E Dan Spells Trouble

Keith came back from his vacation and this is the last day of my martial class week which means work on Il Soo Sik (one-step sparring).  Before we got started he thought I ought to do some basics to warm up.  For once my concern for flexibility and injury has dropped because I've been getting up early (instead of by the alarm) and lightly working out until it's time to go the the school.  

One kick that really tells me my hamstring or glute is tight is the outside to inside crescent kick.  Designed to break collar bones, it requires the kicker to get the foot/leg straight up and then down with a straight leg.  Imagine doing a split in the air.  Never my best anyway, but the warm up really helped me.  I didn't feel any noticeable tugs in tendons and muscles.  

And then he said the words "E dan".  I'm not saying I dread it, but it means second level and that means jumping.  In all the martial arts I've studied, there hasn't been much jumping.  So I'm like a giant gangly goober when it comes to this stuff.  I think my jumping front kick is passible, but that's about it.  Today we hit on the one I must know very well since it's part of the blackbelt exam; E dan dwi cha gi.  Cha gi mean kick and dwi means turning and e dan, of course, means jumping.  In this case it all comes together as a jumping, spinning back kick.  When I finally got one that looked vaguely correct, my kick was just north of ankle height.  Wow, do I have a long way to go.  

Now just add a jump to that.

Straight Up Bassai

Second day of my training week is forms, but since Andy worked me on Bassai yesterday, I just assumed we'd work on something else.  We started with a few one-step combos to warm up, but he pointed out these are no long in circulation. He likes to revisit them on occasion to remember and help work on basics.

Then we jumped into Bassai and made it all the way to the end of the form.  Here's the rushed video I did as soon as I got home.

don't look too close

I am clearly not going to win any prizes with this, but I'm just doing reference videos so see where I need to work or just check progress.  Honestly I just don't want to forget stuff.  I have a lot of work to do.  

I'm glad that I was able to get through the whole thing.  During the learning I kept doing moves from the past.  Forgetting the past is tough some days.

 

Bassai and Breaking

Normally my first day of the training week is dedicated to basics, but Andy took a slight turn so we could continue working on the form, Bassai.  

We started out by doing a few basics, but to spice it up I was instructed to do combos.  Kick to block or kick to strike.  That was fun and definitely warmed me up.  For once I was looking pretty comfortable and managed to keep my balance most of the time.  By the end I was getting shaky and I'm not totally sure why.  I wasn't tired, but my balance was giving up and causing a cascade of errors.  

We spend the rest of the class on Bassai.  I imagine I'm over half way complete, but we went over my progress and cleaned up a few items and added a lot more steps.  I'm remembering a lot more from the past which surprised me.  It's probably been eight plus years since I did the TSD version and I only did a few times at Shudokan.  

Since I've started with SBD, I've been commiserating with my old web cohort Bob Patterson.  He's retired from Martial stuff for the time being, but remains a great source when referring from jumping from art to art.  We have been going back and forth about requirements and I was expressing concern with breaking due to my lack of experience.  I knew he did complicated kicks at one point and while we were talking about the different things he pointed out that he had to do a brick break!  What!?  They had concrete bricks and he went through it in one, but he said afterwards his forearm hurt for a week.  I guess we  know where the stress goes!

He said practice impact as much as you can.  I got figure out how to do that!

The Talk

pretty much like this

There comes a time in every martial artists life where the teacher casually brings up testing.  This is my second transfer to a new art and the conversation really didn't come up in the beginning of my work at this school.  I believe the prevailing thought was that I needed to work on a transfer of belt status so they needed to see what I remembered.  

As per usual I'm pretty much focused on just trying to do what's in front of me and really don't think too much about testing.  If you've read this blog long you'll know how focused I was on the tests at my old school.  The count of years disappeared quickly when you have to learn so much in a relatively short time.  

In this school I've been keeping my eye on learning.  Redoing basics, learning language and figuring out protocol.  Time has been passing and my process has accelerated because I'm basically taking private lessons three times a week.  So I'm starting to see progress in skills and so are my teachers.  

At the end of class today Andy asked if I'd be interested in testing in the Spring or another year (October).  I honestly hadn't thought about it.  After mulling it over in my head for a few moments I said that my kicks/foot work were probably pretty behind and my ability with the language was poor.  Andy's response was to tell me that my kicks were probably better than his.  That seemed like a trick.  Was this exam one of those things that seems easier than the work sheets and skills indicate?  I doubt it.  Was this misplaced confidence in my basic skills?  Probably.  

In the end I chatted with him about reviewing my progress mid-fall to see where I was.  April might be realistic, but I have no idea at this point.  

While I was leaving I ran into Mr. Holman (another student) and he asked about my testing in April.  How many people talk about me?  Very weird.  

Third day schedule is wrist locks and one-step sparring.  My learning rate is slow to me, so we don't often cover a lot of ground, but I was able to get through the six wrist locks to some degree of satisfaction.  We didn't make it to any one-step stuff, but I'm not complaining as what I'm learning seems to be sticking now.  

Nostalgia Forms

Back when I was in Tang Soo Do (7 or 8 years ago?) things in our school were still coming together.  My teacher hadn't really decided on an advanced curriculum by the time I was in my brown belt years.  So I was left to my own devices to work on forms.  I have a few TSD manuals and DVDs so I would study them diligently and try to work out the moves to forms that we hadn't studied yet.  One of these was Bassai.  In most of the curriculums it was a requirement for black belt.   

So I printed out every move on a separate piece of paper and taught myself.  Part of my exam was to create a kata so I cribbed many components of Bassai and my testing board seemed to appreciate that.  

Fast forward many years and I'm a Shudokan guy.  Guess what? Bassai is a standard there.  Sure enough they have it as a requirement for getting your black belt!  Not that I could remember much at that point, but I learned it again and the attendant bunkai for the exam.  I promptly forgot it as I started study for my Nidan.  

Fast forward a few more years and here I am in the present.  I will be required to do three kata for my Chodan in SBD, which includes Bassai!  

I'd been working on Chil Sung Ee Ro and Nihanshi chodan (yet another I had to do to get my Shodan in Shudokan!) and, apparently, am doing well enough that Andy decided it was time to work Bassai.  What a trip down memory lane.  It was hard to concentrate at one point because of all the intrusive memories.  However, once we got started I realized that all three versions I've learned are similar, but have enough differences I'm essentially learning a new thing.  We got up to the first 15+ moves and then we ran out of time.  

Fancy and fast - not me.

Form notes:

Chil Sung 

- Punch is on the rising knee side

- rising knee is just that, not a kick

- two moves and pause for big breath

- three count after keyhap

NiHanShi

- after slide to right, block has crossed elbows and a foot stomp.

- hips in second punch.  

Another Day In The Trenches

This week Keith is out on vacation so Andy is taking over my training.  The first day of the week is basics so we went through as many blocks and strikes as we could manage.  I was focusing on language and hips and didn't receive too much correction.  I was also trying to remember where to chamber my hands. It feels like that each block and strike comes with a different location to start your hands.  I know that's not correct, but I think there is about four, but it's definitely not set in my head yet.  

After hands, we went on to feet.  I was kind of dreading this because my flexibility still fights getting my leg farther up and I still straighten my ground leg on kicks which ruins my balance.  That being said, I felt that the kicks were better than usual and even though my personal review was critical Andy also told me that I have shown improvement.  So I'll take a yeah today.  

When I got back home I try doing split stretches.  The thought being that it'll maybe help me get a bit farther in some of the kicks.  One side isn't bad, but the other fights me actively.  A lot of work to do there.

Friday Training Update

Since I get up so early it can be a trial to get from here to there in the house due to the lack of light.  When I first started at the school it was mid summer so it was light all the time.  Today I was stumbling around trying to find shoes and keys.  Making all kinds of noise.  Since the house is in a mid construction state we don't have a door squared away on our bedroom so I walk around the house via braille.  I'm trying desperately not to wake my wife up, so I'm going to have to figure something out for next week.

I got up early today so I was doing forms in the dusk making sure not step on a cat while I ran through the moves.  I was mostly focusing on landing my punch at the same time my foot landed.  Seemed to go well this morning.  

Keith was a bit late so we jumped in with a few basics to act as a warm up.  I'd showed up early again to get warmed up, but Keith pointed out that it doesn't matter how warmed up I am I'm probably always going to be sore if I push my ability.  That seemed nice, I think.

As I struggle with the language (for example the number eight sounds like the word "turn" to me) I often freeze during the call of the technique.  Maybe I was a little bit better today.  Or maybe it was because they were words I've used several times this week. 

After a warmup and some tuning we went on to wrist grabs which are also known as self defense (Ho Sin Sul). I'm supposed to know about six at this point, but we don't often get to them since I'm slogging through so much, but we got four complete. As usual it's all about basic technique and not brute force.  Stuff I struggled with ever since I've started.  Bad technique leads to  using muscle which doesn't work half the time.  

After that we moved on to Il Soo Sik (one step sparring).  The first one (Il bon) is blocking with a knife hand, punch to the center, punch to the head and then roundhouse.  We worked at that for some time and then, bam, we ran out of time. 

I feel sort of bad for Keith.  He's working so hard for me and we end up burning an hour working out details.  I just hope they don't want to test me anytime soon!   

 

Getting Worse As I Get Better

At least I hope I'm getting better.  Today was forms after a bit of warmup.  I'd actually got there very early to really get my muscles warm.  Yesterdays class left me pretty sore so I was jogging around the room and doing basic forms as an attempt to get ready.  

Keith got there early as well and we got started with warm up drills.  Nice!  Anything helps.  Then it was off to forms.  

It was back to Nihanshi Cho Dan for a good half hour.  My practice hasn't been diligent enough because there wasn't one part that didn't get addressed. 

• Maintaining the proper height throughout the whole form
• Hips must move big all the time
• Targeting on the low center.  

The more we worked the worse it got.  

Next we worked on Chil sung ee ro, the form I worked on for the video tournament.  I hadn't touched that in three weeks so it was a lot of work to relearn.  There was literally nothing that went untouched on that.  Correction on every move.  Holy cow, that was painful.  The Koreans don't have a word for Kime (foot lands as fist contacts), but for some reason I can't manage it all of sudden.  I was fairly good back in my Shudokan school, but I cannot find the timing all of sudden do to the chambering.  I'm sure it'll come, but it's embarrassing to me to have Keith remind me over and over again.  

Things to remember for Chil Sung:

• contraction/relaxation. From the knee strike stay contracted for the punch (the Heisman stance)
• Same as above with the Shin Chook in the thrust kicks.
• Everything.  

Slight Change In Schedule

As September comes around, the schedule at the school is changing significantly.  Thankfully my time with Keith is remaining the same, but moving to a wed - fri schedule.  He has another obligation on Tuesday morning, but the "private lesson" vibe is still in place.  I can't imagine anyone else actually joining us a the 5:45 time, but you never know.  

Today was basics and I'm now working in the 6th to 5th range for foot techniques and 5th to 4th for hand techniques.  Unfortunately, this means jumping techniques for me.  Grim stuff. 

At least I think it's grim stuff.  I keep looking at the flexibility in the advanced moves and asking myself if I'm able to do this.  I'm incrementally improving, but I'm definitely not good.  I'm stuck with thinking I might be too old and then thinking, "hey I'm able to do this!?"   

Today's case in point was a jumping kick. The jumping side kick (Ee Dan yup podo cha gi).  No necessarily something complex but I made a hash out of it.  The secret is to have the landing foot heel pointed at the target.  It forces the hip over.  One good one out of twenty or thirty kicks.  I definitely felt some frustration.  I was doing plenty bad on the regular kicking, but the jump is so filled with thinking.  Shutting off the brain would be easier for sure.  

Hand techniques were way easier, but still need fine tuning, but nothing complex.  Today we moved into a bit of combo work.  High block, middle punch; low block, high punch, and then double knife hand block and strike at the same time.  Fun!  Old memories.

In order to remember things a bit better I had my wife test me in Korean to see if I can sort out the technique.  A bit better.  

Incremental gains!

Porkchop On Head

My nickname should be "fine tune".  It's not like being taught from the ground up, but because I have a background everything I do needs to be tweaked.  Today was a case in point.  Keith JKN was checking my nihanshi cho dan and we had to basically take apart everything from the ground up.  From where arms go to hip work, it ended up feeling like I was learning the whole form all over again.  At the very least I was able to make it look somewhat presentable by the end of class.  

Before we started on forms, we ran through all sorts of basics.  I think we are working on skills somewhere between 6th and 4th gup.  Soo Bahk counts from 10 to 1, so looking in the manual I think that I've been working the hands up to level 4 and my kicks are in 5.  My ho sin sul (self defense)  is way back down to level 8.  I guess my nickname is mishmash.

I wanted to practice a few kicks before we got rolling today and I definitely wanted to try that straight leg hook kick (Yup Hu Ri Gi) and get that better before moving on.  Keith got a water dummy and I had to attack that with the heel and a straight leg.  It was a bit difficult to keep my leg rigid, but I was getting there.  A note from Keith was that I needed to keep in mind that a majority of kicks in SBD are heel centric.  This also helps me keep my toes back, and possibly be able to hit with the ball of my foot.

There are three forms related to the 1st degree (cho dan) and we started working on Nihanshi.  After a run through, Keith noticed that I needed to keep down lower and not bob up.  To do that he kept a focus paddle over my head.  At this school it's called a porkchop.  Hah!

A couple of notes from that kata:

• practice keeping low
• slap comes from armpit
• use those hips to drive all arm movement
• don't stand up
• start with left foot coming up
• end with right foot coming up

I'll need to get some video that, but in the meantime here's the closest I could find on the internet.

Blocks and Kicks and Things Between

Keith JKN is back today and the schedule for our Tuesday is Basics and Forms. As we push forward in basics I'm getting more and more challenged by the difficulty level. The words are coming a bit easier, but I got bogged down in the chamber for all the hand techniques. There are many!

In SBD they don't stack hands in chamber (yet), but at the level I'm working at it's mostly fists or hand at the belt in horizontally or in a open hand triangle. And then there's a reduction in force with my blocks. I'm so used to blocking with tons of muscle that throttling is a massive challenge. Keith is trying get me to only use my hip movement to move my arms into place. It really helps my hip movement, but putting it together takes some concentration which throws me off consistently.

We then moved to kicks, which I would say I'm slowly get worse at. Balance and flexibility seem to be going by the wayside. To be fair Keith is complimentary on a few things, but I wasn't on the ball today. The jumping front kick turned to a mess, then the front to roundhouse turned into a mess and finally the back kick was going well for a second and then fell apart. The final straw was the straight leg hook kick. I can't even do it. Just crap.

He pointed out that my previous experience was good for all the hand work, but a lot of work needs to happen on the kicks. Sigh. Just when I was hoping to show some progress it felt like a massive backward step.

On a positive note I got to break again. A hammer fist. It's got to be the weirdest attack I've ever seen, but I did a nice job on that. All the way from my hip, all the way around the should and head and down. I can't imagine where you'd get to use it, but fun.

Like this, but different. I got to stand for mine.