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!

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”.

Application of a Technique

Yesterday’s training sessions saw us doing a variety of different applications and although the actual techniques varied there was a red thread running through them… at least for me there was. I was struggling with one particular aspect, which I haven’t focused on before, in all applications irrespective of the technique. I just wasn’t able to react to my opponent (actually, I don’t like that expression much, because it implies some element of animosity. I’ll refer to it as training partner or partner from now on) in the way I should have, or better wanted to.
I’ve never been so conscious of the difference between performing a technique and applying it against a training partner. I’m not sure if this is a reaction to my increasing awareness of how techniques (should) work or something else, but in any case I felt like I just couldn’t apply the technique properly. When doing the technique without a partner I seemed to do ok, but as soon as I tried to apply the technique I couldn’t control what I was doing.

I tried assessing why this was the case during class and came to the conclusion that this is only natural. When practicing on your own you don’t have to account for another person’s presence, movement, timing, weigh, etc. Hence, being off by a few centimeters or seconds won’t affect your technique all that much (or so it seems), but when you have to apply the technique and have to account for another person’s behavior, things are very different.

Unfortunately, this insight didn’t help me much and as class progressed, I became increasingly frustrated with my inability to perform the techniques properly. My instructor must have picked up on this frustration and wisely told me that it’s all just a matter of practice and that in time I will get better; very good advice and probably very true as well. However, I’m notoriously impatient and always want to get things perfect right away, so I enquired how I could practice applications at home. My instructor’s simple answer: “You can’t!” This makes perfect sense; there is no way to practice training against a partner without a partner, seems logical, doesn’t it? What does this mean for me? I’ll just have to put maximum effort into every training session we have and make sure that I practice the execution of the techniques as much as I can outside of class, so that I can focus on the application when I have the opportunity.