First Official Break!

Due to the many exciting things going on in my life at any given time, taking time for martial arts can be a challenge.  My wife and me are preparing a rental and doing work in our new place, so an afternoon class breaks things up too much and I can't get things done in a consistent fashion.  

Fortunately, the school offers a class at 5:45 in the morning.  No one has been going so one of the trainers has offered to start it again for me.  It's basically private lessons!  

Today was my first day (we are going to try Tue - Thurs) and I was surprised I was able to shake off the sleep and get going.  Mack JKN ran me through all my basics and we worked on language whenever we could.  As usual, working on basics is a continuing kind of thing.  You're never actually done, but I'm bottom rung in this process.  I'm literally retooling my punches and kicks.  To be specific I feel like I'm learning kicks for the first time.  Back when I was in Tang Soo Do we did a lot of kick basics, but it's long since gone in my memory.  However, I cannot remember this level of scrutiny in the mechanics.  

Since my world view in martial arts is shifting quite a bit I realize the focus in my Shudokan school was kata driven.  There were kicks, but really most of the time we focused on how to do them well enough that the kata looked good.  Soo Bahk is definitely focused on generating power within a technique and technique is a huge focus.  

To wit - To show that you can do the technique you have to break some wood.  In my TSD school we didn't break because of the cost of wood.  Island life made that an uncomfortable price and my teacher didn't want that outlay.  In Shudokan it never even came up.  So I have belts in two arts and never broke anything (not entirely true as we played around with it at TSD with plastic boards).  

After spending a lot time breaking down my kicks and rebuilding them, Mack JKN slid a board holder to about my chest height and put in a plastic breakaway board. The framework holds the board with bungies and has a pad in the back so you have something you crash into.  

So I did a roundhouse and made modest contact and the board fell on the ground.  The next shot went well and the fake board shot everywhere.  Too much gas apparently.  Mack JKN pointed out that I was far beyond where we working and thought I could do more boards.  Oh my.  

Who knows what will be on tomorrow's plate!