Category Archives: TSD

Tang Soo Do related posts

Day Three (and Six Years)

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So a few days down, and the first gym session and first TSD session of the year are behind me. The gym was a killer. What I did before to warm up left me gasping and by the end of the hour I was feeling quite sore and very tired. There was thought behind it though, as I knew I had TSD the next evening, so the idea was to blow out the cobwebs before I got back in the dojang.

Um yeah, that one didn’t work out quite as I’d hoped… The warmup was still a shock to the system, so much so someone else got a nosebleed from the exertion :) But once we were back into the swing of things it was like I’d never been away, and I have to say I’m so pleased to be back in a dobok and working hard. The conditioning exercises at the end of the session left me with purple forearms today, but that’s all part of the fun :) .

The other part of this update’s title refers to the fact that last night was exactly six years to the day that I first started training in Tang Soo Do. In some ways it feels like a lifetime ago, in others, like yesterday, but going along for that first session in a cold school hall was one of the best decisions I ever made. Here’s to the next six!

Day One

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I’ve not exactly been prolific with updating this recently have I? Poor show, I know, but I’m looking to rectify that. No, not in a ‘I’ve got a new years resolution to update my blog more’ sense, but certainly over the next 4 or 5 months there should be a lot more updates here. This is due mostly to the fact that I’m on a bit of a mission, and want to use this place as a reminder, motivation and diary for it.

Like millions of others over the last few days, I’m back on the ‘lose weight, get fit’ thing. In fact I’m all over it. Instead of just doing it with a vague sense of commitment, like those joining gyms this week with one eye on next months direct debit date to make sure they can cancel it in time, I have a real, actual goal to aim for.

Actually that’s a bit of a misnomer, I don’t have a specific goal at all. No dream weight or size or anything like that, but a definite time and place I want to be reaping the rewards of my impending monastic lifestyle. That time and place is the European Tang Soo Do Championships in Germany this May, over my birthday weekend.

I’m not sure why I’m so eager to get it done for that in particular, but it’s firmly lodged in my brain now, so that’s just how it is. I’ve been to a lot of competitions now, and not done well at all since mixing it up with the Dan grades. Now while it’s true that my technique isn’t the greatest, and that it all depends on the judges on the day, there’s also another major contributing factor; fat guys don’t win forms.

I know, I know, ‘it’s nothing to do with that’ – but it is. So I figure if I can at least get in shape properly by then and I still lose miserably, it’s because I suck at forms, not because I’m wobbling all over the mats. That I can live with. The essence of a forms competition is aesthetic, it’s about how it looks, and like it or not we’re affected by factors below our level of conscious thought. So from now until then I’m going to use this to keep track of what I’m doing, how it’s going, and to motivate myself. It might come across as part blog/part Facebook status at times, but that’s just tough I’m afraid. If you’re after something to read with a bit more intrigue, do yourself a favour and read The Pelican Brief.

So here we go, day one, it starts today with my first session back at the gym which will in all likelihood kill me. Such fun!

Oh and as an aside, I’ve also decided to start again with the Fish Oil and Glucosamine Sulphate supplements in an attempt to mend my ailing hips. I got on with them quite well last year, so I’ll give them ago for a couple of months to see how I get on.

EMTF British Championships 2011 Review

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(I’ve cross-posted this from my training log at our club’s website here)

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Another weekend down, and another tournament under our belts. Our club once again sent a sizable squad to Bedford and Northampton for the EMTF British Championships, hosted under the watchful eyes of Master Kumar Sr and Grandmaster Salm. It’s always nice to see Grandmaster at these events, and even moreso when I didn’t even realise he’d be there this year. After an arduous trip up, thanks to traffic, accidents and a wayward satnav, we checked-in to our home from home at the Premier Inn in Bedford and managed to get a meal before the next day’s early start.

To be fair we probably should have been up earlier, we’d underestimated how long it takes to get across to Northampton, but we were still there in plenty of time to get changed, feel some butterflies and line up with scores of our Tang Soo Do family. Once I’d been told what was expected from me for the day (Dan grade and above don’t get much of a chance to sit around doing nothing) the competition began quickly and it wasn’t long before our girls were the first to take the mat. They did a great job as the forms categories starting rattling through, and at times it was difficult to know where to look, you couldn’t turn round without seeing one of our guys on the mats!

As the day wore on it was fantastic to see our gup grades walking away with trophy after trophy, the high standards we strive to keep and the effort put in by everyone really shone through. It wasn’t too long before the Dan grades – me included – got called to the mats to stand in front of three or four masters at a time and try to show them why we deserve to win anything. I couldn’t believe how big our first category was, the names over the tannoy just kept coming. In the end I think we had fourteen people in our traditional forms section, and eleven for chil sung, I’ve never been in a group that size before. Despite not coming away with anything myself our guys did great and placed in both categories, and for once I really enjoyed performing, rather than just feeling incredibly nervous the entire time. It doesn’t mean my performance was any better, but at least this time I can still remember some of it!

I didn’t spar again this year, which meant I spent the afternoon on a ring helping to score and judge those who were fighting, but I quite enjoy it to be honest and it makes the day go a lot quicker. Again, our guys did a good job of taking trophies at all levels from 8th gup upward, and the standard of sparring was very high across all schools. Watching the Masters compete in forms and sparring is always one of the highlights of the day, and this year was no exception. The standard of sparring and forms was very high, right across the board, but still the best bit is watching your own instructor training. It sounds silly but it’s so unusual to actually see your own instructor performing a form, especially one of the ones needed at their level. Normally you only ever see them breaking down a form applicable to your own grade, so it’s a treat to see them performing.

When the day finally ended at just after 7 in the evening we lined up, bowed off and until the next time (which seems to be sooner and sooner every time,) said goodbye to our extended family. I guess everyone took away their own particular highlights for the weekend, but for me they were watching our students looking stronger and more confident in sparring than any time I’ve seen them, running a ring with the very nice Master Christensen from Denmark again, and watching a particular bout in the sparring. The more I go to these events, and the more time I spend with the practitioners – both at home and away – the more grateful I am for having been lucky enough to have found this art and club.

Road Trip

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It’s been a while since I’ve had much to talk about training-wise here, but for once I do!

A combination of lack of time and lack of money has meant I haven’t been able to attend as many EMTF events as I’d have liked to, and it’s always a shame. I hate missing out on trips away, but such is life. Anyway, this weekend past saw a squad training session take place in the now-familiar town of Rushden, and as always ISK sent a small team away to take part. This time I was part of that team.

We loaded the cars up on Saturday morning, met up in a sunny Starbucks car park and hit the road. It was a nice easy drive up with great weather and mostly clear roads, stopping off just by Stonehenge to pick up a student currently visiting her parents, and making it to Rushden just in time to find a pub and get some much-needed food in our bellies. I was very grateful to stuff a mixed grill in my face.

As usual, Master Kumar was very generous and hospitable, letting us use their guest house/flat to bed town for the night. We watched some films, had a few drinks to relax and after a day on the road, even the prospect of a sleeping bag on the floor was more than welcoming. A night of fitful sleeping (thanks to people who will remain nameless, snoring and talking in their sleep) later, some porridge and bananas in us to fuel us through the day and once again we were in the cars, this time just for a few minutes until we got to the training hall and met up with the rest of out extended Tang Soo Do family.

It’s always nice to go away and see the familiar faces, and those faces are getting more and more familiar with each passing month. Along with Elite TSD we made up the majority of the clubs represented for the day, and it wasn’t long before we were sweating and gasping after a vigorous warm-up and basics section. This was followed by some concentrated forms work, including our choice of Chil Sung and also having the chance to learn the EMTF chang bong (staff) forms. These were really different than any staff forms we’ve practised in the past, with a lot of spins involved. You can argue all day about whether spins should be in a weapons form, but they’re in there regardless, and after an hour or so working with them I managed to do this to both of my thumbs.

thumb with no skin

Thumb sans skin. The other one's the same.

Fun.

The day ended with a long sparring session, starting with a variety of drills and ending with a lot of rounds of free-sparring (18 x 2 minute rounds). Exhausted, we finished the day at the Kumars’ home after being invited for a barbecue and to enjoy the nicest home-made bhajis in the world! We could only stay for an hour unfortunately before we had to get back on the road. It’s always quite disheartening to get in a car at the end of the day of training, only to know another 6 hours or so of driving awaits, tired and bruised and on a bit of a come-down, but we managed to keep one another upbeat and chipper with CB radios and some quizzes. I like to talk about pretty much anything and everything (as long as it’s not gossip), so I was very lucky to have someone just as interested in just about everything to talk to on the way home. Everything from the punk scene in Kent, to string theory and multiverses, and everything in between (including bourbon cream biscuits, the most misleading of all biscuits, pretending to be chocolate when in fact they are just made of brown!).

Shattered, I crawled in through the front door shortly after midnight, and despite sleeping like the dead, still feel absolutely shattered today. Strong coffee is keeping me from slipping into a comfortable coma, and the prospect of dog agility tonight is looking daunting.

Good times, thanks all for a great weekend.

p.s. to those still doubting me, I definitely did not fall against the wall, I was merely steadying myself.

p.p.s. ..unlike in Master Kumar’s house, where I brained myself on the chandelier and fell over. Sorry about that Master Kumar!

A Week In The Life

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I’ve had a busy and eventful week or so, so here’s my attempt to catch-up on it all.

Garden

As I mentioned on here a couple of weeks ago, I’ve got it into my head that I’m going to finally sort the back garden out this Spring and get some fruit and vegetable beds dug and planted. I’ve actually started it this time, and I’m making steady progress so far. I’ve got one bed fully dug, planted peas, and built a cane/net support structure to keep the birds (and dogs) off, and for the peas to grow up. I’m under no illusions of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ proportions of veg, but something to eat in a few months would be good. I’ve also got a large pot planted up with chilies, and another pot with some spare strawberry plants in. If I can’t grow strawberries there’s no hope for me!

I’m going to get back out in the garden this weekend and dig another bed or two, with a view to getting carrots, garlic, onions and some corn in (the corn is a trial). Just call me Richard Briers.

Dogs

Ella is well and truly settled in now, and turning out to be a proper little character. For such a scaredy-dog (she jumps at the slightest sound) she’s incredibly pushy when there are treats being given out, or some love to be had. Murph gave us a scare last week and was really poorly for a few days, but he’s back to normal now and loving agility again. The problem for me is the better he gets at it, the further and faster I have to run to keep up with him as the courses get longer and more complex. It’s as taxing mentally as it is physically sometimes, trying to figure out whether you should be doing reverse turns, cut-behinds, pull-throughs or whatever, all the while keeping an eye on the overly excited ginger monkey running and jumping with me.

Music

This is the best thing I’ve had to post here for a long time, I’m so excited. I was chatting to some friends about bands we’ve never been to see, and how it’d be sad for them to finish before we had a chance to watch them live, and to cut a long story short, we ended up buying tickets to Iron Maiden this summer! Iron Maiden…. how frickin’ awesome is that?? We’re going to watch them on 31st July in Birmingham as part of their Final Frontier tour, and I already know how amazing it’s going to be, I cannot wait.

Holiday

It’s looked for a long time that I wasn’t going to get a summer holiday somewhere warm this year, mainly due to the fact that we tend to go on holiday with a group of friends, and one of the couples in that group recently had a baby. However, it turns out that they’re keen to take their offspring off to warmer climes too, so there’s a good chance that we’ll all be heading off to Spain again in September for a week chilling out by the pool together. I’m really glad we do it that way to be honest, there’s no way I could really afford a ‘proper’ holiday this year, but when we get a villa between us it usually works out at about £300 for everything; flights and villa. That’s the sort of holiday I can afford :)

Grading

Last Sunday was the Spring grading at the academy, and it was quite a nervy one for me, because it was the first time ‘my’ students had been with just me by and large since their last grading, which meant I was responsible for their forms and one-step/self-defence. They did me proud though, and the day was a great success.

So that’s me for now, I’m sure there’s probably some other stuff I’ve forgotten, suffice to say March has absolutely flown by so far. Hopefully the next time I update I can be a bit more focused on one topic, and maybe even show you all some pictures of my gardening success!

2010 in Reflection

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I can’t decide if 2010 has been a very short year, or a very long one.

In lots of ways it seems to have flown by. We put the decorations up last week and it didn’t feel like a week had gone by since I was putting them in the boxes after taking them down last year, but that feeling seems to be stronger and stronger each year. Maybe it’s just my getting older and not remembering as many things in-between? :)

I started the year by coming to terms with the fact that I’d passed my Dan grading, which was quite hard to get my head around after just four years of training. From a Tang Soo Do point of view it’s been a real year of change for me. I’ve gone from trying to cram everything into my head and learn, learn, learn, to having my own class and trying to get all of that stuff out and taught to other people. As it’s only a small class at the moment, it still doesn’t really feel like ‘my club’ as such, it still feels like I’m filling in for someone else. I think it’ll change next year when I’m able to get back into regularity and get some more people through the door, I don’t think six or seven sessions is enough to go by. My own training has slowed down a little, mostly due to losing a session a week through teaching my class, but it’s given me a bit of a kick up the backside to train for myself as much as I can. I competed at the European Championships and did well, then later in the year wen to the British and did a lot worse, so again, ups and downs. Overall though, it’s been a good year in Tang Soo Do for me.

Summer started early as I headed to Spain in the first week of June with 11 others for a week in the sun in a private villa, and it was absolute bliss. It feels like a lifetime ago now, but it was so good. Spending a week with your friends relaxing, far away from normal life is a real tonic. The rest of summer in the UK was actually pretty good weather-wise, we got loads of barbecues in and managed to enjoy some unusually warm weather. The house is still being finished up (it’s taking a loooong time) but with the help of some friends who were willing to work for beer, I managed to get the shed moved which previously was blocking loads of light from the living room. I went along to the first ISK Summer Camp which was very hot and very, very tiring, but a lot of fun, and I also finally got around to buying myself a bike and started cycling.

Unfortunately autumn and winter (so far) weren’t quite up the rest of the year for me, it was frankly a very, very low time. I won’t go into details here, people who know me well already know, but suffice to say if I never have to repeat that all again it’ll be too soon. Onwards and upwards though, only a few more days left at work and then I retire like a bear to his den, only in this case my den is going to be the sofa. I’m going to eat, drink, relax and refresh myself for 2011. Something tells me it’s going to be a good year, despite the fact I have a strange inbuilt instinct that odd-numbered years are going to be rubbish. Maybe that’s just because I equate even-numbered years with either the Olympics or the World Cup, and next year we have neither. I have issues :)

See you all in 2011 (unless I get bored next week and update again ;) )

Levitation Perfected

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The weekend played host to a couple of tough training sessions with the EMTF. SBN Kumar Jr traveled down with a few students from his school in tow and stayed down to take the first squad session for the World Championships next year in Florida. Between you and me this meant I knew what I was going to be taking away from the weekend – pain.

The couple of hours we had on Friday evening were pretty hard work (oddly I can’t remember anything from the lesson), but Saturday afternoon was the killer. From a CV point of view it was very tough, and we had a good test of both our aerobic and anaerobic fitness, not to mention a lot of strength and stamina work. I can’t remember doing as many sit-ups in one go before, and I hope it’s a long time before I have to do it again. The added palm strikes to the solar plexus during the exercises were the icing on the cake!

If that cake were made of glass, elephant tramplings and caustic soda that is, the entire front of my body is killing me!

I wasn’t too bad on Sunday to be honest, a bit sore but nothing to write home about, but after last night’s lesson which included more core work drills from the previous days, I went to bed in a lot of pain. I’ve had DOMS before, but nothing like this, it feels like I must’ve had a bloody hernia or something!

Of course, we training martial artists are the epitome of grace and always in control of our bodies and balance (no, really), which makes this morning’s performance of ‘How To Get Out Of Bed Like Bruce Lee’ even more atrocious… I slept reasonably well considering, only waking up a few times when I rolled over and when the dog decided he wanted a night-time jaunt around the garden to relieve himself. When the alarm went off though, I found I couldn’t actually sit up.

No matter how hard I tried I could not lift myself off the bed, and lay there for a few minutes wondering if this is what it’s going to be like when I’m eighty. Then, using my wonderfully logical brain and my love of applied physics, I came up with a plan:

  1. Lift knees
  2. Drop knees to side to rotate body
  3. Drop legs off side of bed to rotate into seated position
  4. Stand up and face the day knowing I AM MAN

What happened though was something     quite different. The bed had been shifted about 6-8 inches to my side of the room to accommodate the dog’s bed on the other side (so he doesn’t go off to make friends with the cats in the middle of the night and end up with a face full of claws), and as I hitched my knees up and rolled onto my side two things happened. 1) I fell off the bed. 2) I got wedged between the wall and the bed. I was barely conscious at this point, and the confusion of finding myself suspended above the floor in total darkness left me a bit bemused, but I figured it out eventually. I just couldn’t figure out how to get down. I couldn’t struggle or twist to get myself unstuck because it hurt so much, and I remember a tremendous sense of shame at having got myself stuck. Kinda like a ship in a bottle – how did it get there??

Eventually I wriggled myself free and slumped to the floor, unobserved and pride intact! I’m still not sure how it happened really, it was one of those only-just-awake things where you’re not sure if it really happened or not. Suffice to say, I’m installing some kind of airplane-style escape chute at the nearest opportunity.

Fail?

Downtime

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The observant (or perennially bored) among you will have noticed that I haven’t updated much lately around here. There are a few reasons why, but the short version is that I’ve had a lot of stuff go on lately away from Internet Land, and not much of it has been nice. It’s been a very trying and upsetting time for my family and me, but there are breaks in the cloud now and things seem to be getting better.

On a training front, I haven’t got a lot to report really. I’ve unfortunately had to miss some seminars that I’d have loved to have been at, but that can’t be helped and I look forward to the next chances I get to go away and train. My own class is still going well too, albeit with a minimal number of students for now. It would be really easy to look at that as a negative, but that’d just drag me down, so I’m focusing on the positives from it. With a small number of students I’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time working on specifics, and giving a lot of attention to the things I can see which need addressing, and I’m hoping that what we lack in numbers at the next grading, we make up for in quality.

When I first knew the class was going to be opening on a Friday, I was a bit sad to be losing one of my own training sessions each week to run it. I thought I’d really miss putting on my dobok, standing with the others and working up a sweat. So far though when it’s come to it, I haven’t really had a chance to feel like that. From start to finish I’m completely engaged, constantly thinking, analysing and trying to adapt what I had planned to what’s happening in the dojang. I’m sure as time goes on it’ll become more instinctive and organic, with less detailed planning and more adaptation, but for now the challenge is great.

It’s really quite interesting now that I take some time out to sit and think about it as I write this, because it’s yet another aspect of Tang Soo Do I’d never really thought about before. We do a lot of work on the Internal and External as we progress through the gup grades and beyond, and teaching is yet another area where it applies. When I train on a Wednesday or Sunday now, my focus is very much internal. I’m thinking about me. How is my form? Am I applying this correctly? Are my stances good? When I’m stood in front of a class though it’s all about the people in front of me, and I’m asking the same questions of them in my head. I’m getting a lot better at pacing a class, knowing what time it is roughly and how long I have left, but I still have a few moments of thinking ‘oops, I haven’t checked the clock for ages, what time is it??’. I’m hoping the attention I pay to the moment is seen as a good thing by the people stood in front of me, I can think of nothing worse for them after paying money to be taught, to think my attention is elsewhere. Respect is a two-way street, it needs to be earned.

School Days

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My own Tang Soo Do class started last week, and today’s the second time I open the doors to the unsuspecting public. It was a really odd feeling turning up last week and being responsible for opening the doors, making sure everything was ready, coming up with a decent lesson plan (some of which was ad-libbed) and realising that none of the familiar senior faces weren’t going to be there. The only thing I can really compare it to is that first time you get in a car by yourself after passing your driving test. Daunting but with a certain sense of freedom and responsibility. It’s strange to be driving in the opposite direction of my normal Friday class though, knowing that everyone else is still there training together.

Despite it being a small class (and I was never expecting anything else) it was good fun and a good first test of my ability to control a class and to keep it running without any big breaks. Keeping the energy levels up in the room is difficult and necessary, that’s going to be the hardest part to learn and continue. Things like Ho Sin Sool are difficult at the 10th gup level, because it’s very basic stuff (relatively speaking of course), and much slower paced than sparring or pad drills. I suppose with my TSD head on I should be talking more in terms of Um and Yang, and how the slow pace is good to give students a chance to catch their breath after the hard work :) .

One of the things I’m very aware of now is just how important these first few months are going to be in any student’s development. This is where the first stages of muscle memory are going to develop, and it’s important to iron out any bad habits before they take hold, or at least to try. I find it interesting now when I look around a class to see the small idiosyncrasies and differences between similar grades. Sometimes it’s almost imperceptible what those differences are, but you could show a class full of people in silhouette and out of focus and be able to identify people by the way they perform a move. So for me it’s going to be important to make sure legs are locked out (god knows I’m guilty of this enough myself), hands aren’t opening and closing, techniques finish where they should, shi sun is level and consistent etc. Obviously these aren’t things I’m going to be hammering-down on as such in the early days, but where possible and where I spot things happening I want to try to nip it in the bud.

I dare say in just a years time I’ll be able to look back at this post and think ‘boy did I have that wrong!’, but only time will tell. They say there’s no substitute for experience after all!

EMTF British Championships 2010

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Another week, another Tang Soo Do event of some kind to attend. This time it was back up to Rushden and the scene of the recent Masters’ seminar for the annual EMTF British Championships.

The convoy got on the road and the not-entirely-unreasonable time of 10:30 on Friday morning and we got to our hotel in Bedford shortly after the sun went down, thanks in no small part to a crazy amount of roadworks on the M1 and M25. After checking in we congregated in the bar – which felt as if we’d only been there a week ago, never mind seven months! – and had a quick drink to unwind and some food, then it was back to our rooms to chill out with some TV before trying to get some well-earned shut-eye.

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (no, really) we got on the road again first thing on Saturday morning and had a lovely drive over to Rushden, only to find the caretaker at the school which was to be our venue was obviously enjoying a lie-in and hadn’t opened the gates, leaving buses and cars all over the road. Once we got in and claimed ‘New Cornwall’ in the corner of the warm-up hall, the competition began quite quickly. We had some nice surprise presentations after the bow, including Master Jan De Vry’s 6th Dan and Master Kirie’s (apologies for the spelling) birthday present of a beautiful hand-made sword from Germany, and then the Masters began their competition. Our own instructor took part and gave the sort of performance that helped inspire the rest of us for the rest of the day.

I’m finding it’s par for the course now to to be expected to help if you go away to a big competition as a Dan grade, and I think it’s right. If we want to wear the belt and progress, we should expect to carry extra responsibilities at these events. Personally I find it makes me feel very proud that my opinion during judging counts for something. So with this protocol in place, the Dan grades were next up so we could compete and then help run the other mats to work through the Gup grades and sparring. Unfortunately for me, despite training hard and giving what felt like a decent performance in Chil Sung, I failed to place, and the same for the Dan Gum section (although I did miss a transition move which couldn’t have helped my cause). The Chang Bong was another disappointment for me, made all the more difficult as I felt the sting of being fourth in a group of four! Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to train harder the next time around.

Fortunately, everyone else’s training and skill was more than evident and as a club we took a haul of thirty-seven(!) trophies at all levels, from lower gup grades to master level. I couldn’t have been more proud of the people I train with, and as I was looking around the dojang during the day, I couldn’t turn around without seeing one of our students accepting a trophy somewhere. I was especially proud of the gup grades I think, especially when I think of the limited amount of competition experience some of them had, you’d never guess it to watch them. When the day was done, we headed back to our hotel for a quick meeting and a few words from our instructor, a few celebratory drinks, and then off into town for a slap-up Chinese meal and a bit of dancing at New York New York. The evening was cut short thanks to some trouble-makers who felt it necessary to look for a fight (talk about choosing the worst group to start on), but we instinctively schooled like fish and left early.

It was a great weekend, despite a lot of driving. The bond between us all grew stronger again, and there’s no doubting that we really are a family of sorts. Everyone’s there for one another, all offering support and friendship, and getting away with the EMTF feels more like visiting extended family every time we go. Despite it meaning my comfort break was essentially me running around with a banana in my mouth (no, not like a monkey), it was nice to feel included enough for Masters Kumar Jr and De Vry Jr to grab me to help set up the scoring system for the afternoon. I’m already looking forward to the next competition, and hopefully doing a lot better. Thanks to the EMTF once again for making us feel so welcome.