and I felt (notice "felt") comfortable because I knew my material.

I decided to buy the white/yellow belt DVD produced by Master R, the owner of our school. I watched it today because I wanted to refresh my memory on wrist grips (we've only done them two times in class - if I don't know them I will fail). I see that in forms, Master R aims before he punches, that is, he brings his arm up from a hadon makee at the same level the next punch is going to be, whether a middle punch or a high punch.

So, I asked my daughter about it. And she said, "Oh, yeah, you always aim with the opposite arm before you punch. I learned that at white belt." Well, I didn't learn it! So, here it is, the day before my test and I am learning something new for my test. Acccckkkk!

Then, I have to go and think. I asked about combinations like hadon makee with a toro chundankyonkyuk. My daughter said you're supposed to aim with those, too. We have to do combinations on our test. I don't think my brain can handle aiming with the forms and combinations.

On the otherhand, I suppose white belts are not expected to "aim." I haven't seen anyone else aiming. I'm not so sure the yellow belts are aiming.

When did you learn aiming? Was that after white belt?

Hi Lynn,
good luck with your test!

I learned to do this in TKD, but not in any other style I practiced...

Good luck, Lynne! And remember - you need to get up for testing and show that your are a 9th gup - not ask if you're a 9th gup. If you weren't able to pass, you wouldn't be testing - but you still have to show it.

Let us know how it went when you're done.

The BEST of luck..Don't foget to tell us how you did, which I'm sure will be EXCELLENT!!!

My biggest tip for gup testing: don't worry. You worry, you tense up and might possibly freeze or forget what you're doing. Just try to relax. I don't know your school's testing procedure, but if it's held at your dojang, it's likely your instructor will be giving the commands for the test. So it's basically just like a class.

As for self-defense grabs, the key is just do something. Even if you can't remember exactly what to do, don't just stand there when your wrist has been grabbed. You know, I assume, some basics of getting out of your opponent's grip. If your testing requirements are anything like ours, the most important question is Did you escape from your opponent's grip or not?

In terms of aiming, we only do that for the high punches on gicho hyung ee bu, and then only for yellow belts, so we can tell that they're doing sang dan kong kyuk and not just choong dan kong kyuk. Learn it if it's part of the test, but I can guarantee you won't be aiming with the opposite hand in a fight.

Good luck! TANG SOO!

Thank you all for the encouragement.

Kacey, when I thought about what you said, about being 9th gup, that really helped. For some reason, I was less nervous.

I passed and one of the instructors said we did very well. All the adults passed.

I can't be objective about my own performance, but my daughter said I did the best on wrist grips and one-step hand combinations...the two things I was worried the most about!!! True, I didn't have to think about them because I'd practiced them so much at home. I wasn't about to go into a test and not know them. It's bad enough that you're nervous and could blank.

I ended up not doing the aiming in my forms...it was too much of a mental overload. No one else (white and yellow belts) did the aiming either. I am going to be working on aiming. We have to do it with all of our forms eventually.

Now, I'm excited because I get to learn new stuff :D

Excellent! Congratulations on passing.

Thank you, crushing :D

Congratulations! I'm glad what I said was of help to you - and thanks for letting me know that it was.

Congratulations! You'll find that a lot of the things that take a great deal of mental effort now, get much easier with time.

As I teach the newer people, I always encourage them that by the time they hit 6th Gup, it will all be second nature and you can concentrate on the finer points of the techniques.

Hey Lynne, Congrats on the promotion!!!!! Keep training hard and it will start to become more natural. As everyone has said, now the training begins and you can start to work out the details more as you go. Good Luck!!!

Congratulations, Lynne! You're doing good and keep it up! We enjoy hearing about your learning experiences!

- Ceicei

Way to go, Lynne! At least you know what you need to work on for the next belt you're testing for, and I'm sure you'll do great then!

Lynne,
First... Congrad's on your first testing!!!

One thing to remember for each testing. When you are testing for aspecific rank, like in this case, 9th guep, you are not expected to look loke a black belt.

Too many students beat them selves up, trying to perform at levels above their current expected level of knowledge and ability.

It is good to be deeply involved and work hard to achieve all that you can. Take it one day at a time and have fun in all that you do...


TANG SOO!!!

Congratulations! You've just taken one small step that'll lead you down a long, indeed never ending, often perilous, but always rewarding path. Just keep at it, and you'll only get better.

Tang Soo!

Congratulations Lynne! :)

Thanks for the congratulations, the encouragement and the advice. I am listening to the advice ;)

It's good to know that things that are a mental overload now will come more naturally as times goes on. Many things in Tang Soo Do do not "feel" natural at first. I thought the 270 degree turns in forms were insane. Now, they feel natural. E dan ahp chagis feel natural now - I can do them with grace instead of looking like a lame horse.

Thank you, Master Penfil, for reminding me that I'm not expected to have the finesse of a black belt. I am too hard on myself sometimes.

Hi Lynne,
How we see our selves, and the expectations that we hold our selves too are a balancing act that takes time to understand and bring together as individual practitioners.

If we are not hard enough, we do not progress. If we are too hard, we can injure ourselves (mentally and/or physically).

We sometime think that if we train HARDER (like “JOHN RAMBO”) that we will get better. It is more important to train SMART.

Always listen to your body. If something hurts, ask yourself if the pain is good or bad. Are you sore from a good training session or have you caused some damage to muscles or connective tissues. Was that last kick a bit too high for your own ability level?

I had a student when I was in Arizona that was a bit over weight and spent all day at work sitting at a desk. He was a CPA. We, as a class, would climb Squaw Peak (a mountain in Phoenix) a couple of mornings per week. One Sunday we chose to climb Camelback Mountain. Camelback was higher, and many of the trails were covered with loose dirt, making them slippery. Squaw Peak was almost all solid rock, and easier to navigate.

This student slipped three times in the course of our climb on Camelback and had strained the ligaments and tendons in his left knee without realizing it. The next evening in class we were doing edan-ahp chagi’s down the floor. He landed with his weight back on his heel on one kick and his bone alignment was out of place. His femur and his tibia slid off of their connection points and we had to call him an ambulance.

In speaking with him after he returned to class (three months later) he said that he was feeling weaker than normal that night, and that he should have taken it easy, but that he didn’t want to appear to be a wimp. I explained to him that by not listening to his body, and trying to be macho, he lost three months of training time and experienced a great deal of discomfort in other areas of his life as well.

The moral to the story is:

Always listen to your body and never allow any instructor to order you to do anything that may cause you to have problems.

Congrats Lynne..Well done!!!

Congrats Lynne..Well done!!!
Thank you, Drac :)

Hi Lynne,
How we see our selves, and the expectations that we hold our selves too are a balancing act that takes time to understand and bring together as individual practitioners.

If we are not hard enough, we do not progress. If we are too hard, we can injure ourselves (mentally and/or physically).

We sometime think that if we train HARDER (like “JOHN RAMBO”) that we will get better. It is more important to train SMART.

Always listen to your body. If something hurts, ask yourself if the pain is good or bad. Are you sore from a good training session or have you caused some damage to muscles or connective tissues. Was that last kick a bit too high for your own ability level?

I had a student when I was in Arizona that was a bit over weight and spent all day at work sitting at a desk. He was a CPA. We, as a class, would climb Squaw Peak (a mountain in Phoenix) a couple of mornings per week. One Sunday we chose to climb Camelback Mountain. Camelback was higher, and many of the trails were covered with loose dirt, making them slippery. Squaw Peak was almost all solid rock, and easier to navigate.

This student slipped three times in the course of our climb on Camelback and had strained the ligaments and tendons in his left knee without realizing it. The next evening in class we were doing edan-ahp chagi’s down the floor. He landed with his weight back on his heel on one kick and his bone alignment was out of place. His femur and his tibia slid off of their connection points and we had to call him an ambulance.

In speaking with him after he returned to class (three months later) he said that he was feeling weaker than normal that night, and that he should have taken it easy, but that he didn’t want to appear to be a wimp. I explained to him that by not listening to his body, and trying to be macho, he lost three months of training time and experienced a great deal of discomfort in other areas of his life as well.

The moral to the story is:

Always listen to your body and never allow any instructor to order you to do anything that may cause you to have problems.
Master Penfil,

I'll keep that in mind. We have some pretty rough classes and sometimes the are very rough, too. I'm not complaining (not bragging either) but people sometimes get sick during class from heat exhaustion. We really get pushed hard.

I can see how it wouldn't be hard to get hurt. It would be easy to overextend a limb, like in running jump kicks. I remember one of my first classes we did running jump side kicks. Since side kicks are a yellow belt move, I had to no idea how to do them, much less a running jump side kick to strike a focus pad. I don't know what I was doing but it wasn't a side kick. I wanted to do my best but I was also cautious. Kind of a fine line there.

I am definitely hearing you about differentiating between muscle pain and something serious. A couple of weeks ago I had deep pain in my knees and they felt like they were going to give way everytime I got up. This had happened the week before and had gotten worse. It was scary to try and walk and almost fall. I have flat feet. I found my old orthotics and wore them inside my running shoes. The pain was gone by the next day. I have no idea what was going on but it was not muscle pain. It was a powerful dull ache, like a bad headache.

I will try and be attuned to overextending myself in class and listening to my body afterward, too. I'd hate to disrupt my training with an injury that could have been avoided if I'd only been smart enough to not do "that."

It's bad enough when people break their toes doing machine gun kicks because their toes get twisted!

It's bad enough when people break their toes doing machine gun kicks because their toes get twisted!

Machine gun kicks, eh? Never heard of that one. Mind describing it, just for interest's sake?

Machine gun kicks, eh? Never heard of that one. Mind describing it, just for interest's sake?
No problem, except I haven't quite got the hang of them yet!

Let's say your body is turned 90 degrees, so that your body is facing what was your right. You turn your right foot so that it is pointing behind you/away from you. You proceed to slide (not supposed to hop but I still do) on the right leg to the left while kicking your left leg. Your left leg never touches the mat and you try to keep it high - I guess it's basically a roundhouse kick because you are kicking from the knee down. You're propelled by the back leg sliding. You do this fast. It's not easy for a beginner.

We also do a hop-and-turn with them so that we are kicking/sliding with the opposite leg.

Also, we will machine gun kick to a partner and do a full circle machine gun kicking around one another and continue on to our finish point.

Before I started classes, I had seen the entire class do machine gun kicks around the entire perimeter of the Dojang, reverse and go around again...it's 4500 square feet.

People break their toes sometimes because their toes get caught on the mat while sliding.

Hi Lynne,
This exercise (Machine-Gun Kicking) is a great exercise for
1. Building stamina and cardio,
2. It is good for learning how to maintain your balance,
3. Being as you are using your lower abdominal muscles to lift your leg to kick, you are strengthening your abs with this exercise,
4. When you are sparring and your opponent is moving away from you to avoid the interaction with your attack, this exercise teaches you how to adjust your distancing in order to stay in the correct proximity to score.

These are just 4 positive reasons to train with this exercise.

The negative is that while you are improving with all of the above listed benefits, you are also establishing a muscle memory of kicking from the knee as apposed to using the hip rotation in the kick.

This makes the score of “Pro’s & Con’s” 4 to 1 in favor of doing this exercise. You can make it a “Perfect 5 to 0” by simply re-setting your hip between kicks and using the proper hip rotation for each repetition.

One of the major set backs that I have witnessed in training over the past 36 years for myself and others is when we are taught a technique early on and practice it incorrectly without corrections from our seniors. The execution of the technique is “LOCKED” in our muscle memory in an incorrect fashion and we never get around to fixing it because it is accepted as O.K. by those above us.

Always take the time to study your movement and work the fine motor skills into your muscle memory. It will make all the difference when you are ready for Black Belt (Midnight-Blue).

A good way to establish this is to work with a partner that has a “Focus-Mitt” for you to strike. You will feel the difference between those kicks that have hip in them and those that are thrown from the knee alone.

Work with a partner for a week or two and report back if you can feel a difference or not…


P.S. Regarding the part about students breaking their toes during this (and any) exercise; you should always be aware of your surroundings, and how to move safely where ever you are.

If you are attacked in a parking lot or on any paved surface where there are cracks and or split levels in the surface, you are at risk for anything from fracturing your ankle to tearing tendons and ligaments to tripping and breaking your leg or being raped and killed as a result of loosing your balance.

Develop your peripheral vision to always scan the area that you are moving in as to avoid such unnecessary and totally avoidable accidents.


TANG SOO!!!

Thank you again, Master Penfil.

My daughter and I will work on the machine-gun kicks with a focus pad this week (after class). I can see how using the focus pad would very helpful.

I do wish we would do the machine-gun kicks a little more often. I think we've done them three times in the 9 weeks I've been taking classes.

I'm curious to see how it feels throwing more of my hip into it. That should be interesting. At this point, I haven't been asked to use my hip. The instructors are probably waiting for me to "slide" my foot correctly. I think the focus pad will help me, well, focus.

Hi Lynne,
I was just noticing that you are located in New York. I will be in Rhode Island at the Tang Soo Do Mi Guk Kwan Association Tournament from Wednesday, July 11th to Sunday, July 16th.

Are you familiar with the TSDMGK, Assoc.?

Are you and, or you dojang going to be at the tournament?

KJN Ferraro, and the TSDMGK, Assoc. hosts some of the best tournaments that I have ever been to. If you are interested in coming out to compete, or just as a spectator it will be well worth your time!!!

There will be seminars during the days building up to the tournament. You can go to heir web site at www.tsdmgk.com (http://www.tsdmgk.com/) for more info.

If you do decide to join us, please take some time to come over and introduce yourselves to me. I always enjoy meeting the Discussion board participants.



TANG SOO!!!

Thank you for the information about the Rhode Island tournament. No, I wasn't aware of it. I'm looking over our school newsletter and it's not mentioned, possibly because we have Grandmaster Byrne's summer camp in Massachusetts form July 13 - 15 (wish my daughter and I could go - there is going to be a Bo workshop, Chil Sung forms with Master Rexer, and a fan workshop).

We have National Championships in Atlantic City, NJ, July 20 - 22. I don't know if my daughter and I are going to compete yet. Are you and your students going to compete?

Is the Rhode Island tournament a yearly event? I might ask Master Rexer about it.

Have fun!
Tang Soo Do

Lynne,
Please give my regards to Grandmaster Burn and Master Mitchell. I met them both last year at Grandmaster Ferraro’s 2006 Summer Training Camp. The Mi Guk Kwan changes the location of the tournament each year. Last year it was in Atlantic City, in 2005 it was in New Orleans.

TANG SOO!!!