stuart.dyckhoff

Posts Tagged ‘tang soo do’

I’ve never seen myself as a natural language learner.

My dad and my (so far) eldest son yes, but not me.

So when I realised that I need to learn some Korean so that Ican properly progress in my Tang Soo Do efforts I went a hunting. In short we new green belts have been told that from now on our gradings will be done in Korean – well at least the moves, forms, kicks, etc will. After staring at my manual for a while and realising that Korean by osmosis wasn’t going to work, I set about a plan.

My first thought was to use popling and create a set of Tang Soo Do cards for each section of the manual. I did this and my efforts can be found over at the Popling site, here.

Then I decided to tap up a martial arts forum I have started to frequent. Some of the longer standing members offered advice and even proffered their knowledge when it dawned on me….

Why not just Google it.

So I did:

First hit was to this interactive, online TSD flashcard utility.

Next stop hit was Flashcarddb and a search for TSD stuff returned this list.

Finally I found another flashcard site, though nowhere near as impressive as popling or flashcarddb which had this set of cards.

So, along with my manual; various flashcard sites; the MartialArts Planet forum and the DVD’s I already have then the only other thing to add would be perhaps watching YouTube videos. That is unless any of you can add to my list of resources?

I know I’ll be frequenting these sites and supply them here in the hopes that they help someone else.

Well … not really.

Last night was the family (aka Jenna, Coel and myself) jaunt to our Tang Soo Do lesson.

Towards the end it saw all three of us sat on the side for one reason or another which caused Ma’am to ask us if “we were on a family vacation” – the funny thing being is that we’d just come back from one and that possibly didn’t help.

Some context though …

Jenna was the first one sidelined. She was exhausted and physically couldn’t stand. But then she had also been in a school swimming gala that morning, then done an hour of ballet practice in the afternoon and finally ended up in the steaming hot gym hall that is our Tang Soo Do class.

Next to fail was myself. My excuse – 12hrs straight in work before heading down the gym and not enough food or fluids inside me. After a particularly brutal, lets mangle the senses type exercise my head went spinning and if I didn’t lie down I’d be passing out.

Finally, Coel who’d also been in the same swimming gala was doing fine when a freak slip with his partner caused the kick pad to glance his left eye and he couldn’t see out of  it.

So lessons learned:

1. Ensure you are well fed and hydrated before exercising on a hot day in a hot gym.
2. Ensure you haven’t already indulged in several hours of exercise beforehand.
3. Pay attention at all times.

Have you ever felt like you’re on vacation when you should be ‘up and at them’?

Jenna, Coel and I attended our first ever Tang Soo Do tournament last Saturday.

In all honesty we had little idea of what to expect or even the format for the day. Whilst the actual event was a success the information provided leading up to it was a little sparse.

As a family we had modest success. I thought Jenna did really well in her grouping but unfortunately for her she came up against 11 girls that were 1 and 2 years older and had mostly been doing Tang Soo Do for a good while longer. Due to this she didn’t manage to achieve any positions.

In contrast Coel was smack bang in the middle of his age category and only lost out in the final of his sparring coming away with a very respectable 2nd place out of 10 boys. I personally think he was very unlucky not to win and watching the video of the fight only confirms my gut feeling on the day. He lost out by one point but there are extremely clear indications where he had scoring hits or kicks but wasn’t given points and other times where in live viewing it was debatable whom hit who first. On playback it’s clear that Coel got the hits in first however he didn’t once receive the benefit of the doubt. Still he was very happy with his placing and trophy.

For my part I really didn’t want to do the sparring – I’m not doing Tang Soo Do to learn how to defend myself or fight better but for the fitness and family benefits. That said, due to the way the belts work I was in the over 36 male category and there were 11 of us from all over the UK and Holland. As there were no other orange belts I ended up with a bye and my first fight was against Jon from the same dojang as myself. Jon is a far better fighter than I and definitely deserved the win – but again vagaries of judging left me frustrated that I wasn’t given the scores I should have got and was not given the benefit when I blocked kicks and ended up losing points.

In the forms competition I was stunned to be told I was joint 2nd with a chap I’d been getting to know who was down from Rugby for the day. Peter and I had performed our initial forms together and ended up in a showdown by having to do them again. Congrats to Peter who edged me out and I ended up with a respectable 3rd place.

The other event I’d entered was breaking. Breaking is done with polypropylene boards that have a pre-determined tensile strength and come in three strengths. Not surprisingly men are expected to break the toughest (black) boards. This competition is based on style, performance and doing what you say. You can opt to break up to four boards at two stations any way you pick. I was first up and advised by a black belt to not go for two boards. My response being: “I’m only going to be here once a year, might as well go for the full hog” was met with a shrug and a ‘I told you so‘ type reply.

Well I failed (no doubt the black belt probably feels justified), but I did see one set of boards fly and the second start to go … so because I’d opted for the two sets of two and failed on one my marks would have been quite low. The fact is, I now know what to expect and where to improve and I really enjoyed the aspect of trying as the only other time has been in my grading. How else will I know what I can or can’t do if I don’t try?

I measured the overall success of the day by the fact that on the half hour journey home the two children fell asleep and were out for the count!

I know Jenna and Coel enjoyed their day despite getting a foot stuck in folding chairs, a bleeding gum, constant nagging for food and a few tears by both. For myself I did too. I loved meeting fellow students of varying expertise from all over the UK and it was nice to see some of the most senior belts in the world of TSD including our Grandmaster.

Next year our federation hosts an International tournament and I’d like to think win or not we’ll be there and will enjoy the day for what it is.

Tang Soo.