Schooled

I was having one of those Karate Kid moments where Pat Morita was using some mundane task as a base for a movement. I wasn't that awesome, but I was working with a new student, Nurse, and found that if I broke blocking exercises up and did repeating patterns she immediately got the rhythm and did a nice job. I'm awesome.

The 2nd half of class was mostly a tripping throw. Going calf to calf with someone and rotating their shoulders until they fall. I'm the king of falling. I can't stay up when my shoulders are twisted so I'm the best Uke anyone can get. I was partnered with Trucker for the first part of class so my arms bruises from last week had a nice flair up while we did exercises.

Trucker has decided to make more of class and start studying on the outside. Our class is complicated in that we teach in Japanese, but it's a Korean art. We forget to tell people about this and they assume it's just Karate. Anyway, Trucker called me and I had to go through the whole history of our school and help him with some internet searches. The frustrating part of TSD is that we are not affiliated with a school down South or anywhere else. So our style is a blend of Karate and TSD with a bit of Aikido mixed in. This makes learning material very tough to focus on. TSD has a wide variety of style if you go by the internet. I've found two sources to be most reflective of how we do things, but neither is very similar. Master Kil and Master Pak are my favorites.

Our school started as an informal club with no fixed curriculum. Teacher Slim would just teach whatever he could remember off his head. He has four Black belts, but his only 2nd degree is in TSD. When the old students moved on and the other Teacher moved away my Teacher stepped up, but everyone knew Japanese and not Korean. So when Teacher got his black from Slim we just stuck with what everybody knew. I can say that I wish we had a static curriculum from one of the books, but I've been there long enough to see the benefits of how Teacher runs class. It may seem eclectic, but we all progress in a circular fashion.