Back to Basics

In yesterdays class I joined the white belts in their exercises, as I’ve been progressing rather well with the requirements for my current rank.
It turned out that this was a good wake-up call. I’ve not practiced my basic techniques (lunge punch, lower block, middle block) for a few months now and I’ve become quite sloppy. Particularly my power generation had suffered.
So, I’ve set myself on practicing these basic techniques to get back up to speed.

Protecting your jewels…

Every man who’s ever been hit/kicked/fallen onto their twig and berries will know that this is one area of the body you’ll want to avoid a blow to. Not only can it cause you the god given power to create life, but it will cause a paralysing pain, literally. Therefore in an aggressive environment it is vital to protect your groin area.

This is exactly what we practiced in yesterday’s training session. The pattern associated with my current belt rank (Do-san) has block/punch just before moving into an upper block (chukyo marki). To see how this works in a combative environment, my instructor set out to kick me in the nether region and I was to block the kick by punching down onto his leg/foot.
As an answer to my question what the best target was to the downward punch, my instructor resorted to his tried and tested method of “learning by feeling”… So, I was to hold up my foot while he tapped (I wouldn’t call what he did a punch) areas all over my foot and along my lower shin. Afterwards I concluded that it doesn’t matter where you hit the foot or the lower shin, because it will always hurt your opponent… a lot!

Once I managed to protect my privates from a stance I was instructed to practice covering while performing a forward kick. This seemed easy enough (or so I thought), but on my first try I quickly realised that I needed to adjust my balance quite a bit in order to stay true to my target. But again (and I suspect this will be an ongoing theme in my TKD career) “practice makes perfect”, and I’m still far from that…Key things worth remembering from the downward punching exercise are covering underneath your groin as much as in front and keep your cover throughout your kick, because that fatal blow can come at any time in its lifecycle.

I’m rollin’, rollin’, rollin’

It’s been a while since my last entry, but I’ve been very busy and didn’t have much time to keep mu blog/log updated. So rather than backtracking all that I’ve done over the past few weeks, I’ll just pick up again from here.

Last night saw me doing one of my favourite pastimes: rolling around on the floor. Usually I do this in a very drunken state, but this time it had a purpose: how not to kill yourself doing a forward roll! It was the first time I’ve done this in a TKD environment, so a few bruises were to be expected.

The main points about the way we learn to do the forward roll are:
a) Keep close to, but not on the spine and cross it about half way through the roll. If you are too far to the side however you will hit your shoulder blade, which is quite uncomfortable. I found this out the hard way.
b) Keep your head tucked in, looking at your belt. Not doing this causes you to hit your head on the floor, which again is very uncomfortable. I found this out the hard way too.
c) And this is the really important one! Always push forward. This is a forward roll, not a downward roll. Not pushing forward enough causes you to fall on your shoulder, which will wind you and hurt a lot. This too I found out the really hard way, and the considerable bruises to my shoulders bare witness to this.

In the end though I did manage to get a few good ones in, but as they say practice makes perfect and I assume that I will have to bear a few more sessions of aching shoulders before I get this one right all the time.

After the rolling around, I did some practice on my kata for this belt level (Do-san). I need to ensure to keep my punches crisp and on a centreline and generally be a bit less sloppy.
Finally I joined in with the white belts to practice some lower blocks (hardan marki)

I’m back, and lazier than ever!

It’s been a busy few weeks, hence I didn’t have time to write on my blog. To make things a bit easier on myself, I’ll not try and recap what I’ve done, but rather take things on from here.

And to make things really easy on myself, I will from now on only write about my actual TKD experience and leave out all the other things, i.e. strength and cardio training as well as flexibility. However I will pick up on those topics provided they are relevant to TKD, for a particular technique for example.