I was able to get a copy of the new basics I need to learn. There are fifteen which is in line with my previous group, but these are all three move sequences. The first ones aren't necessarily difficult now that I've done them a few times, but the last five are a consolidated technique. They are from Northern China and have colorful English translations, like "smeared paint technique" or "shaking hands technique". It's a fun romp through martial arts history, but not sure about overall practicality. Pulling the one good move out is fairly easy though, but the technique can be challenging.
However, like the rest of the week I got more new stuff! Today we learned/practiced knife drills. I knew it wasn't going to be new stuff since it built off our other techniques, but there is always a challenge with the finesses of the style. In this case the capture was more thought out than TSD and there were subtleties that made a lot of sense. The knife being kept away from the thighs for instance. I get so used to rubber knives that I really didn't think about closeness to my thighs. However, in TSD we never grabbed the knife or tried to take it away. SBD always removes it. I kept thinking cut hands and so forth.
We got through the first two of five that I'm supposed to know. TSD was less rigid and really encouraged experimentation while SBD really wants you to focus on the technique without getting imaginative. However, when I mentioned to Andy that TSD had a full take down he totally went there with me. And then when I mentioned that we had a shoulder lock after the take down he did his version which included a unique leg brace to hold me in place. Super cool! Of course, now my shoulder is aching like is used to. I think I'll keep my mouth shut when it's fun time.
Excitement was in the air today. I wasn't very awake, but I was stoked to get to class and see if I could remember the first form and maybe some basics. No luck there because as soon as we bowed in it was time for partner drills.
Ho shin sul is the Soo Bahk Do version of self-defense. It's predicated on someone grabbing you and giving you a way to control the outcome. Lots of wrist locks and such. My exam had nineteen. Now that I'm in the next group I only have ten to learn. And this time they are based on sleeve grabs. I don't see the immediate application, but I can see it's just a way to get us to think about various ways to deal with grabs anywhere.
Today we went through the first four, but I'd pressed to remember anything beyond the first one. They seemed to be expansions of our previous ones so that's pretty cool, but with the nuances I got lost fairly quickly. Before I knew it, I was already past due to leave. I barely made it on time to my first meeting of the day.
I got into a class a few minutes early, but before I drove over, I took a look at my wife's video from the test. I'm aware that we are our own worst critics and I'm usually objective, but this was the night where I was going to find out if I had a lot of corrections on the test or not and video showed me all my errors. I walked in there dreading what they were going to say. I was worried that I would have to do a complete do over in October.
I stand to the side when I get there because they aren't going bow me in for the last five minutes. Colette was lining everyone up and giving notes. She was asking how folks liked the tournament and pointed out people that did very well. She then says, "should we give Mr. Tater his list of corrections now?"
I turned bright red. I think I could take a pretty large list, but why bring it up with the kids? Ugh, so embarrassing. She let that hang in the air for five seconds and looks at me and says, "none".
You could have knocked me down with a feather though. I was positive that it was going to be a lot more than none. Hah.
The Ee dan folks had to redo kicks. Pretty good for all of us! yeah! I won't get my new belt for a month because they need to do all the certification printing first. Then they assign us numbers and that goes off to the embroiderers. So complicated!
Where to start? The exam (or presentation to be precise) takes two days. In reality it could be done one day, but they were putting a tournament together with the testing, so it took a lot get things squared away.
The oral exam, which is usually held after the final part of the test, was moved to Friday evening. I'm not sure why, but at least we wouldn't be huffing and puffing and trying to think straight.
I got there around three pm and we had a mass bow in. I think there was between a hundred and a hundred thirty participants. And from several regions as well. Friday had two big seminar sessions. The first was using a rear, cross stance while blocking to set up for an attack, which took an hour and was actually pretty fun. We built on it and got up to the point of using it practically with partners. Very fun.
The second session was different options for each level. My group was Dan test prep. We had a crash course in protocol in exams. My co-hort was me and three kids. I was at the end of the line as the "youngest" in rank. The co-hort was expected to act as a group. In the case of the forms, we were supposed to act in concert. Anyone who has seen group kata at a championship understands the time and effort to have everybody hit their timing correctly. Let's just say that all that practice I put into to having the correct time went out the window in a hot second. We were slave to the timing of the senior student. In the end we moved way faster with little or no pauses.
After learning to stand up and sit down and where to run to, we ran to our next session which was the oral exam. The eight of us (the other four were the Ee Dan candidates) got into line, where I was the tail-end charlie, and faced thirteen of the high-level belts from the region. They started at the other end which bummed me out. I wanted to get it over with but found the questions interesting. The Ee Dan folks got very hard questions. I knew a fraction of the information they were talking about and start getting nervous. When they started on the Cho Dan folks the questions throttled down quite a bit, but they were challenging enough. I was wondering what they were going to ask me to be honest. They get to me and say, "We were all reading your essay and were fascinated about what you wrote. Can you elaborate on some of the main themes?"
I stood there and thought to myself, "what the hell did I write?" I pulled myself together and talked about espoused philosophy versus whatever the teacher wanted to talk about. My old schools really never got into tons of details about what the school believes. Reed did talk about what was appropriate, nothing in stone.
We finished around 7 pm. I was wiped out.
The next morning, I had to be there at 7:30 to practice protocol and then warm up a bit. I couldn't see that we'd have the protocol part down, but when we got started, we were golden. I think we might have a few hiccups, but I surprised how well we did as a group.
Here's the test break down:
1. Basics - 13 techniques that everybody should know. From simple blocks to jumping kicks tied to a hand attack. I messed up three times on basic turning. I suspect I'm going to hear about that.
2. Forms - 3 of these with my gang. Bassai, Nihanji and Chil Sung Ee Ro.
3. Il So Sik - Normally I'd do sixteen of these, but they cut it in half because it was running so long. That was an adjustment. I got a bit slow at one point because I was trying to remove moves from my normal process. Some kid whispered what I was supposed to do. Bless his heart.
4. Ho Shin Sul - Self-defense. I did that on automatic. I don't even remember other than I was worried that I was hurting Bill on wrist submissions.
5. Sparring - two one-minute rounds. So fun, but I was worried about gassing myself. The advanced students were doing two on one. That looked so fun! At this point I was huffing and puffing when we stopped. I gather it was noticeable across the hall. Nice.
6. In Neh - Endurance. I have to do 120 straight punches in thirty seconds. Not as bad as you'd think, but the counter said 92. I was blinking in disbelief. I knew I was tired, but was I that slow? The region head said, "does anyone want to go again?" I said yes. We started over and I realize about 30 punches in that I don't have any gas in the tank. I reach down and get going again and when they call time the guy says 94. I didn't hear it, but a few people in the audience were audibly upset and a few stood up. Colette said I was fine and later told me I was in the 130s for each round. The guy couldn't count or something. Weird.
7. Breaking. I had to do a jumping spinning side kick. I don't normally have a problem with this, the first shot knocked me back. Hunh. The second, I kicked the living crap out of the guy's hands. Ooops. The third went well. Nice clean break. Boring ass kick though. See below.
I swear I don't have a pot belly
We all gathered afterwards and bowed out. I'm now waiting to see what the results are. Hopefully I won't have too many corrections and I'll see the Midnight Blue belt fairly soon.
Last day before the start of the testing weekend. I'm practicing my Il soo sik and Ho shin sul twice a day at this point and stretching my back three to five times a day. I woke up this morning pain free and practically sprang out of bed. Whoop!
I have to get out of bed once my mind starts to turn to beatings. It means that I'm awake enough that the topical stuff of the day is coming through. I ended up getting up around 5:45. I figured that was enough. I got a little work done, warmed up a little and went into class a little early.
I decided to wear my mask to class today because two folks traveled by plane and probably chose not to wear masks. I'll stick to wearing them at the test as well due to the amount of people gathering. I'll take it off for the actual test though. I was huffing and puffing when we were doing the partner exercises though. I was dying when we got to kicking drills. I had to turn and get some fresh air at one point. It went very well for me. I was pretty stoked. I hope to keep up this level of things.
Tomorrow I have a class in the morning and then I'm not sure what to do for the day. I hope I don't drive myself nuts.
It seemed like months to go and now it's just a few days. I have a few more classes to squeeze in under my belt, but the adrenaline is coursing through my veins now and makes it hard to relax and just breath.
I got up a bit early and warmed up by practicing. It wasn't stellar due to me forgetting pieces and parts. A sure sign of stress. I know that so I wasn't beating myself up, but when I got to class I wasn't super thrilled by the making a lot of errors on our two mans drills. Nothing was too horrible to be honest, but I wasn't sharp and had to think a lot about my next move.
The good news was that Heather and Joseph showed up and that means we can pepper them with procedural questions for the next two days if we can. Since I have to leave early I was a bit frustrated.
Friday will be a long day for sure though. I'll go to early class and be able to stay the whole hour since I took the day off from work. Then I'll hang out and possibly ask questions if I'm allowed. Then it's just waiting time till it's time to head to the next town where the Shim sa is being held at a Best Western.
At least my back is holding up fairly well. I wasn't really warmed up all the way until a little before I left class. Saturday morning will be a small challenge to get enough time to get ready before the test starts. And not over do it.
At first I thought I was going to have cancel the test and wait till October to try again. Then by Monday morning I was thinking I could do a modified test based on what Andy suggested. After last nights class I guess I'm just back to regular. I have some lower back pain, but once we were warmed up I didn't feel a thing. I was able to do the kick that knocked me flat with no problem. I did have a few issues turning, but that might have been there before and Colette just caught it. Or I was tentative about twisting.
The class was just me and Jack. Colette asked if we wanted to do anything specific and ran us through a couple verbal tests. We ran through pieces of the test and she took some time picking at small things, which is questionable a few days before the test. But it was honestly good. My eye gaze tends to point down so she videoed us and it was startling. So that was a quick, easy change.
Jack and I did the one - step sparring. That was hilarious as you imagine. Four foot Jack against six foot me. We should have video of that. I forgot that he only does one side of the one-steps. That threw me off, but we got through it and finished up with In neh (endurance punching).
Another class that went way too quick, but built up my confidence significantly.
Bill and me were working out on Saturday by running through the test. This has been our usual schedule for a couple of months now. Near the end of Ill soo sik, during the spinning, jumping crescent kick my floor foot slipped and I slammed down on the floor before I new it. It knocked the breath out of me and the pain was unbelievable. My lower back was telling me it was time to have a spasm.
We went through a few more things gamely and my back never spasmed, but the pain was continuing. When I got home I was starting to panic that I'd thrown my whole test away. This is my last week! I could barely move without serious pain. That night I took a muscle relaxer and slept 11 hours. My back was doing great the next morning, but as the day progressed it kept creeping back.
Bill let Colette and Andy know that I had an accident and we talked about the test weekend. Apparently we can tell the proctor and the board that I'm messed up and it's still a go! Talk about a less exciting test. But it's given me hope.
Then last night my buddy, who is a PT, ran me through an eval. So my problem doesn't have anything related to a disk injury, but a small muscle that stabilizes the spine in the lumbar! This is good and bad news. The good is that at disk isn't injured, but to get the muscle to be happy in such a short time is horrible. Tons of Ibuprofen, exercises and a TENs unit if we can find one. He explained to me that we are trying to get that small injured muscle to release it's grip by doing range of motion exercises that tell it that's "fine". But doing the cat/cow stuff I saw an immediately relief.
I'll be doing this throughout the day and we'll see I do at class tonight. Ugh.
This time next week I'll be getting fairly antsy about the evening. I'm electing not to take the day off from work so I can occupy my mind with something else, but I'm going to try to take a half day. I have to be at the convention center at 3:30, but I'll go early to walk around and get comfortable there. The oral exam starts right away, but only lasts a half hour. It'll be challenging because they don't have a format, so the questions can be all over the place. You have to come with your A game brain.
The rest of the evening is all about seminars and meeting with the test proctor and so on. I'm not sure what the seminars are about to be honest, but I'll get to meet everyone from around the region. I've heard so many names for the last year so it'll be nice to make acquaintances and put names to faces.
The test is the first thing on Saturday morning and should finish up by noon. My wife is going come and take video. Hopefully she can get some good snips here and there.
My proctor is my old instructor's (Keith) wife, Heather. She's been signing in via Zoom in the morning, but as I was walking out early to get to work today she asked me to come over to the computer. She asked if Jack was going to be my partner during the test. I told her about Bill, but got to share a laugh about having Jack as my partner. He's ten and is half my height. We've done several things together and it leads to a lot of laughter on everyone's part. Not particularly good for a serious exam though. We'll still have to go over some details next weekend just to make sure everybody is on the same page.
Today's class was add-on basics and forms. The basics were grueling as none of them seemed to go with the one before. In the end with did 9 different pieces. What a mess.
While we were doing forms Andy watched me and said quietly, "you're ready." I thought that was very nice. I feel ready, but I don't want to get cocky. As I was leaving he asked me if I was nervous. I said, "I'm fine now, but we'll see how it goes near the end of next week. Hah!"
Speed Control , or wan gup in Korean, refers to your ability throw your punches and kicks in a controlled fashion. But after my discussion with Bill the other day about pacing myself I wanted to make sure I timed my work better today.
It was back to partner drills, but the more advanced students got to do knife attacks and defense. That was okay for me because it was reminiscent of the stuff we used to do in TSD, but with a few new twists here and there.
Bill and I would work on a few of those and then go back to my stuff. We hit Ill soo sik and got that done fast, but I made sure I took a few moments to breath in between each set. It was probably my best attempt so far. Only one minor bobble.
Then we worked on four more knife attacks. So fun, I can't wait to work on that stuff again. Then back to ho shin sul which had no problems. I only had a few minutes left so I had Bill verbally test me on the basics. I still make a few errors on these which bothers me. Thankfully they'll say them twice at the test.
Each week Andy has a new theme for us to learn. As the Shim Sa gets near, he likes going over some basic stuff verbally, to see if we all know where we are. Today, or this week, we are going over the last five of the articles of faith. I found out that I had them written down incorrectly and so when he asked me for number eight I gave him the wrong one. I got it correct on the third try, hah!
Bill and I ran through Ill soo sik pretty quickly. I had only one hiccup on a foot change, so that was pretty great by my standards, but I was going to hard. He warned me to slow down to conserve my energy. We flew through ho shin sul and we still had time to do kicking drills and his ISS. I was on fire!
Nine days to go and I'm back to studying terms. Hah!
We had to meet up at 7:30 due to our schedules this Saturday. Andy came out and watched us run through the test. Since Bill has been approved as my partner I felt like we could really settle in with each other. And since Andy was there it gave us an air of formality and pressure. Anything that emulates the pressure of the exam is what I like. I think it makes the actual test easier.
We ripped through the test in about forty minutes. I only needed to do hohop (take a deep breath) a few times. My errors continue to drop so that pleases me, but I have a few mistakes that vex me. A foot placement here, a pause there, and so on. Nagging stuff, but obvious to everyone watching.
The error count from Il soo sik was two I believe. I can't actually remember anything else of note other than a repetitive error I get on one of the forms. That's the foot placement thing. I'm assured it minor, but if Andy can see it then others will see it for sure.
Endurance went well (125 punches in 30 seconds) and the break was smooth. All in all, a good day. I hope to continue at this level for the next week or so!
I'm at the two week mark before the Shim Sa (the belt test) and I'm feeling pretty good. Mistakes continue to lessen at each practice so that makes me very happy. I'm told to expect mistakes and just learn how to move on. That takes a lot of stress out of the work.
Today is form Friday, so we warmed up with a few basics and then moved on to forms. It gets a bit boring repeating them, but easy to see errors and then on the next rotation, fix them. So I walked out feeling pretty good on those.
Good news. Bill was approved as my test partner. Just no sweeping him. He's seventy, so that's right out. With him as my partner he'll just attack so it's one-sided (so we think). This makes the test go very fast, but it allows for some nice pacing on my part if needed. I run the test straight through so I'm pretty wiped out. Bill pointed out that I can probably go slower during partner based portions of the exam because we'll probably be waiting for the other candidates to catch up. We shall see.
Tomorrow we'll practice at 7:30 am. Our schedules are a little off due to booster shots for the both of us.
I quit the booze on April 1st so I could be more focused on beatings. Sometimes I just didn't feel like I could focus correctly. Now I'm starting to realize it was probably the allergies that were killing me. So it's like an April fool's joke on me, hah. I was just going to dry out until the test was complete. I'm noticing that I'm still the same no matter what though. I'm still waking up and trying to wake up more in class. Is there a gain for not drinking? Hard to quantify.
My wife joined me to be supportive and just saw an article from the Lancet that not drinking is probably the best route of all for overall health. So we thought this was pretty awesome. Until last night. We had a steak night, the first in months and both of us have a huge connection with a glass of red with with steaks. I thought it would be nice to have a small glass, but in the end we didn't have any wine and I ended up waking up without at trace of disrupted sleep. So yeah for us?
Back to class - Bill and I did the partner drills again. I'm loving this to be honest, because I see it as such a area of needed focus. I can practice all the moves at home ad nauseum, but without a partner I miss some subtle things. So the more the merrier. The only problem is that I miss out on practicing all the other bits and pieces. That's what Saturday has become. Run the test and see how things go.
Bill up and volunteered to be my partner at the Shim sa, but Andy was noncommittal. Apparently not knowing how things go is part of the test! Hah, makes sense in the perverted martial arts sense. The counts of days grows smaller!
There wasn't actually any mangling other than my wrists and shoulders getting twisted pretty hard during ho shin sul. Today was just a standard partners day. I got partnered with Bill and we ripped through ho shin sul. I did mine and he did his and I was able to remember everything. I got one correction due to happy feet during the chicken wing. I'm only supposed to be making two steps.
We got most of the way through ill soo sik. I ran into a few hiccups but I'm finding myself doing this due an issue with timing. My practice is very repetitive and when we stop and address something else, or focus on a particular detail, I tend to get derailed. That happened once today. Still, improvement is occurring, just at a very small pace.
No word on whether or not Bill will be my test attacker. Probably still too many questions, but they told us that there won't be a mask requirement because the state doesn't require it. So the org can't override that precedence.
I read the book Angry White Pyjamas by Robert Twigger years ago. It's filled with all kinds of training experience nuggets. He points out that of that all of his teachers brought something to the table and all of them also bring something frustrating. In his case Aikido training would contain lots of group patterns. When everyone is in sync the whole process goes easy and with less effort. He had one instructor that could break any pattern and make progress frustrating.
Andy has that tendency at times. Colette will talk to the point where we get anxious to start and Andy will stop things to tell a story when it feels like we are getting going. Last night was a bit of that, but it mostly due to the fact that it was just Mr. Moore and me. After basics he would go back and forth between us and attack. We did both ho shin sul and ill soo sik. I think I made some errors, but I can't remember anything significant. I would mess up when he stopped for any period of time. Clearly I'm used to my schedule, hah.
The question of my partner is still in the air. I suggested the guy from Camus, but Andy was saying that he's way too high of a rank. He thought he might ask Bill! That would be super awesome in my book, but Bill is a bit standoffish due lack of mask mandate. It would still be cool though.
No, it's not the name of a new Marvel superhero movie, it's me! After Bill and me were working out on Saturday, Colette asked me to Proctor the Gup shim sa (lower belt presentation/test). I know absolutely nothing about this roll and had never been to a lower belt test for SBD.
The story started around the moving of a refrigerator. Colette and Andy needed a new one and needed some help getting it into the house. I was in the neighboring town, so I couldn't get there anytime soon. I ended up showing when they had it in place. Nice timing! We chatted a few minutes later and they asked me to be the Proctor on Sunday. I felt like it would be a good experience and, because I felt a bit guilty not helping a bit more at the school. We all sign off on helping out when we can, so the work is distributed. I'm usually working on my house so it can be a bit tough. They have an aggressive schedule of activities there and could use a lot more help, but there isn't a lot of us to go around. So, I made sure I could get there and try to help.
Help, well, a bit of a hinderance seems a better description. I was given a few instructions from Colette and after getting everyone settled, we were ready for bow in. There were about fifteen visitors and twelve candidates. Colette and Andy made up the board and I stood up the whole time.
My job was to say the moves in Korean and kind of act as a director for all the action. Holding boards to break, acting as a director for sparring and so on. Due to the large group the whole thing took several hours. Afterwards Colette only had a few notes for me. That seemed pretty good to me. I totally blanked on the Korean for the sparring stuff. Whoops. At least she was laughing at that.
All in all, a great experience for me, but I felt bad for many of the students that weren't totally prepared. When they'd do something on their own for the crowd and it was crap everyone still politely clapped. I'm not sure if they know, but Colette would follow up with, "I guess we know what we'll be working on next week." Hah.
Saturday with Bill - we ran through the test again and it was a bit smoother than last week. I'm taking this as a good sign. Just a few forgetful spots in ho shin sul of all places. Everything else went really well and we remember to spar this time. I was pushing the pace, so we finished in an hour. Bill pointed out that I don't have to do that since the test will most likely be broken up and I'll have more of an opportunity to rest than I think. I don't trust our circumstances to line up like that, so I'll stick to a harder pace just in case.
Friday means forms! I just assumed I'd be doing my three, ad infinitum. But Andy switched gears on me. He started at the very bottom of the forms and started working his way up. I've haven't done these in over ten years, maybe more.
The first two or three are pretty easy, but then take a significant turn. Gads it was horrible. I had to watch the people around me to get an idea of what the next move was. Total rookie time. We did that for about twenty minutes, and then he moved me to my regular three for the test.
I got through the three and it was time to run for the door. The class went entirely too quick, but I had time to practice at home and was pleased that the four items related to yesterday's work were recalled! Whoop!
On a side note, our teenage girl appeared to get lippy with Andy and he dressed her down a bit in front of the class. Things went back to normal right away, but I didn't actually hear what she said. She was responsive after thought. Bill and me speculate that Bianca probably doesn't want to come, but her Mother, the dr, might want to be keeping her close. Hah.
