This just pisses me off how this all turned out. First the whole blatently young gymnastics team and now its a BS Chinese judge. Now I'm almost embarassed to be of Chinese heritage with all this happening.
Here are my Taegueks 4-6 that I had to perform for my test. As I'm watching this I know that there are few messups here and there but I guess that what the video is for. To help us as students of this art to improve and tweak our technique.
Can I get some comments?
At the end, there's a board break I had to do with a back kick. That kick was off centre but I still managed to break the board.
So I had my promotion test yesterday. First off, I had to rush in because I had a long lunch with my old professor from university. So right when I got in, I got right into my uniform and after about a minute of stretching I was up to do situps and pushups. Which was really not problem for me since I was already decently prepared with my cardio.
After a while of waiting, it my turn to do poomse. Having memorized all the poomse up till my current belt, I don't think I made any huge mistakes. But I do admit I made the small mistakes of not putting enough power in some of my blocks and backfists and other things.
The kick I had to learn for this test is my spin hook kick. For a while my master has been training me to just loosen up on my technique. I have to admit I don't think I've achieved that flow on one of my legs with the spin hook. Interestingly, I able to do the kick well with my left leg but my right leg I put too much power in it and it compromises my technique as a result.
There was a short essay part of the exam that we had to hand in. Admittingly, I didn't have time to hand that in at the time. But my master is okay with handing the essay in later. I'll probably post it up in a blog when I'm done.
So all in all, it wasn't my best promotion test. But I did okay.
After much thinking and after much training each week as usual. I decided to take the plunge and go for my promotion test earlier than I thought.
For many reason I was wary about taking the test. If your read my last blog about dicipline. Those were the reasons that was keeping me back for a bit. However, one of my biggest weakness as people who are close have found out is that I tend to beat myself over the head for the smallest things. And as I'm realizing now, I deserve more than what I'm giving myself at this point judging from the comments I get from people.
Plus, some people did make a good point that if I stayed for so long at one level, I'd be so incredibly bored after a while. Plus, in some ways I am disrespecting the opinion of my Master.
And I thank those people for encouraging me.
So today after training I decided to go fill out the form and I will be taking the test next week on Saturday at 2pm pacific.
I've been thinking about this for a while and I am seriously wondering if it is true that the ground game is important?
First of all, let's start off by saying that I do not think that BJJ is the king of martial arts. I believe that there is no one martial art that is perfect. The BJJ grappler can just as easily be kicked or punched in the head.
To me the argument that a lot of fights go to the ground is almost BS.I think it really just depends where you are. If you're fighting in the hard concrete street, I'm not going to easily start rolling around. I feel like the ground fight will most likely happen on either grass or a padded ring like we always see in our tournaments and MMA fights. When you look at the early UFCs, they were fighting in padded rings and not actually on a street. However, there have been instances where grapplers have fought on hard concrete. But honestly, how often is that going to happen?
Even though I don't believe grappling is the king of martial arts, I still think it is necessary in this time since there's the popularization of MMA and BJJ. Now lots of people are thinking about hybrid fighting and as standup fighters in TKD, it be naive of me to think that I don't need a ground game at all. Which why I'm thinking of adding some grappling to my repetoire.
Now I know at least some of you have ended up in street fights either purposely or acidentally. I want to know what you guys think.
So do you think ground fighting is an important part of what we should learn as martial artists?
So I'm coming back from training and my Master's wife recognizes that I've been improving in my skills quite rapidly. And she brought up the topic of when I would go for my next promotion test. Just to set the background for this blog, here's my opinion on this topic. And I stress that this is just my opinion and I do not mean to offend anybody with this.
In my years of training, I've been to several schools and went through several training methods. So I've had time to guage the strengths and weakness of each school that I was at. One of things I notice is that in some schools I felt that it was run more like a business and that students are given the wrong idea that it is a race to become a black belt. Quite frankly, I'm not okay with what they think. I don't like how people can seemingly just have a cakewalk through the colour belts. But what do I know? I only have a blue belt and I admit that I still have a lot to learn. But it does irk me to think that there are a lot of dojangs that have turned into "McDojangs." It seems like the quality of students that come out of these dojangs just lack some of the basic skills that every student at whatever level should have. Why do you think people have largely criticized TKD for being an ineffective martial art? To me this is definitely one of the reasons. For me as a coloured belt I don't want to get to black belt fast and suddenly find out that I can't fight and that my technique is sloppy. I am more at peace that I am wearing the belt that I deserve and not the product of the Master who has simply lost their passion for teaching. Which is why I try to spend at least a good amount of time at each level. From my experiences I've spent about 1 year at each level.
So I told my master's wife that I simply like to spend a year at each level and then what she said was something I didn't realy expect. She said it was good but she said that one year is kinda long for the amount progress I've made in the past month and a half. She said that since we are at a small school where the Master is able to teach students one-on-one and refine our techniques well, we don't really need to take one year for each level. We have the opportunity to excel. So then I started thinking again, am I doing myself a favour by giving myself lots of time or not?
I am a firm believer that it is better practice one technique 1000 times than to cram 100 techniques in a short amount of time. Because at least you know that one technique so well that you can apply it elsewhere.
I've also been reading about the old days of martial arts and that back in the day, it was very meaningful thing to achieve a black belt and now its not so much. Now there's the topic of genuine places and fake big businesses.
So right now, I'm thinking where I should be going with this? And I hope this blog encourages all of you to honestly assess what your dojang's strengths and weaknesses are.
