Warrior mindset

Getting to black belt or achieving anything of value takes patience and hard work. It is an admiral quality that people display when they just keep turning up to the dojang and taking another small step towards their goal. This is one mindset that is important to making progress. We can call this a ‘yin’ mindset, something that keeps you chipping away at a goal and knowing that you will get there eventually.

However, we also have to train our ‘yang’ mindset, that of facing a challenge in the present. One that cannot be chipped away over time, but has to be dealt with in its entirety immediately

Years ago I was in a class and we were doing pad work, the instructor introduced the technique to be practiced, which happened to be spinning turning kick. This produced a collective groan from a group, mainly from the higher grades within the class. Granted spinning turning kick is not the easiest of techniques but it is hardly tough enough to have people groaning about it. At that point, I feel, all the people who expressed their dislike of the technique had already lost.

For sure they had exposed a weakness in their technique, the fact that they didn’t enjoy practicing the technique. Also they exposed weakness in their mindset, they had almost already admitted defeat just because it was a tough technique. In that session, no one that expressed their displeasure put in 100% effort. Maybe just going through the motions until the instructor moved to a different technique.

Ok, so it was only a pad drill, but what happens if we carry that mindset into other parts of the art. If we have to spar a tough opponent or even defend ourselves physically. We can’t get used to admitting defeat when we are presented with a challenge. We need to develop a strong mindset that doesn’t let us shy away from challenges

We do this simply by facing up to challenges, in class we hear there is a difficult technique, we have to spar the club champion, we have to spar 2 on 1 , or 3 on 1 or even 5 on 1. No matter what the challenge we should meet it with no complaining and pretty much no comment at all.

At the beginning of this article I referred to the 2 different mindset as yin and yang. Both have to be present in your training. Whereas turning up for training everyday but never meeting a challenge will not help you progress, turning up for training once a month will mean that the basic will always be a challenge for you. If we balance the two, turning up and also constantly accepting challenges that we are presented with they we will make strong progress in our training.

Next time in training, when you are presented with a challenging situation, watch how you react

Tactical Taekwondo Pad work

Padwork is an integral part of TKD training. It is often seen as only having sport application but with a little bit of imagination we can make it suitable training aid to pattern application and self defence.

The drills I am going to talk about are hand orientated I am going to leave the leg drills for another time. Before we get to the drills I think we should look at some equipment prefrences.

The Pads and The Holder

I personally like stiff focus mitts to train punches. I find with softer pads you don’t get the same feedback. Feedback is also important when learning to hold pads for someone. There should be a small amount of tension in your arms when you are holding. Just a little bit of resistance when the punch lands so the puncher can feel how hard the strikes are. If too much the punches can be jammed or the holder can end up generating more power than the puncher. If too loose there is a danger to both the puncher and the holder for injury and strikes will never be delivered at full power as there is nothing to absorb the power. It takes time to get the skills for holding but it is an important aspect of training.

Gloves

There is some discussion about whether to wear gloves for pad work or not. For me it is a matter of what your goals are in a particular session. If you are going to be working for a long time at your max power then maybe you should protect your hands a little. If you are working on technique then I suggest you go without gloves, this helps better with the form of your hands and hand conditioning. A while back I found after working with gloves for too long that the form of my fist hand changed and still to this day I can spot people in my classes that have maybe over used gloves in their training.

The drills

These are a few examples of drills that I use in my classes. Before doing these drills you should have basic abilities in punching so that you can train safely. Time should be spent just going through basic punching combinations. This is good for the puncher and the holder to practice.

The first two pad drills are taken directly from the techniques shown in the patterns

Stripping and clearing

This drill is essentially to train your non punching hand. The drill starts as normal with the holder presenting the pads to the puncher. Jabs, straights, hooks, and uppercuts can all be used. Randomly the holder also has the choice of holding the pad for a punch but covering it with the other pad. The puncher should then clear the obstructing pad with their non-punching and then delivering the strike. I like to call for multiple strikes each time this happens, you have just cleared a pathway may as well make the most of it.

Pad control

This drill is also based on keeping both hands active. Instead of letting the holder dictate the strike used, the punch takes control of the pad by holding from behind. Essentially grabbing the holder’s hand. The puncher then moves the pad and delivers three fast strikes, then shifts the pad and delivers another three fast strikes. The strikes again range from, jabs, crosses, uppercuts, hooks, and can also include downward hammer fist and various elbow strikes. The changes and strikes should be fast, after all the puncher is punching their own hand the pad is merely in the way.

When you are well practiced at this you should try the same drill with your eyes closed.

Last three strikes of your life

This is for developing power. Once a variety of strikes have been practiced. The holder calls for a strike or punch. The Puncher then deliver three of the prescribed strikes as hard and as fast as possible. As soon as they have finished then another strike should be called. This continues till the power or form of the strikes starts to drop. Then either the partners switch roles or the puncher gets a short break and goes again.

Cover

Similar to a boxing drill, during a punching drill the holder can attack the puncher with the pads. They should be strikes aimed and the head and the puncher should cover. The reaction of the puncher should be to either grab, clear or grapple the holder. Not just to ride out the punches and continue.

Surprise

The holder engages the puncher in conversation. At a random moment the holder bring up the pad and shouts at the puncher. The puncher should respond as quickly as possible in an appropriate manner ie. Striking and backing off. The more relaxed each person can be before the strike is called the better the practice is. This can also be done with multiple people

These are just a few of the pad drill I use with my students to practice movement straight from the patterns. Of course nothing beats live practice but I find padwork an invaluable part of my, and my students, development. I hope you try some of these drills and see how they work into the TKD self defence system

What we take with us

I haven’t posted in a while, my life has been extremely busy. I got married in December and have spent the last few months preparing to leave China and move to Jakarta. Hopefully since Indonesia doesn’t have so many internet restrictions I’ll be able to post more often.

The subject of me moving country is connected to the theme of this posting. In moving country I have had to say goodbye to my students and teacher. It is never an easy thing to do, but sometimes life pushes you in a certain way. However, it did prompt me to thinking about what a person can take from training. I have moved around a lot and have always had to take as much from training as I can and make it my own.

Often I have had teachers move in and out of my life, if I don’t try to assimilate what they teach in to what I do then why bother training with them. I think that this is something people should ask themselves; what do you take from training?

I have known many good practitioners and Dan grades that have moved away from their dojang and as a result stopped practicing. Without the group or their teacher they maybe find out that their art is meaningless, and belong only in the gym. These are maybe the same people that would tell students that martial arts was part of their life.

I don’t think that someone has to leave their club or even travel to another country to find this out but just ask yourself, if you took away the dojang, your teacher, and dobok, what have you got?

In other words, does the art you practice belong to you or does it still belong to your teacher, do you still need a teacher to continue to develop. Of course we all need one in the beginning but there comes a time when you should be able to break free and start altering the art to fit your needs. It may seem strange for some especially in a system that encourages copying a form as closely as we can.

I think we all have to spend time actually studying the art that we practice so that when life does make staying at your current place of training impossible you don’t lose the art

Sine Wave

One of the things that seems to very important in pattern practice is the inclusion of sine wave. A good sine wave in your patterns can make all the difference in competitions. Instructors everywhere make comments on how important it is and a lot of time is spent developing that nice up and down motion in movements. But is it really that important? Where did it come from? And why was it included in the patterns?
Certainly the sine wave was not always present in TKD a quick look at youtube and the difference can easily be seen. For example:

Now without making any comments about the standard or skill of the different gentlemen, there are obviously a lot of differences between the two performances, perhaps the main ones being speed and the sine wave. So from this we can see that sine wave is a fairly recent addition to the TKD system.

But why was it added? It would seem that the most commonly accepted theory was that General Choi added the sine wave to his patterns to further distinguish what he did from Karate. This theory would seem to hold true with the strong roots that certainly the early patterns had in Shotokan. It would only make sense that General Choi would want to make some changes to his art to make it stand out. In fact he continued to make slight changes to the sine wave and other aspects of the art almost until the end of his life. But sine wave isn’t really a new creation in fact the up and down motion of the body is used in many martial arts for power generation. In Chinese internal martial arts, Aikido, and many grappling arts you can see body dropping motions that are similar to the sine wave in TKD. It is possible the General Choi came across these movements in his early training and then transposed it on to the karate movements he had learned.

It is maybe because of this reason for adding the sine wave that its effectiveness is still a matter of debate among many groups. Some stick to a very direct motion claiming that it was the original TKD and therefore the most powerful, while others claim that TKD is progressive and we should try to take on the changes that the General made during his life.
My personal take on this is that the sine wave is a solid and efficient way of creating power that has been over stylized in pattern practice and not applied in a realistic fashion. It therefore has remained as something largely misunderstood and in some cases dismissed as art or ascetics.

The problem of not applying sine wave is that it has become a blanket principle that is given to every movement of pattern regardless of effectiveness. An example of a movement where the sine wave would actually be a hindrance to power generation is the upward elbow strike found in the pattern ‘Jhoong Gun’. The elbow strike moves quite a short distance. If you drop your body at the same time in the opposite direction then you are actually taking power away from the strike or worse pulling the attacking tool away from the target area altogether.

Another time when sine wave may not be so applicable is continuous motions. When we perform a number of motions in one stance, using the sine wave can actually slow us down as we have to essentially ‘reset’ our body position after each movement. The purpose for this practice is something that I discuss in the ‘pattern practice’ article on this blog.
There are of course many advantages to the sine wave as well. By using the sine wave we can learn how to base and how to generate power on some movements. But as with many practices connected to patterns and the more traditional aspects of TKD sine wave has been side lined and labelled as ‘art’ by many schools and therefore won’t be developed.
I think this lack of development of sine wave and some other principles is a great shame and could actually be holding TKD back. If we took a step forward to looking at sine wave from a practical point of view and practiced using it in applications then we couldn’t help but gain a deeper understanding of the purpose of this movement then be in a better position to judge it effectiveness.