pain medication in several days.

I’m consciously trying to avoid doing too much with my arm, and sometimes I’ll put my sling on because I’m starting to use it too much — carrying a glass of water, opening a door, that sort of thing.  Two weeks and a day since surgery, and I really can’t imagine that I’ll be wearing the sling much at all in another two weeks, much less the 4 additional weeks I was told I’d be in the sling.  The shoulder already feels much more stable than it did at any time prior to the surgery.  So it is all going very well.  I’ll definitely be sleeping with the sling on the full amount of time, because that’s the time I’d be most likely to inadvertently do something bad to it.

Tonight I led warmups for the beginner TKD class.  The aerobic portion was a lot of kick-1-2-3 (kick with one leg, step, step, step, kick with the other leg), doing front, arc, and inside and outside axe kicks.  And some ab work and pushups.  I joined in on everything except the pushups (though I did do three middling one-armed pushups).  At the class breakdown, I took two of the younger green belts and worked on one-step sparring.  Then we started in on Tae Guk Oh Jang, our fifth form.  That was somewhat challenging and amusing, since I had one arm in a sling and couldn’t demonstrate fully like I normally do.  At the end of class, I found a partner for the long box Kali (stick) drill for a few minutes, which I always enjoy.

Health, TKD, Teaching

At my dojang, a variety of ages have been ending up in the “adult” classes.  The adult classes are nominally from age 10 and up.  The children’s classes are for the real young ‘uns.  But due to a variety of scheduling conflicts, several of the younger students (green, blue, and red belts) have been attending the adult classes, specifically ones that I teach.

I don’t feel particularly comfortable teaching children.  The adults who train in the beginner and intermediate classes are highly self-motivated — they wouldn’t be there in the first place if they didn’t want to be there.  So they train hard and are looking to learn whatever they can.  Some of the kids train like motivated adults, and they are really exciting to teach.  Many others, however, act like, well… kids.

And teaching kids (who act like kids) is a different kettle of fish.  They need to be cajoled into working hard.  They need to be entertained as well, or their focus is anywhere but on working on their movements.  If someone isn’t right in their face enouraging/cajoling/pleading/threatening, they don’t end up working hard and improving.  And it is really tough for me to watch martial arts done poorly.

For example, earlier this week, I was working one-step sparring with a mixed group of green belt adults, and green/blue/red kids.  Our one step sparrings all start the same: one person steps back into a front stance low block, then steps forward into a front stance high section punch which allows the other person to defend that attack.  The kids (who have been training for several years) had lousy stances, and were giving lousy attacks.  I had the feeling of “where do I even start” when I was working with them.  Their basics were so far below the level that I am comfortable with, that it was tough to correct them over and over, and it was tough to back off a little so they could actually work on the movements.

I’ve discussed teaching children with some of the instructors who work more closely with the children.  I try to work on some things they have mentioned, such as spending less time talking, and backing off the emphasis on precision.  A number of the kids — especially in the 5-7 age groups — aren’t developmentally ready to train precisely.  But it is tough, because that means that by the time the kids get to 8, 9, or 10, they don’t have the experience of practicing effectively.  A lot of them can do the moves correctly, but most of them just don’t do so on a regular basis.

There is a mental place that I’ve got to come to when dealing with the kids, and I’m not there yet.  I think when I’m working with them I probably need to try to correct just a single movement in a particular day, whether that is a front stance, keeping hands up when sparring, or whatever, and correct them over and over throughout the class.  Otherwise I think I’ll drive myself nuts with trying to correct every single thing in a single class.

Teaching