Tag Archives: tang soo do

“Teacher Leave Those Kids Alone”

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Over the last month or so I’ve started taking some classes for one of our instructors over in Falmouth. It’s new to me, this teaching lark, but it’s slowly getting better.

I think it’s fair to say my first couple of lessons in charge weren’t as good as they could’ve been, and I’ve already started to see the things in my teaching I need to correct and make better. I talk WAY too much when I’m stood in front of the class, and I’m not nearly as concise as I could be when I’m trying to get an idea across, but I think that’ll come with practice. I went to the first couple of sessions with a very definite plan of what i wanted to do, and when, but I’ve found so far (and remember we’re only talking about 4 or 5 lessons so far) that I do much better when I go with only a couple of ideas in mind, and to see how the class evolves.

The last couple of lessons I’ve used that principle and, last night especially, it felt a lot better. It’s been a long time since I went to lessons that last an hour and a half, and filling that time as someone with very little teaching experience can feel daunting. You don’t want to bore people, nor do you want to get to an hour through and realise you’ve got nothing left. It’s fair to say that I was glad I was working on forms a couple of times as they can take up a lot of time, but last night I went in with the idea in mind to avoid forms altogether.

After my previous blog post I had punching on the brain, so I built the lesson around that. From making hand basics look better, breaking down a punch into its component parts to focus mitt drills and some one-step work. Working on a particular ‘thing’ (God, you’d think I could come up with a better word than that after years of writing here…) seems to be a nice way to build a lesson, and it gives me a lot of flexibility once I see which pieces need work.

I always thought I was going to enjoy teaching, as I love doing small parts of classes or helping people one-to-one and I like teaching people in non-martial arts related things, and as the lessons are ticking by I’m starting to realise I was right. It’s daunting to be responsible for peoples’ progression in something I feel so strongly about, especially as I’m not as young or as fit as others (I’m staunchly of the mindset of ‘don’t teach what you can’t do’), but when I make a suggestion to improve someone’s technique and I see it work and see how it ‘clicks’ with them, it’s enormously satisfying. It’s also really good to find that I’m not forgetting some of the most simple things when I’m trying to demonstrate something. Well, not as often anyway ;) .

(In hindsight, perhaps I shouldn’t have picked those particular lyrics as a post title…)

Punch Drunk

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For whatever reason I’ve found myself thinking about punching a lot lately. Ok, maybe it’s not too much of a leap for me to think about it, I practise martial arts for goodness sake, but even for me it’s been on my mind a lot. Mostly I’ve been thinking about the differences in the way different arts punch, and how the power is generated.

When you think about it quickly, a punch is a punch, but when you break it down there are so many different ways of doing it, and all with the express purpose of putting the opponent down as fast as possible. Can it really be that difficult to figure out the best way to do it? Apparently so.

Let’s start with what I know; Tang Soo Do. It’s actually pretty complicated to analyse a karate-style punch, because when we perform our basics or forms we tend to finish the punch at the same time we end in a stance (which is often a chun-gul jaseh – front stance). Obviously in practise this wouldn’t be the case, the punch would have to come out earlier, but the way we throw a punch is as important as when. Shin Chook (tension and relaxation) is a fundamental part of Tang Soo Do – it’s one of our eight key concepts – and as well as governing a lot of the ways we should move, it also dictates the way we should attack. The principle is that the arm and body should be totally relaxed through >95% of the attack, with only a small moment of tension at the point of impact. The idea behind it is sound, the relaxed muscles increase the speed available, the power’s delivered by the hip, and at the end of a day a good punch is one that delivers the weight at the fastest speed possible.

So why then, do boxers not punch in the same way? Watch a good middleweight or heavyweight boxer; the shoulders are often high, muscles tense – the polar opposite to a karate punch. When I think about it the punching is completely different, instead of relying on bodyweight being behind a punch, it uses the core muscles and a firm foot plant to generate torque. Obviously there’s more to it than that, and it’s not to say that TSD never punches that way – anyone who’s done some decent focus mitt drills can testify to that – but the point is that they’re a very different style of striking.

Jeet Kune Do has again, a different style of punching. Being called ‘way of the intercepting fist’ should give you some clues that it’s going to be done differently, but how exactly? JKD works on the principle of having the strongest hand forward and attacking with it, whereas most other arts will work with the strongest hand backward. The way I’ve heard throwing a JKD lead punch (the cornerstone of JKD as I understand it) is to imagine throwing a whip or a chain with a ball on the end. How many karate practitioners have ever intentionally thrown a power punch that way? Does it work? Undoubtedly.

All of this is before we even consider other things like the alignment of the fist. The vertical vs horizontal debate has raged on for probably as long as the martial arts have. I’m not going to get into that here, I can see why the proponents of each type prefers it, but that’s for another day. Now that I think about it, the reason this has been on my mind is probably because of the UFC event on the weekend when James Toney fought Randy Couture. I remember thinking ‘If that boxer gets in range to strike, he could end it quickly’, but why would I assume a boxer can hit that much harder than a MMA practitioner? Is there truth behind it or is it just a preconception based on well-planted people thumping one another? I’m still not sure :) .

Tackling Jinto

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Training feels more like it used to at the moment, I’ve got loads of new stuff to learn, it really reminds me of being a lower gup grade and having to take loads of new stuff on. At the moment I’m trying to load my brain (and muscles) with a combination of Naihanchi Ee Dan, Jinto and Joong Jol (Yuk Roh Ee Dan).

I always love the challenge of trying to take a new form on board and to learn it from start to finish. Refining it and making it look good always take time and come later, but remembering the sequence is the first step, and with some forms it comes much easier than others. Naihanchi Ee Dan went in easily enough, because it’s a small number of moves which are just mirrored (note: whenever I say I know a form here, I mean I know the sequence of moves, being able to perform it well is a whole other story!), some of which are straight out of Naihanchi Cho Dan. Over the past week or so we’ve been learning Joong Jol and so far I love it. I think over time it’s going to be one of my favourites. I’ve just about got the sequence in my head now, but there’s still quite a bit open to adjustment as we find a happy medium between how the Moo Duk Kwan originally taught it, and what’s being taught now.

That leaves me with Jinto (Chin To, Jin Do, Gankaku in Karate), a form which – if I’m honest – I’ve never been a fan of. I’m not sure what it is about it, but the times previous that I tried it I didn’t enjoy it, and I never really enjoyed watching it either. In a way, this is what will mean that I spend a lot more time with this form than any of the others. When I like a form I’ll practise it a lot, obviously because I enjoy it, but some tend to get neglected in comparison. Chil Sung Il Ro is a great example, I’ve never really liked it in the past (although I am warming to it more now), so I would seldom put the extra time into it that I should have. Jinto however I’m determined to crack. It’s taken me a relatively long time to memorise the sequence but I think I’m there now, it’s a strange form in as much as there’s very little repetition or mirroring, not like the vast majority.

When I learn a new form, I like to find out as much as I can about it, but this is much easier to do with some forms than others. Take Chil Sung and Yuk Roh for example, being relatively young forms, and having very limited exposure to styles other than Soo Bahk Do, there’s very few places to go to find out about them. Jinto is an absolute goldmine however, being a very old tode/karate form with a lot of history, most of it anecdotal of course, which is always the most fun. Even the meaning of the name is disputed, but I know what I believe in terms of its origins. In Chinese (China being the form’s origin) and Okinawan, the closest translation is something like “fighting to the East”. This came as a surprise to me, as I’ve always thought of it as being ‘the crane form’, and the crane stances in it obviously point to an origin in Chinese White Crane style kung fu, but it seems we have our old friend Gichin Funakoshi to thank for a lot of that.

Funakoshi is rightfully thought of as the father of karate in Japan, as he was instrumental in bringing it to the country from Okinawa and founding Shotokan. One of the more famous changes he made was the change from Pyung Ahn/Pinan to Heian, and personally I think a lot of the changes around this time were due to the bitter rivalries between Japan and its neighbours. Anti-Chinese sentiment was rife during Karate’s formative years, hence the change of Kanji used to write ‘kara-te’ from ‘china hand’ to ‘empty hand’. Funakoshi changed the name of Jinto/Chinto to Gankaku, changing its meaning  from something like ‘fighting the East’ to ‘crane on a rock’. It’s an obvious choice to make, as it made it far more socially acceptable, and it was instantly recognisable as to why to anyone who saw the form.

The story about the stranded pirate/sailor who defeated Matsumura Sokon with the form is a nice one, but I can’t really see it being any more than that – a nice story. There are other changes of course, like the fact we now perform it on a very North-South path, whereas originally it was diagonally, but that’s what makes it so interesting. A form with some history, a lot of stories and a lot to read about and to make my mind up about. This is the learning part of Tang Soo Do that I absolutely lap up. Whether or not I ever nail those crane stances, that’s another story.

Moo Do on the Moor

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It’s another catchup post, hooray!

Last weekend was the first Moo Do Summer Retreat for our club, which meant ~15 of us packed up and headed off onto Dartmoor for a few days to completely immerse ourselves in Tang Soo Do. We had a hostel to ourselves to cook and sleep, and a field about half a mile away for training, and we didn’t need any more. I couldn’t get the Friday off that I’d already booked (….not that I’m bitter), so my brother and I headed up on the Friday night. I was gutted to have missed the first day of training, but glad that I could be there for the other two.

A 4am wakeup call was harrowing after a couple of hours sleep, and that Saturday was a long one, but at the same time the various sessions went very quickly. Before I knew it 10 hours of training were over and it was back for a chilled out evening with a couple of barbecues. Sunday started with a more humane 7am alarm, but again was a very tiring day. I won’t go into all the details of what we did here, as the vast majority of people reading really won’t be interested, suffice to say I came back exhausted, blistered and very happy. The fact that people are already asking to be booked onto the 2011 camp is a sign that it went very well.

Because of being away all weekend, and then being so tired I could barely function for the next couple of days, I’ve not been out for a proper ride for a week now. I mean, I’ve ridden it training and to the shops, but that doesn’t really count. If the weather stays not-too-monsoony today I’ll try to get out for an hour tonight, but the impending apocalypse clouds out the window suggest otherwise. The cycling is really working my legs, and the weight is continuing to drop off which I’m very pleased about. It was one of the main reasons I bought a bike again, as I know how good the exercise is. Time will tell how far it’ll get me before I have to start putting some more serious miles in, although I hope being lighter by then will make it less arduous than it feels right now.

Things are going well all in all at the moment, a bit more summer sun would top it all off.

Tang Soo Done

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Where to start? It’s been a while since I updated here so I’ll try to cover as much as I can for now. It’s been a busy couple of weekends as far as Tang Soo Do is concerned, with more to come. A couple of weeks ago I headed up with three others to Rushden for a Masters/Dan seminar with the rest of the EMTF, in a very hot hall, where we went over some higher-level forms.

The afternoon started with a big group warmup led by Master (Jan) De Vry which as well as being very hot, was hilarious. Master Kumar Jr took us through some basics which were far harder than they had to be. I don’t mean what he was asking us to do was difficult, because it wasn’t particularly, but the combination of the heat and my outrageously long dobok bottoms (I really must take them up!) made me give a much worse account of myself – and more annoyingly my club – than I’d have liked. But glancing around it was clear I wasn’t the only one struggling, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Later we split into smaller groups each with a couple of masters teaching, and I was with the very likable Master Mantle who took us through Jinto (one of the forms I’ll need at my next full grade) and my favourite form-I-won’t-need-for-a-long-time, Rohai. It was a really strange experience being taught by a different master, as everyone teaches differently, but it was valuable. Rohai especially; it’s not a form I actively practise, but I love the shape and movement in it. I cracked my knee on the floor far too hard with an over-enthusiastic ‘break’ punch halfway through, which still hurts if I kneel.

Later we all re-grouped and went through the second dan gum (dagger) form. I’d been through it a few times before with the people who went to the first seminar, but it was nice to have it drummed into my head with constant repetition for an hour or so. There were some finer details that I wasn’t sure about too which I’ve been able to clear up since which was good. The main problem with the day for me and many others wasn’t the heat directly (although it was really debilitating) but the kicking and turning on the wooden floor. I think a combination of the humidity and the wood meant that we ended up with a lot of blisters. Proper nasty, deep blisters. Most of them have healed now, but one tore open last weekend and now I have that super-soft baby skin on the bottom of my foot; I can’t see it being much fun to train on. The Masters ended the seminar by being taught the first new sword form introduced to the EMTF. It’s a very nice looking bit of very Korean sword, and I’m looking forward to learning it in the future. Our great hosts made sure we went away with full bellies as Master Kumar Snr’s wife prepared a great buffet with homemade samosas and pakoras – heaven!.

Skip forward a week, and it’s another weekend of Tang Soo Do. Saturday say my brother take his First Dan grading, and two others take their Senior First Dan tests in a scorchingly hot dojang back here in Cornwall. The heat was really oppressive, but everyone gave a great account of themselves despite it, I felt tired just helping out with the Ho Sin Sool, Il Soo Sik Dae Ryun and free sparring at the end – I can’t imagine how it felt for everyone else. The following day we all went down to the Falmouth dojang for the gup grading, which again was very hot, but a lot better thanks to the breeze. Again, everyone did very well, and at the end of another long day (which thankfully kept me from watching England’s dismal display in the World Cup) we had a quick lesson to brush up on some of the changes made to various bits and pieces we do. My blister tore open during one of the races we had at the end, but by then I didn’t even notice. A really good, if long, weekend which saw a lot of people take their next step on the ladder.

This weekend is free so far, so I’m planning a Saturday involving a long lazy barbecue in the afternoon followed by a trip to the Blue Bar in the evening for a pint on the beach watching the sun go down. I’d better make the most of it, it’s the club’s first annual summer retreat the next weekend, three days of 4:30 am starts and 12 hours a day training, eating and sleeping Tang Soo Do.

Awesome.

Freak Finger

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Surely going back to the lower grades syllabus should be easy? You’d think so, easier at least at any rate, but no, not for me. Last night I managed to do something nasty to my finger doing the very first set sparring combinations from the old Moo Duk Kwan syllabus. I’m so clever!

It should have been a simple combination; the attacker throws a rear-leg front kick, I block it with an inverted inside-to-out palm and retaliate with a reverse punch and kick of my own. It was going really well until the last kick of the session, when for some reason my brain decided that a much better block would be a straight-fingered spear hand to a moving shin… I had that weird few seconds at first where you aren’t sure what happened, followed by the realisation, pain and the ‘ohmygod, ohmygod, what happened? Did I break anything? Is there blood?’ shock reaction. I’m not sure what I did exactly, but it was incredibly painful.

So today I have a freak finger. It’s about twice the size of the one on the opposite hand, and the middle knuckle is now turning purple and red and all kinds of interesting colours. If I try to make a fist with my left hand now it looks like the same kind of fist you’d make if you were trying to strike pressure points with your middle knuckle, and I also look a bit special trying to type. My first thought when I got home last night was that I’d broken it, because it felt just like when I broke my finger last year, the same throbbing pain followed by a dull ache and not being able to put any pressure on it at all, but I’m not so sure this morning. I’ll just keep an eye on it for the next few days and see what happens, I really want to avoid going to X-ray again because it’s so incredibly boring.

Other than that little episode training’s still going great. Little changes made to the most basic techniques have made it a real task trying to re-learn without losing power or form. Things like floating a foot through the most basic blocks make them feel a lot more powerful, but I know I’m getting sloppy doing them. It’s all too easy to let the forward momentum throw your body forward into a lean, and forget about keeping square shoulders and hips… for now at least.

I started back at Dog Agility last week after a while away thanks to my excursions and those of our teacher, and it was great fun. We’re back to Monday evenings now, but with a 5:30 start, which means it’s a pretty frantic race home, get changed, get Murph ready and get over to the ground. We still both love it, maybe this year will be the one which sees me get him measured and entered in his first competition :) .

Demanufacture

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Not only one of my all-time favourite albums by the mighty Fear Factory (I strongly suggest you listen to it if you’re into Metal in any way), but also a word that’s been in my head lately when I think about my Tang Soo Do training.

For me, training seems to go in cycles, ones which have happened enough times now for me to recognise and acknowledge them. I’m at a point now where I’m looking at everything I do and pulling it to pieces, and this is due in no small part to the new teaching changes which see Sunday evenings focusing on the lower gup syllabus. We’ve been taking apart a lot of the stuff I first learned years ago, the building blocks of the art, and it’s really making me think about how I do them, and making me want to greatly improve these parts. I touched on it in my last post here, but introducing Shin Chook (tension and relaxation) into things I do automatically now such as the first few il soo sik dae ryun, makes them feel very different – but at the same time very familiar. A bit like the first time you put your favourite jeans on after washing them.

I do a lot of my best thinking and analysing of what I do in the kitchen these days. While I’m cooking meals I’m constantly working through moves, combinations, forms – anything and everything basically – and since tearing those basics apart and starting to rebuild them into a better, stronger version of what they were I’ve begun to look at everything and question my execution. Am I putting a full amount of hip into high blocks? Nope. Am I STILL not locking my back leg out in a front stance after years of practise? Yep. Are my shoulders and hips square when I perform a simple choong dan kong kyuk? Not on your life.

I’ve also started looking at the various moves and turns in the forms, and trying to decide on what the applications could be. We learn this sort of thing in our lessons, and every man and his (computer-literate) dog can look up ‘bunkai’ on youtube, but personally I feel there’s a lot of value in trying to work it out for myself. I don’t believe for a second that there’s a single intended application for every movement during the hyung, so putting an imaginary opponent(s) around you and deciding how you might use or adapt a sequence is mentally challenging and really interesting; to me at least. I realise just how pretentious this could all sound, but I don’t care :) .

I imagine this all sounds pretty familiar to a lot of practitioners of classical martial arts, especially those who have an active interest in it and don’t just go through the motions and switch off once they get home. At least I hope so, I’m not that odd am I? It’s one of the cycles I mentioned at the start. Every so often I think ‘Hey, you know what, I’m really beginning to get this now’, only to be made to look at what I’m doing and then think ‘Just how badly have I been doing that??’. I remember a few weeks after I started training in Tang Soo Do thinking ‘I wonder if it gets boring once you get to Dan grade and know how to do everything?’. Oh how wrong could I have been?? I know now that the learning and improving never ends, and in a way it’s a very reassuring thing. It’s nice to know that in 5, 10, or even 50(!) years time I’m still going to be looking at what I’m doing and trying to make it better in some way.

I’m doing it again now, thinking too much. I was just re-reading what I’ve written and started thinking about the forms and applications. A lot of what we do is derived from Chinese kung-fu styles, which got me wondering about what their applications for the forms involved. The use of huri (hip) in the movements is a very TSD thing, and when I think about some of the throws and re-directions in the forms (low blocks, high blocks etc), I wonder how practical they’d be without that efficient use of body weight transferral that the hip movement affords us. I can’t imagine it was designed with brute force in mind, so was there a completely different intention for those motions or does it work without the huri?….

*That paragraph above is pretty much a stream of consciousness as it came. That’s what it’s like in my brain most of the day when I’m not concentrating on something else, it’s no wonder it takes me so long to get to sleep*

The Griller In Manilla (well, Somerset)

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It’s about time I updated I think. I had the week off last week and spend 5 days of it up with the in-laws on holiday in Somerset. It was a nice relaxing time and I got to spend lots of time with my extended family, especially my niece who insisted I went on as many rides as possible at the nearby theme park! I visited Longleat for the first time too which was awesome, there’s so much to see and do and feeding the deer through the car window while we went through the safari area was hysterical.

But now it’s back to normality and back to work. Luckily the unseasonably hot, sunny weather is still with us and I’m loving it. I’ve already managed to get a couple of barbecues under my belt (literally, with the amount of meat I ate), and it’s when I’ve been sat in the back garden in shorts and a t-shirt, relaxing with a beer in the sunshine that I have to remind myself it’s still only April! Long may it continue I say.

I’ve got loads lined up over the next few weeks, starting with a rock night before too long. It’s been AGES since we had a good club night out. I’m looking forward to hopefully having a few(!) beers this time and getting my mosh on! I’m feeling in the need for some excessively loud metal and a lot of leaping around with like-minded folk :) . With a bit of luck we’ll entice some rock night virgins up too and get them well and truly initiated (and inebriated). After that I’m off up to the bright lights of London for a weekend with my mates. It’s smack-bang in the middle of birthday season, so we’re going up to watch a night of boxing at West Ham’s Upton Park ground, featuring some of our latest Olympic stars such as James DeGale and Frankie Gavin. It’s on the same Saturday as the FA Cup Final, so it’s going to be a great day. Football, boxing, then back to the hotel to watch Amir Khan’s fight in the States on the same night – good times! Finally, the end of May sees our long-awaited holiday. Twelve of us are packing our bags and heading to sunny Spain (volcanoes permitting…) for a week of lounging in the pool and relaxing. Despite the fact that it’s Seni that weekend (noooooo) and the Eurovision Song Contest final on the same day (double-noooooooooo), it’s going to be great. I’ll just have to buy more pointless weapons and awesome Muay Thai shorts another time ;) .

Training’s great at the moment, the change of each class to be focused on a specific grade has meant I’ve revisited a lot of the very basic stuff I take for granted now, and taken them apart only to rebuild them incorporating concepts I wasn’t introduced to the first time I learned. I can already see just how powerful those simple techniques are with proper use of shin chook applied, not to mention just how much better they look when done that way. I’ve always thought you can tell how accomplished a martial artist is by how natural and easy they make things look, and I’m hoping this is just the start of working towards that. I’m still struggling with the recurring hip injury I’ve been carrying for literally years now, and it’s really painful (not to mention annoying) at the moment. I ought to go back to the doctor again but they just seem to shrug it off, the most I’ve ever had done is some simple exercises from the self-referral physio. Ho-hum, maybe I should just take a leaf out of Bill Wallace’s book and only kick left-sided ;) .

EMTF European Championships 2010

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I’m writing this off the back of the most memorable weekend, and one I hope is only going to be repeated in the future. We (as a club) went away to Bedford to compete in the EMTF European Tang Soo Do Championships, and I like to think we did our club and our county proud.

A long trip is kind of expected for us now if we want to compete on anything more than the (rapidly dwindling) local circuit, and we weren’t disappointed by the trip to Bedford. As well as the 300+ miles on the road, this time we were taking ‘Reggie’ with us, the minibus from the university campus where many of our club train. Reggie unfortunately has a speed limiter which means he had trouble getting above 60 miles an hour, which made sections of the motorway feel like a drag at times, but at the same time helped us all feel like a bit more of a team. No-one gets left behind! :)

I can’t speak for everyone, but I had trouble eating on Friday night as the nerves started to kick in. After not-a-lot of sleep we headed over to the sports centre and basically got on with it. Lining up to start the ceremony was a new experience for me, and it felt very strange to be stood just behind the front row. Being counted as Senior in a hall of a few hundred fellow practitioners is an eye-opener, especially when the Dan grades are asked to turn around and have the rest of the competitors bow to them. Once we got past the opening ceremony, which included a big show from out old Seni friends, Baba Deep Singh Gattka, it was on to business. I thought I’d had a bad omen within 10 minutes of the competition beginning after only just getting changed into my dobok. I was stretching in front of the audience seating and managed to hit a spectator in the glasses as she walked past me…. smooth, Adam.

I was far more under control of my nerves than I thought I’d be when I got called to perform my first form, Chil Sung Sam Roh. That said, I was still absolutely flushed with adrenaline, so much so that I barely remember performing it at all. I remember sitting down afterward though and feeling like I really wanted to fight, or run a mile, or jump around like a lunatic – it was such a massive buzz. To my amazement I did enough to take Bronze which was very satisfying, even moreso when it turns out I was only beaten by two members of my own club. Making a clean sweep of the podium in the Dan grade Chil Sung event felt like vindication for the amount of time and effort we put into them. I had plenty of time to watch our guys on other mats as I helped with some score keeping on the one I was assigned to, a mat which typically hosted two of our junior grades. Better not make any calculation errors in that one then! Luckily I didn’t, and the girls took well-deserved silver and bronze.

Later in the same day I competed in the Chang Bong (bo / staff) forms category and did enough to pick up silver which was also really gratifying. A lot of the people performing Bong were doing very elaborate forms with a lot of spins, whereas myself and another of our Dan grades performed something more akin to a Kicho open hand form (read: very basic). The fact that good technique shone through and we took silver and bronze was nice to see in a discipline which seems to be being influenced by ‘freestyle’ moves more and more.

That night we had a good trip out to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet which helped make up for the lack of eating anything for the day, followed by a failed attempt to find a pub to watch the Haye Vs Ruiz fight. By that point I was so tired that I was quite as annoyed as I would have been otherwise, which was lucky as I’d been waiting a long time to see that fight. A few hours kip later and it was time for Day 2: Sparring.

I spent a lot of the day behind a scoreboard or helping to referee fights, which was both quite an honour to be asked to do, and also a nuisance as I didn’t get to see many of the ISK competitors. Those I could watch though were great, and by and large bossed the mats which, again, was testament to the extra training we all put in.  I personally didn’t like the way a lot of the points were scored, but that may just be my bias of coming from a competition background of freestyle, where blocked shots normally aren’t scored. My own fights went pretty well despite the way the official results went, and I was really pleased to beat one of the Dutch Huk-Tti guys, despite not medaling, as they have a big reputation. All over the hall our team were picking up medals left, right and center, it was a great day.

The Indian banquet which rounded the weekend off was awesome, we all ate far, far too much food, indulged ourselves in Master Uberlander’s delicious beer and danced the night away. I’m really looking forward to the first training session back tonight, getting back on the mat and training while I’m still really enthused. I couldn’t be more proud of our team, and I can’t wait to see how we manage to build on this standard for the upcoming British and World Championships.

Now comes the self-centered, reflective bit. Don’t say you weren’t warned ;)

I’m quite surprised how much the competition, and the weekend as a whole, has affected me. I always knew it was going to be a good time, but I’ve taken so much more from it that I’d ever anticipated. I can’t describe how it felt to be a part of it all, to be stood there with all of those other TSD practitioners who’d traveled from all over the UK and Europe to do the same as me. It was great to be included (as a Dan grade) to help with the adjudicating and keeping the days running smoothly, it all felt very inclusive.

Stand-out moments for me include: bowing in with hundreds of other people for the first time, hearing people from our club cheer and applaud whenever I or anyone else competed and represented ISK, not falling over or forgetting my forms, watching our guys (and girls!) performing better than I could have imagined, and getting drunk with and dancing with everyone on that final night.

I’ve come back to Cornwall feeling completely inspired, and utterly determined to get as good as I possibly can, and hopefully a little bit beyond that! The feeling of being part of something bigger – and as clichéd as it sounds – a family, is something that’s really stayed with me. The strange thing is that even though it was such an amazing time, I’ve come back and feel quite dejected now. When we all stood for the final bow-out it hit me that it was over, and ‘normal life’ had to resume. I realise that it’s the fact that it was such a departure from the norm that made it so special, but I didn’t want it to end.  I just have to keep telling myself that this is just the first of many of these experiences for me, and that it’s only going to get better as we do. It’s safe to say I can’t wait for the next event :)

And finally, despite it being quite crass and ego-centric, here’s what I won. It’s not as much as some, and there’s no gold there, but these (or what they represent for me)  mean an enormous amount to me.

my medals

Bronze for Chil Sung, Silver for Chang Bong

Tang Soo everyone, and thank you all!

Lurgified

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I’m listening to Paul Simon’s Graceland and looking forward to the weekend, so I thought I’d have a go at writing an update for this. I’ve been at a bit of an impasse for the last couple of weeks where I’ve wanted to write something, but just haven’t been able to muster up the enthusiasm or subject matter. Not really writers’ block, more of a general brain block.

It’s only a week before the European Championships now, and I’m nervous and excited. More excited than nervous for the time being, but we’ll see how long that lasts. The big team sessions we’ve had lately have really helped pull the clubs together, and I think it’s going to feel like a really good, big family unit going u to compete. I’m confident in at least knowing the forms I’m going to be competing with, it’s just smartening them up and practising again and again for the next seven days that I need to do. I’ve always stuck to just sparring at previous competitions which has suited me just fine, but it’s a loooong day just waiting for your category to get called and I’ve never really tested myself with my forms in front of a high-ranking group of strangers. I really hope don’t let the chang bong slip out of my hand!

Before I even get as far as the competition though I need to get better. I’ve had colds and sniffles on and off for weeks now, literally weeks and weeks, and just as I seem to be getting over one another one comes along and kicks me in the ass – or more accurately the lungs. This latest one has made itself right at home unfortunately and has turned into a chest and sinus infection, and the most irritating cough I’ve ever had. It tickles and tickles and never clears, and it meant I got about 3 hours sleep last night. People who know me know I don’t do well without a good night’s sleep, I’m like a zombie, so I’m amazed I’ve even written this much today. It doesn’t bode well for poor Murphy who’s meant to be going back to dog agility tomorrow morning after two weeks off due to Crufts and a local competition. Sorry Murph, we’ll be back to dog school soon.

On the games front it’s been pretty quiet. I milked Batman Arkham Asylum for all it was worth and finally gave it back yesterday, but it’s been such a long time since I played a game I enjoyed as much as that that I’m itching for more. So much so that I went into town and made a random purchase yesterday thanks to a sale at the games shop and a new reward card so I could at last spend the points I’ve had saved on there for ages. I bought Dragon Age: Origins, despite the graphics really not looking that great (although my last few games have probably spoiled me), but mainly because it’s a Bioware game and they have a tendency to make very good role-players. I had a couple of hours on it last night and really enjoyed what I’ve seen so far, even though there’s an unusually small number of race and class choices. I’m still waiting to borrow Assassin’s Creed 2 too, it’s supposed to be very good. Oh, and Blazblue Calamity Trigger is out next week too, more 2D fighting goodness from Arc Systemworks, the genius behind the likes of Guilty Gear XX (which is still the pinnacle of that series if you ask me).

So yeah, that’s me. More inspiration and less boring updates next week with a bit of luck!