Friday, August 28, 2009

In your face

Last night I had one of the enjoyable training sessions for months. I’ve been going through a rough patch lately and it has really affected my training, but last night I was really motivated and in good spirits, which really made a difference.
One of the main lessons from this session was how we interact with an opponent, which was demonstrated through an application of Steps 17 and 18 of Taekwondo pattern Dan-gun (my master actually describes this in his blog much better than I ever could). Anyway, as we were performing the application our instructor stepped in and demonstrated it again to us, focusing our attention on the facial expression of his opponent. And indeed there was a sincere look of fear/surprise, which none of us had managed to invoke on our respective opponents. Why was this so? As he demonstrated the application again on each one of us, we realised that his hands were much closer to the opponents face right after the block than when we had tried it. This created a false impression of proximity, which in a situation like this was very intimidating, which in a real life threat situation can win you vital seconds.
So what’s the lesson? Stay in your opponents face!

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Playing the Game

In our school, we start sparring relatively late compared to other schools. Basic sparring techniques are introduced at orange belt level, limited to movement in relation to the opponent, defence against slow and predictable arm swings and breathing techniques.

About a week ago, maybe two, I had my first sparring session with our master, which to me is always a daunting (he is freakishly fast and his technique is awesome!), after my promotion to green belt, so unlike the “usual” arm swings I was expecting, he started laying it on me good and proper with kicks (some/most of which I’ve not even been taught yet) and punches. I was a bit overwhelmed to say the least. At least I managed to avoid a major catastrophe, but I recon that was more a result of my physique (I am after all about 20cm taller and 15 kg heavier that our master) than my technique.

Last Sunday’s training session saw me sparring against our master again. This time however he said that I can use (or better: try to use) a centreline punch as a weapon against him. (I must have done something right the last time we sparred to deserve this). Anyway, about 2 minutes into our session I hadn’t fired off a single punch and my master stopped to ask me why I wasn’t attacking, so I told him why. I simply couldn’t get myself to do it. Not because I was hesitant or afraid of hurting him (although that was part of the reason; there was no way I could properly control my punch in the midst of a sparring session), but because I was more focused on not getting the sh*t kicked out of me. I put all my focus on defending and wasn’t even looking for a way to land a punch.

At this stage my master made a really good analogy. Sparring is like playing numerous games at once. The main game is how you move in relation to your opponent and the environment. Then you have the game of defending against strikes, which is going on at the same time. By allowing me to attack he just added another “mini-game” to the mix. Attacking basically involves finding an opening (while still playing the other two games) and then going for it at the right time and then going back to playing the other two games; or, if the opening closes before you can profit from it just resuming with the other two games. My guess is that this “mini-game” will expand a bit, once I can (and I mean when I’m able to, rather than allowed to here) use a few more techniques, and probably include opening/creating a gap in addition to finding one sooner or later. But these are things I’ll not worry about for now. At the moment I’ll need to learn how to play the games’ basics.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Changing the way I think

This entry is as a response to one of my master's blogs.

I was surprised to actually see this blog entry, because I initially thought of this as a relatively insignificant event. However, the more I think about it, the more significant it becomes. It is a very good example of something I've noticed regularly in classes lately.

When I first started training TKD, I thought of it as a rigid concept with exact patterns and established applications. Therefore, I’ve never allowed myself to look beyond the specific application I’ve been taught. But now that I see others going through the same learning process this is changing. Incidents such as the one described by my master, where other students learn a slightly different variation of an application of a technique, made me think that maybe our style isn’t as rigid as I originally thought.

When we train applications of a technique in class these days, I catch myself more and more often trying out my own variations. This includes looking at different angles of entry, following up a block or evasive manoeuvre with different counter attacks, etc. I wouldn’t go as far as doing this with techniques I’ve just learned, but more with those I’ve been taught a while back and am more comfortable at performing. As I stated above, I’ve “caught” myself doing this, i.e. I’ve not consciously tried to come up with a variation to an application, hence these variations are minor. I think however that in time (and with a lot more practice and experience), I might become a bit more adventurous. For now though, I’ll keep “my” variations to little things, but perhaps with a more conscious approach, incorporating thoughts as to how I could make a technique work better for my own needs/abilities.

The main thing to take from this for me is that I should no longer look at our style as rigid, but rather as fluid and constantly adapting to the situation. For my study of applications this will perhaps take the focus from the “how is it done” (which is still the main focus when practicing specific techniques, particularly with new ones) to “what is it trying to achieve”.