State of My Arts

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

It is now 4 weeks until my 3rd dan test.  Last week I was mulling over what I should change up in my routine to get the most ready for my test.

Well, last Sunday I went through the P90X Plyometric routine — and boy, is that a killer.  I forgot exactly how tough that routine is, since I had only done it once before.  I resolved at the time to do that once a week — though I’m now out of whack with that, as I will relate henceforth.

Last week was as follows: Sunday: P90X Plyo; Monday: Black Belt TKD; Tuesday: P90X Chest, Shoulders, Triceps (lifting), plus Beginner TKD teaching; Wednesday: Hapkido, Intermediate TKD teaching, Advanced TKD; Thursday: rest; Friday: Hapkido; Saturday: Intermediate/Advanced TKD. 

The item missing from that list is lifting on Friday.  I just wasn’t up to it that day.  That was just as well, since the Hapkido class involved a number of hip throws.  The class that night was 4 students, and I was the 2nd lightest of that group.  So I got the easier duty of throwing the female black belt in attendance.  The only tricky thing about throwing her is that I need to squat lower to get my center below hers.  Still easier than throwing the 220- and 250- pound gentlemen.

Today, I opted not to do the Plyo routine.  I felt like lifting, since I hadn’t done that for 5 days.  Today was the Back and Biceps routine.  My biceps are pretty darn fatigued now (mission accomplished).  Usually at the end of the lifting routines, I’ll do the 15 minute abs/core routine.  Didn’t feel like doing that, either, so my guilt-ridden conscience prompted me to go for a short run, somewhere between a mile and a quarter and a mile and a half.

My weight is currently in the 195-ish range (194.6 this morning).  Dropping another couple of pounds would be nice, though I’m running a little low on time to do that barring a concerted dieting attempt.  This week is the weekend of Labor Day, and I’ll be taking a 4-day weekend (from work and training) and eating a lot of unhealthy food.  Then there will be two weeks of regular training, followed by the week of the test.  During that week, I won’t be doing any extra exercise, just TKD classes on Monday and Wednesday.

And I’m sure I’ll be ready to go.

TKD, Training

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

So, I’ll be testing for 3rd dan in TKD on September 25, which is five weeks from today.

Our black belt promotion exams are usually three hours or so.  I feel like I’m in good enough shape right now to have a good performance, but I figure I’ll try to peak at that time.  My current exericise regimen is TKD on Mon, Weds, and Sat; Hapkido on Weds and Fri; teaching on Tues and Thurs; and lifting weights on Sun, Tues, and Fri.  I’ve dropped Kali for the time being, as it is too rough on my shoulder.

I can’t really add anything to that load without overtaxing myself.  So I suppose the only real change I can make is replacing my weight lifting routines with something else.  Cardio/core on test night will be more useful than added strength.  The options that come to mind are running, yoga, plyometrics, or cardio. 

So, faithful readers, any comments on what has worked well for you when you are trying to peak for a particular event?

Fitness, TKD