First Tournament

[FearlessFreep]

Well, I survived my first tournament yesterday

It was pretty interesting to watch all day.

My son placed 1st in his forms competition; my daughter placed sixth. This was her first every competition in any sport so she was a bit nervous and shaky.

I placed third, but was not too thrilled by the scoring. A white belt woman had been put in our group because no one else was in her group. She scored decently average scores (8.2-8.6 ish range) except one judge gave her a 9.6, which got a wow from the crowd and I was a bit surprised that one judge gave her a full point better than anyone else. She ended up winning. I thought she did it correctly and assuradly, but with no power or pop to her moves. The second place guy was an orange belt who did the most basic form, Il-Jang. My instructor had us all do our most advanced form, the one for our next belt test; so I was surprised to see a orange belt going back a level rather than forward. Not to be petty about it; I was nervous and rushed a bit and hitched at one point into the next move; there were things I could've done better. When the scoring from first to third ended up being seperated by .3 difference...

I placed First in my group in sparring; adult/male/beginners. I had two matches and one them both. One was against a 40yo 6'3" (at least) guy; and pretty substantially sized. The other was against a 34yo, maybe 5'9". The big guy came on strong and aggressive and got me back a bit until I settled down and used my faster feet and motion to keep his attacks from landing. I did get in close enough and managed to punch him so hard it knocked him down; got an extra point for that. He was big, strong and aggressive, but not fast enough. The other guy was different, pretty agressive but not as intimidating in size. I got in two head shots for scores and he later admitted that my spinning side-kick just was too much for him.

I was surprised as how stressful it was. I guess the sress of competition, or the extra gear, or facing two unknown opponents. I found myself not breathing as well and that affected my metal focus and my ability to execute technique. Some things I did well, some I did not. I learned a lot, both good and bad. It was definitely a step forward in my TKD world.

It was a fun day

 

[TX_BB]

Congratulations Freep,

I didn’t know you were allowed to breath until my fifth tournament. Enjoy the experience and keep going there is a lot to learn.

Have fun

 

[terry_gardener]

just like to say well done for your first tournament.

and special well done to your son for coming first.

glad you enjoyed it.

 

[Miles]

Congratulations and well-done Jay for you and your daughter!

Scoring poomsae is always dicey-it is fine if the individual judges are consistent-either high or low. However, unless you have at least 5 judges and are throwing out the High and Low scores, there is a potential for getting a goofy result.

Now that you've gotten the first one under your belt, so to speak, when's the next one? And, are you participating?

Miles

 

[Andy Cap]

Exactly as Miles said. If that judge scored on the same scale throughout the day then all scores would be relative. Most tournaments do throw out high score too.

Either way, I hope everyone had fun. Tournaments are the game and are ment to be fun.

 

[FearlessFreep]

Well, I tried to approach it as fun, and it was. We really don't focus much on tournaments at our school. I only found out about it last Saturday and really made the decision last Monday so we only had a bit of time to polish off the rough edges of our forms and I only had a few sessions to try to re-enforce some aspects of my sparring. So in a lot of ways, the tournament is more like takings aspects of our total TKD training and competing with them as best as we can then it is something we train specifically for.

Don't know what's up next around here. I'll definitely see if I can get in the next thing that comes up, but I haven't started looking for it

 

[MJS]

Congrats!!! :ultracool Sounds like everyone had a great time and got alot out of it, which is the way it should be!

Keep training hard and get ready for the next one!!! :supcool:

Mike

 

[BrandiJo]

i had my first yesterday too, it was awesome

Im glad you and your family had fun


my school did awesome and i am happy with how i did, one little girl from our school did extreamly well (shes like a lil sister to me) i was so proud of her

 

[jfarnsworth]

Looks like a congrats and good job to the both of you (Fearless Freep & BrandiJo). Remember this was just a small little step in the learning process. It's all about having fun.

 

[Tidy_Sammy]

Nice one, congratulations on your score (and your childrens).

I've never had a tournament in MA but imagine it would be pretty nerve racking.

 

[ajs1976]

Congrats on the Tournament. I'm planning on going to my first one in may, if work does not interfere.

 

[Jim Tindell]

What tournament was this? I was a tournament in Brainerd, MN this past Saturday. Wondering if this was the same one.

 

[BrandiJo]

mine was in Nebraska

 

[foolbae1228]

First off, I want to congradulate you and your son on doing well on your first tournament.

But I want you to realize that you need to learn from this experience. Don't stray from a martial artist, but rather become a stronger one. What I am about to say you may need to take with a grain of salt, but would be better for you to hear in the long run, so that you don't later get hurt.

If, during the sparring, the blows that you took weren't padded, would they be damaging? What could you have done to counter and block those? I'm not saying that anyone's perfect, but you have to learn from your's and others' mistakes.

Secondly, don't make excuses. You should have crushed the white belt in form and should have been as comfortable with your form as the orange belt. you should always have the "I'm gonna crush you" mentality no matter the gender, height, race, skill, or strength.

You should use tournaments to make mistakes, learn from them, and gain experience. Don't use them to feed egos, which you were trying to heal with all of your excuses above. Martial artists don't know the word ego (not to be confused with pride), so using tournaments to feed egos makes them nothing less than thugs.

I don't take anything that I just said back, and mean it from my heart. I apologize, however, for any hurt feelings that may have come from it. If you are confused and want to ask a few more questions, please e-mail me at [email protected], and I will be happy to reply.

Farang-
Ryan

 

[Marginal]

foolbae1228, without the qualifiers, your post wouldn't even have had the potential to sound rude. It was simple, basic, good advice by and large.

 

[foolbae1228]

Farang-

Thank you, I just wanted to get a point across, but sometimes people don't always take it so nicely nor openly as you have. Thanks.

Farang-
Ryan

 

[FearlessFreep]

On the forms:
My apologies if it came across like I was making execuses for not having scored better. And maybe part of me was. I do know there was much I could've done better myself that would've made a difference. At least in what I can remember of it. I admit that in the heat of the moment, so to speak, I'm not fully aware of everything I did; at how well I did those little things like arm angle on blocks, etc. So yeah, in everything I said, I still know I could've done better myself and everything else wouldn't have mattered. Mostly, though, this is all new to me so I just try to have an accurate assemement of how I did, not how things resulted. There are things I did well, things I did poorly, and some things out of my control. In trying to learn from the experience, I mostly just want to take responsibility for what I did or didn't do and not to let myself worry about what I can't control, and it probably came across as petty excuse making as I was thinking through it all out loud, so to speak

On sparring:
This was a bit surprising because both my opponents started out much more agrssively then my normal class partners, but my normal class partners have never been in a tournament. I learned a *lot* from that. As the matches went on, I learned to relax and control myself and not get overwhelmed, especially by a guy much larger than me. Like someone else mentioned in another thread 'some train for TKD and some train for tournaments'. I wasn't really planning on a tournment last weekend so it wasn't part of my goals in training except the last few days. To me, sparring is about a larger training as a martial artist, not a goal in itself. When we talk in class, we talk about verious strikes and moves and combinations anf often we have to say "but don't do that in sparring, it's illegal" Sparrings is about training against an opponent who is indepent and at some level of skill and trying to stay calm and react and attack and defend at high speed. I made mistakes and did some things well.

Like forms and practicing technique to perfection and other aspects, it's a part of tryng to be a total Tae Kwon Do Martial Artist. The tournament, like belts, is not, to me, a goal in itself, but more of a yardstick along the journey, a way of saying 'where have I come and how am I doing?' Like I said about belt tests before, I don't really prepare for tests; I just try to practice every day and get better and learn and then when it's time to test, who I am *that day* is who am I, period, for better or worse. I want to try to have the same attitude toward competitions. To train and be the best I can be every day so that when something comes along, I'm ready for it.

 

[Marginal]

One unfortuante part of tournaments is that you can hit judges that have differing interpretations of what makes a good pattern too. If one hapens to think that patterns need to be pretty and showy to wow the crowd, they might not especially care (or even want to see) a pattern executed with power...

They're more interested in being the Andre Rieu's of martial arts.

 

[foolbae1228]

And again, with the sparring, I'm glad that you realized my lesson and that you are learning techniques that you can't use in tournaments. Now try this, the next time you spar in class, take the pads off both you and your partner. Keep control when you strike, because you don't want to hurt him/her, but you want to have speed so you can land the blow, which should feel like a tap when you connect. This just hightens your awareness and your control.


Farang-
Ryan

 

[FearlessFreep]

To me, in my inexperience and naivette, forms are first a training exercise, second a performance piece.

One thing my sabumnim has emphasized is the idea of staying relaxed until the moment of the strike, and using the proper technique. For example, when kicking, I find I kick much quicker and have more power if I'm relaxed and loose going into the kick and everything comes together with a 'pop', a 'snap', a 'bang'. If I tighten up as I start, it's a lot slower as the muscles fight each other to release and contract and extend. So the proper combination or timing of relax and flex seems important to getting speed and power. This applies to sparring, this applies to self-defense, it's just a basic principle in striking, whether with hand or feet. So, forms become a way to practice this; relax and then "pop", relax and '"pow". There are a lot of other principles in terms of balance, foot placement, focus, etc... that I use practice of forms to conentrate on.

If the judges are looking for somthing else; *shrug* not much I can do about that.