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.

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).

Information Overload

Wow, this must have been one of the more intense training sessions I’ve had in recent times. Not just physically, but also mentally.

I’ve recently been promoted to the next belt and so I’m learning a few new techniques. At this point I must say, I’m not a quick learner and need more time than others to get my head around a new technique, so today was a big challenge.

We’ve had a few additions to our training group since the beginning of the year, so we do a good bit of very basic exercises, which suits me well, because it allows me to revisit some of the things I meant to have learned when I first started (not that long ago). So first off we did an exercise to learn how to generate power through rotation and linking our body to our weapon (in this case the hand) to increase the effective mass. I still use too much strength in my arm and shoulder to generate power rather than linking the arm and hand to my body and using its rotation. I think towards the end I managed to do it a bit better.

Closely tied to the initial exercise was a new punching technique, which uses hip rotation and the shift of weight from back to front leg as the main source of power. It’s a very subtle technique meant to be used while the opponent is distracted by a hand in front of his face, or a similar diversion.
As I expected I started using my shoulder to generate the power again, which meant I was raising my elbow. This completely defeated the purpose of the technique, as it gives away the intent. The challenge was therefore in trying to keep the elbow tucked in, pressed to the ribs, and using rotation of the hips to shoot the arm forward. It proved to be more difficult than I expected.
The second aspect of the technique is using a snapping or whipping motion (remaining pretty linear mind) rather than pushing through the target as you would for a lunge punch. This therefore involved a quick forward action and equally quick retraction of the arm. Throughout the technique there is little tension to allow for a quick acceleration. Only at the instance of impact will the whole body be tensed to transfer the maximum force possible.
I will need to practice this technique quite a bit I recon, if I ever want to nail it. But then, I’ve just started learning it, so I shall not despair quite yet.

Finally, I got to practice my forward kick (just started learning that one last week) by kicking a tree for what seemed like hours, but was probably only 15 minutes. Nevertheless, the muscles in my hips were burning from lifting my leg. I never used to use these muscles in my life before TKD, so they are quite underdeveloped, I hope in time they will get stronger. Anyway, the main thing I need to focus on with this kick for now is the quick snapping motion and making sure I stretch my foot at the point of maximum extension. This too is quite a new concept to me, lifting my toes while the leg and foot are extended/stretched.