토요일

saturday at the dojang. now i know. very intensive. an hour and a half instead of an hour. wide range of activity, from our normal warm up routine of stretches and kicks and punches into poomsae, into cross-room exercises, to sparring drills to sparring.

oh…did i forget the ten minute ab torture? i couldn’t even extend my legs up anymore at the end of it. was that only TEN MINUTES? but what a high. my arms are sore again, too. my triceps…no. what is that? that’s my deltoids. but that’s from yesterday i think.

in terms of the test next month and what i have to know, i’m pretty solid…though i’d like to practice my self-defense techniques #7 and #8. in fact i’d like to brush up on all of them under #9, including those two. maybe i’ll talk to someone in class about coming in when the do jang is open for an hour or so with no class, i think it’s thurs eve?

self defense moves are the ones i do the least of out of everything. those are probably the ones we practice least, too. but they are short and repetitive and sort of brutal! practicing them doesn’t take a long time. whereas we all need lots and lots of repetition on our kicks and punches and poomsae. self-defense moves are intended to end things very fast. 1, 2, 3. they are the grim cousins of the beautiful and swift family of kicks known so much in olympic style sparring. olympic style kicking is fun to watch, and sometimes even spectacular. self-defense techniques are small, fast, and devastating. sometimes only one-two. while you always aim to move decisively with proper stances that maximize your power and balance, you really never practice them at full strength (except the parts you can pull short on, snap back in the air, like a knife-hand chop to the neck or a kick to someone’s head.) because it would be far too easy to hurt someone in class. …and yet, they should be practiced a lot so the muscles know them by heart. no thought whatsoever. grabbed by the belt? the lapel? around the waist? by the wrist? by the neck? bam! bam! bam! if someone grabs you by the neck and you have to think about it, then you might do what is natural, which is very frequently what is not going to help you.

i don’t need to practice them necessarily for practical reasons (or i do, but that’s not my concern here) but more in terms of what i’ll be tested on next month, to pass to green instructor. well, i know them. but i’d like to perfect them by then.

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i let luna withdraw from training. she doesn’t want to do TKD right now. i think she should keep going. i mean, i know ultimately it will be very good for her. but…i don’t want her experience of the art to become Something Papi Wants But I Don’t; i don’t want it to turn into a weekly fight. no…not over something i love so much, not over something she could love, too. i’m very conscious of those times i’ve seen parents go too far with their own image of their child, impressing upon them something that isn’t them.

though i’m not exactly sure that i’m letting her off too easy. some things you need to just keep kids at until they get it. some things you need to provide the firmness for that they lack. like a trainer does for you, knowing your own laziness or fear won’t help you elevate where you want to go. but that’s a tricky line. after all, i know where i want to go. but when it comes to being pushy with my kids, i tend not to. i set lines that i know will be important for them. and i enforce them firmly with no big emotion, and no wavering. it’s very important for children to have hard lines in their life, as well as much love as you can give them at all moments.

but when it comes to being pushy? when it comes to forcing them to eat food or other things…i err on the lenient side. i’m not saying it’s right. but i grew up with an authoritarian like you’d not believe. and i won’t do that to my kids. i’m still not positive it’s the right decision to let her withdraw so early. i’ll talk to luna about it. tell her i want her to keep going, even if she’s nervous because it will help her grow. see how she reacts to that. feel out where her hesitance is. she declined to go to her mother, i wasn’t there, i’d like to hear it from luna at least so i can sense what it’s about. either way, it will be fine. soon i’ll have pads and a heavy bag here, and she’ll get used to training at home, even if i have to sneak little mini-sessions in for her. maybe she can ease into it that way. it’s funny, her and paloma both put on my headgear (i’ve red and white) and they run around trying to kick things.

i just know it’s important that they train at some point. i don’t think i can leave it up to them entirely. luna especially. she’s so angsty and anxious and self-conscious and sensitive. even paloma has begun pushing her around! look at them above. you can see just by the way they present how their personalities are. paloma is chomping at the BIT to train, that is clear already! she’s impossible to hold back when she’s at the do jang and sees people kicking and stuff. luna just wants to color with crayons.

but luna is young. so we can wait a bit. i mean, i’d rather do that than become all towering and insistent about it. after all, this is the kid who gets traumatized by spider man. she’s practically all nerves. i don’t mind letting her come back to it. which she’ll probably do unless she associates it, early on, with shame or anger.

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did some sparring drills today with a blackbelt, she was a woman. we had fun. this was the first higher rank belt i did drills with who was not afraid to hit me hard. i mean, we didn’t pummel each other. but i don’t think these kicks ought to be pulled so much that they are bloodless. i do know that control is one of the most important things we learn and are expected to demonstrate, and also what truly shows the mastery of the art, i also think there’s a danger when people train as if these are not meant to break ribs, but to “look” a certain way. sometimes you see the demonstration of strikes and blocks and kicks that are almost thoughtless, absent-minded, soft, they get sloppy in the air sometimes. i guess i know personally what violence feels like, and being cornered in the night and all that good shit. i know how much these moves could possibly be needed, and i practice them as if they are real. when i do a jumping front kick, i don’t just do it in the air. it’s not an abstract motion that i’m doing so i can perfect an abstract motion. i visualize my targets. when i extend the strike, i’m putting my foot up under your chin, into your neck, or deep into your solar plexus nerve cluster.

i just think that it’s important when you train not to imprint/program a hesitancy into your art. i trust my teachers at the do jang, and the teachings we have about first building technique. slowly. that is the foundation and that is very important. but we are also taught to move as if we are really performing these to work. you should know what the strike is for. where it is meant to land. what it does to the body.

you also must figure in who you are working with, of course. sabum says you adjust according to whom you are training with. older person, small person, obviously less-skilled person—take it easy. but if you are both adults and there is some balance (i might have possibly been stronger than the blackbelt i drilled with, i don’t know, probably, but she is a much higher rank, and she certainly was strong enough).  so we weren’t grossly imbalanced as far as strength and size.

thinking back, we moved back and forth from light contact, to harder contact. that’s when you remember these kicks are powerful! you catch one in your rib cage and it knocks the wind out of you a bit, even with the hogu on. but i found myself laughing when i got knocked back. that’s what i mean, that we had fun. i liked it because she made me feel comfortable. she was comfortable. not just with her art, but with people. i could feel that, and that can be contagious. we naturally found ourselves feinting and testing each other’s reflexes. it was good! there was an ease in the interaction, and yet still very much challenge that could live there. my most memorable laugh was one where i was shaking off one of her well-landed and targeted kicks. my laughter was not ridiculing or embarrassment, it was an ode to the efficiency of her technique! also, a thanks, for being comfortable enough to give me a good shot. to me, it was a type of respect. it is. it is a respect to give someone your best. there’s times when someone is trying to dominate you for their own ego, and then there are moments where someone is saying “you’re a good partner, and you can take this and work with it, and it will make you even better than you are now.”

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so it was a great work out today. i’ll have to make saturdays a part of my regular routine. they sure are tough, but you know how it goes. pain, gain, glory, and deltoids with hard curves. it all goes together.