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!

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.

Emotions running high…and low

This will be a very personal entry to my blog, but I think it’s worth sharing.

I’ve gone through an emotional rollercoaster over the past couple of weeks, with the (anti-)climax occurring on Friday night. I’ll spare you the details, but needless to say it involves the opposite sex, a friend I hold in very high regards. I wanted more than the friendship and she (dealing with the situation extremely maturely, which I thank her for) explained to me that she just didn’t see us working out as a couple. Now despite the fact that I kind of expected this outcome (I chose to close my eyes at the obvious, I always do that and hope for the best), I was still devastated and am currently going through the phase of what another friend of mine referred to as the “emotional shock”. It will take a bit of time, but eventually I will bounce back…

Now what does this have to do with TKD, you might ask. To me TKD is the trampoline that allows me to bounce back. Whenever I’ve had problems in the past year or so since starting to train, TKD helped me a lot in re-focusing my mind. Training to me is a great way to take my thoughts away from the things that trouble me in my life, be it work, family issues or (as it is in this case) heartache.
Usually when I have a major problem in my life, it engulfs me entirely, I struggle to deal with other things, I loose concentration and can be a real pain in the a** to my friends. But whenever I train, I seem to be able to shut out everything else entirely and just focus on the moment. It helps me clear my mind and reset, it allows me to look at things in perspective.
What’s curious is the fact that during these times I seem to really make good progress (or at least I think I do). I feel motivated to push myself harder than usual and surprise myself as to what I’m capable of achieving.

So here is a call to those few people who actually read my blog. Do you have similar experiences when you train? Is TKD, or whatever style you train in, a way for you to escape your everyday life for a few hours? Share your thoughts!

The Beginning of the End

I appreciate that this one is a bit late, but I haven’t been at home for the past two nights. So when I’m referring to “today” I mean last Thursday (not that it really matters)

Tonight’s training was yet another interesting one; in fact, I can’t say I’ve ever had a boring session. I’ll take two, perhaps three major points away from it.

Number one: Forward kick
Retracting my leg as fast as sending it out is still not coming naturally to me and I really need to focus on this, but there’s progress and in time I recon I’ll manage. However today’s session wasn’t just focusing on that. Today was about power generation, or as my instructor likes to refer to it: Juicing it up.
One of the other students kindly held up the kicking shield and my instructor and I laid it on him by alternatively kicking with plenty of force. Initially I really used all the muscles in my leg to really put pressure on the shield and although there was plenty of power there, it wasn’t quite the point of the exercise. My kick was very slow and unbalanced, nothing like a proper forward kick. The power of the humble forward kick is generated by thrusting the hips forward, not by much, but enough to really put some grunt into this actually rather fast and “unspectacular” kick. The other aspect is balance; we were doing the kick not from a standing position, but by slowly walking up to the target. The way to keep you balance through the kick then becomes more “interesting”, because when walking naturally your balance is between the two legs and not on one leg as you would have it for a kick. To shift the balance to the supporting leg when kicking you simply chamber the kicking leg coming through the path of the supporting leg, simple. And so easy to remember, as it is what we’ve been doing this for all punches all along!

Number two: The mindset
This lesson came about as we were playing a little game to teach us how we should move when faced with multiple opponents and how stressing this can be, both physically and mentally.
Our instructor told us a nice little story about a tea master and a samurai and the way our mindset influences our ability to perform at martial arts. I’ll not repeat the story at this stage, because a) I’m lazy :-) and b) I’m not a good story teller.
Enough to say that the main lesson from the story is that when we perform any martial arts technique, we will have to have our mind calm and focused on what we are doing. Sound simple, but when exhausted and faced with the danger of imminent death it’s not simple at all. This is why we train our techniques in a controlled environment and spar, to prepare us for the (hopefully never occurring) situation where we have to put our lessons into practice.

Number three: The beginning of the end
The way our instructor’s syllabus is structured is in my opinion very clever. Rather than dumping all sorts of techniques on beginners, we are taught the very basics and as we progress through the ranks the complexity of the techniques increases.
I’m not sure if it is as a side effect of this, or if it is intentional (I shall ask at our next training session), but this leads to an interesting fact when looking at the sequence of a fight. What we learn as beginners, through the first three belt ranks, is in fact the end of the fight. The final blow or takedown, when our opponent is weak and we focus all our energy on ending the fight with a single technique.
This is the mindset we should have when performing these techniques; focussing on executing them with precision and determination.

That’s it for now. Unfortunately our instructor will be travelling for the next couple of weeks, so I will have to train in my own time, more so than usual. I’ll focus on the forward kick and losing a bit more of that excess fat I’m carrying around (damned be that lovely food at Christmas time).