Owner: Taekwondo Blog URL:http://tkd.tomcatuk.net/blog.html Join Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:33:06 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Been doing Taekwondo on and off for over a decade. The only sport I seem to be able to maintain an interest in. For me (in order of preference) the aspects of Taekwondo that appeal are flexibility, fitness, destruction, technique (including patterns) and Site statistics:Click here
A word of warning 2007-07-05 02:59:00 Yesterday I was standing outside the office, the door was open, when suddenly a gust of wind attempted to blow it shut and lock me out. The old "lightning" reflexes jumped into action and I swiftly and accurately thrust my right leg forward to halt the doors' progress. There was a twofold result.1. The door was successfully kept unlocked.2. I lacerated both sides of the ankle as it came under pressure from on one side the (metal - ouch) door, and on the other a rather sharp edged brick wall.Anyone who's been at Taekwondo for a while has probably found themselves operating light switches, opening doors etc with knife hand techniques, or worse with their feet. Anyone who hasn't and is reading this probably has their mouth open in the sheer stupidity this would appear to imply.I just hope when it's really important, the reflexes operate properly. Read more:warning
Still aching from Tuesday.... 2007-06-29 03:40:00 Boy, that must have been some lesson Tuesday
night. My legs are STILL aching from it today (Friday).
Taekwondo on a Tuesday 2007-06-26 17:05:00 Finally made it along to the Tuesday
session in Croydon held by Master Mark Drury (4th Dan). Exhausting, but certainly a great lesson. I'm definately going to try and make the Tuesday session more often as it's very different to the lessons I normally go to in Mitcham. I'm not, however, drawing comparisons as to which sessions are better - too much respect for my instructors to want to start doing that! It does seem to me though that training with different instructors regularly can't be bad for your overall Taekwondo development as there is different emphasis on the various aspects to the training.Not busy next Tuesday and live in or around the Croydon area? Grab a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt (plain) and just turn up - starts 8pm, runs for an hour and a half. Always good to see new people. The address is:Energie Fitness ClubStephenson House2 Cherry Orchard RoadEast CroydonSurreyTip: 1 minutes' walk from East Crydon train station. The class is for 14 year olds and up.
Er, argh! 2007-06-19 15:18:00 Somethings wrong - none of my old posts are coming up (must have done something stupid....). The pages are there at my hosting account. I can download them and right enough the blog entries are there but browsing directly to them with a web browser displays the correct URL, but presto I'm actually viewing the main blog page with the most recent post at the top.I'm foxed. Wondering whether posting a new entry will force it to behave itself....Hmph. No idea how, but rather than publishing to the correct directory via FTP, I was publishing to the blog.html file itself and Blogger had helpfully created a directory and was happily publishing into it. I'm pretty darn sure I didn't do that when I set it up.....
Tournament 2007-06-09 18:20:00 My club held a small tournament yesterday and invited the students from St Katherine's Taekwondo led by Master Sargent to attend. Unfortunately, while St Katherines did bring a large compliment of juniors, they didn't submit any adult fighters so all the Chung Yong adults had to fight members of their own club. I got Michael (he's recently moved up to 8th Kup) and he beat me 12-11 on points. Despite the obvious drawback of not winning, I really enjoyed the match and learned a few things about what I can do to improve on my tournament fighting.The St Katherines fighters were impressive to see - they have some very talented fighters there and I'm glad the two clubs are affiliated to each other. Read more:Tournament
Third pattern (Sam Jang) is complete! 2007-05-31 17:30:00 Just put the finishing touches to Sam Jang. This one is the "final" word on how they are all going to look. The main image no longer than 4 lines, so it should all fit height wise on most screens (at least 1024x768 and up). Will probably start on Pal Jang next as my stats tell me this is the next most popular one people search for. On the off chance someone other than me is reading this, check it out - the link is right above you in the "Taegeuk" menu. Read more:complete
Self Defense for Women - One Day Seminar 2007-05-30 15:16:00 This course is designed for mums, daughters, sisters, aunts, nans, friends and girl friends. You do NOT have to be fit and active to take part or have any knowledge of self defense. During the seminar we will cover basic principals of avoiding dangerous situations and how to best use the abilities you already have to defend yourself, perhaps with a few new skills and tricks. Saturday 16th June 2007 Time: 11am to 2pm Venue: Madeira Hall Canons Leisure Centre Madeira Road, Mitcham CR4 4HD (Free parking available) Price: £20 per person (Pay on day, advance booking required) Age: 13 years to 113 years. What do I have to bring with me?Wear comfortable clothing that allows you to move freely. I'm not young and fit. Can I still join in?Yes! This course will be tailored to suit all ages and abilities. Who will be running the Seminar
?The course will be led by both male an Read more:Defense
, Women
, One Day
Slight change tonight 2007-05-28 19:35:00 Unfortunately, as I work on the third pattern, a useability problem came to light. The whole purpose of the patterns pages is to enable the visitor to see the entire pattern at one, yet be able to hover over each move and get a blown up picture with a description of the move in English and in Phonetic Korean. The third pattern (Sam Jang) has so many moves, this isn't possible. The main pattern image will disappear off the bottom of the visitors screen, ruining the entire concept.I mulled over a couple of possible ways to sort this out, but the only viable option was to stretch the size of the page widthways. The site effectively won't work that well now for visitors with an 800x600 screen resolution and is now really for those using 1024x768 or higher. The stats aren't all that high yet (not really a surprise as there is still a lot of the site unfinished!) but they do tell me 800x600 resolutions are becoming rare. Apologies if you are at that resolution - horizontal scrolling will Read more:Slight
Flexibility in Taekwondo 2007-05-26 18:22:00 Time to admit something. The thing I enjoy the most about Taekwondo is the flexibility exercises. I'm lucky in this, being naturally flexible. Most people don't have such luck, and flexibility can be a major sticking point. To execute a side kick (dwi chagi) effectively at waist height or above, you need to have reasonably flexible hips. Side kick is probably one of the most effective techniques Taekwondo teaches - do it right and your opponent/attacker will go down and not get back up (at least not in a hurry) and it's based on flexibility at the hip.If you're not taking cod liver oil yet, start now. It's great for maintaining joint flexibility, and strength in your bones.Stretching exercises shouldn't hurt, but you should feel a slight pull. If you don't push slightly beyond your current limits, you won't improve. To understand what is going on from a biological point of view when you stretch:Voluntary muscles are elongated fleshy sacs. As a result of nervous stimulation, the
Missed training 2007-05-25 15:19:00 Due to various factors I missed training tonight. I hate it when that happens and at my age missing lessons tends to mean more of a shock to the system when I finally get to go. I'm going to make a big effort to start making two lessons a week the absolute minimum, and ideally get to four a week where possible.I'll use the time to do some more work on the site, but it's just not the same :(
Sweaty, very sweaty 2007-05-23 16:12:00 Looks like summer is getting close here in the UK. Tonights lesson was hot, sticky yet as always enjoyable.Mr Gibbs brought in the big impact pads tonight so we got to put some work in on our side & back kicks. I don't know why, but for me back kick (that's "dwi chagi" in Korean) is by far my worst kick. I'd like to think I understand the "mechanics" of how the kick is done. My legs just don't seem to want to co-operate. Doing 10 in a row makes me dizzy so the last three are usually somewhat comical.Hopefully with my wife returning to work shortly I'm going to have more time to train so I can up my game. Hoping to get to three lessons a week on a regular basis. Did I mention Taekwondo is addictive?
Image loading 2007-05-20 17:45:00 Solved a slight issue with the design of the pattern pages. Because the image of the entire pattern is a background image, loaded via CSS it was loading AFTER all the rollover images. As a result, the odds are people on slower connections gave up as the main image was taking too long to appear, so the page looked rubbish.The answer turned out to be simpler than I thought. Obviously, the main image needed to be loaded via HTML before the rollover images start to load. Because the rollovers load in the order in which the user is likely to be looking at them, even if they have not all yet loaded, the page is effectively "operational" because the first rollovers have loaded by the time the visitor hovers over them.I added a new element to the CSS:#preload {display:block;position:absolute;margin:0px 0 0px 0px;overflow:hidden;}And then used that to load the image before all the others by placing this DIV at the top of the containing element code:divimg src="il-jang/Taegeuk-Il-Jang.jpg" alt=" Read more:Image
Black Belt 2007-05-15 18:04:00 The Black
Belt (or first Dan) is for the outsider, always seen as the ultimate goal in a martial art. Black belts are invincible fighting machines and live lives similar in style to what we see Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Segal and Chuck Norris doing on the silver screen.I've trained in Taekwondo for something like seven or eight years and don't own a Black Belt as of yet. To an outsider, and possibly to a lot of people inside the martial arts world, this could be read as a sign of failure. However, I don't personally hold any particular relevance in the colour of my belt, and I am going to try to explain why.Many years ago, when I first started training, there was a guy at the club at first Kup grade (Red Belt with Black tags - one grading away from his Black Belt). He continually asked when he would be allowed to grade for first Dan. Make no mistake, this guy was an able fighter with competition wins by the dozen. He was precise and realistic in his patterns. He could break anyt
Spam 2007-05-13 16:56:00 OK, this isn't strictly speaking a Taekwondo topic. Ever do a Google search and end up looking at a page that doesn't help you at all and is just there to show you a bunch of ads? Since redesigning the site, traffic has dropped right off, and it seems to be falling lower and lower for the keyword "taekwondo" in the Google results pages. It did get as high as page two, but the redesign has obviously had an affect as I'm now hovering at about page 6. Nothing to worry about - I fully expected a drop in SERPS as a direct result of completely remaking the site; things WILL improve when I finish getting the site put together and then work on a few more important backlinks. I also made the mistake of getting too many backlinks too fast when first putting the site online (sounds mad, but that's how it is - Google punishes "obvious" attempts to get high positions in it's index for competitive keywords).What's bugging me is two of the sites that Google returns on page one for a search of t
Chungdokwan have joined the BTCB (British Taekwondo Control Board) 2007-04-18 16:08:00 Title says it all really, Chungdokwan is one of the five major schools of WTF Taekwondo in Korea. It's British
arm was apparently affiliated with the BTCB in the past but split away for reasons unbeknown to me. Now Chungdokwan are back in which I tentatively hope will be good news - more and bigger competitions being what interests me most. Hopefully I'll get to find out what the BTCB is all about at the tournament in Bournmouth next month - better get the entry forms filled out fast!Looking forward to meeting a lot more Taekwondo practitioners! Read more:Control
, Board
Ouch! 2007-04-13 17:27:00 Training tonight turned out to be a little more strenuous than usual. Mr Hackan is back, and took the lesson for the evening (turns out he broke his leg in a tournament fight back in December, hence his absence till now - ouch!). There was also a new guy, Dave along for tonights lesson with his son, James. Always good to see some kids joining, but even better to see a fellow parent who has the get up & go to train as well. We're a bit light on adults on Fridays (I'm quite often the only non Dan grade there on Fridays) so I hope he'll keep coming. Sparring against the kids is OK from a fitness point of view but adults make better oponents - you don't have to be quite as worried about making contact with them!The site makeover is going well - got what I think is a great idea for presenting the patterns & other techniques in a clear, unique and hopefully informative way. Should be publishing some more pages tomorrow.
Still constructing 2007-04-09 12:15:00 The Taekwondo site is having a complete makeover. Gone are the javascripts for image rollovers & menus. Good riddance; they were pretty, but search engine spiders choke on them creating the necessity for a sitemap to get all the pages properly indexed. The site isn't supposed to be designed for search engines, it's for you the visitor and a sitemap indicates the navigation of the site isn't what it could be. I hope you find getting around the site easy and some information that's useful of you're training in Taekwondo already, or interested in finding a bit more about it before starting.The new design uses HTML & CSS for the menus and image rollovers. You're looking at the basic design here at the blog, the rest of the site should switch over to the new design this week.The CSS driven menu requires a list of links in HTML to work. For the pages not included in the blog, I'm using an include file so I can edit it all in the one place. That won't work with Blogger though, so to s
Effectiveness of Taekwondo 2007-07-22 17:03:00 Quite a lot of people I speak to that train in different arts seem keen to question the effectiveness of Taekwondo as a self defense system. Now, Taekwondo is an "offensive" martial art, as opposed to Jujutsu which would be classed as "defensive". The basic premise being that the Taekwondo practitioner blocks and then counter attacks with a strike capable of incapacitating the aggressor, whereas in a defensive system, the attack is worked against the aggressor typically using using twisting, painful grab techniques. Some Taekwondo schools perhaps leave it out, but at my club Ho Sin Sul (self defense) is an active part of the curriculum. Ho Sin Sul is in many respects very similar to Hapkido, the most well known Korean self defense system and really the Korean equivalent to Japanese Jujitsu.Taekwondo itself is, by it's nature, geared towards fancy high spinning kicks. These are perhaps not the best techniques to use on the street as a foot at head height, if grabbed, puts you in a ver
Third leg technique 2007-08-22 14:50:00 Finally got around to adding the third leg techniuqe (Kibom Aree Il). Here's the page:First Leg TechniqueBe great to get some feedback on whether or not it makes sense done just in text - will try to do some images for it at some point.
Aches and pains 2007-08-22 14:39:00 Strange how quickly fitness suffers when you don't train even for a short space of time. One small two week holiday in Gran Caneria and seemingly my fitness, strength & flexibility have all evaporated (maybe it's all the sangria!).Managed to make Master Drury's Tuesday lesson last night and boy, are the muscles (particularly the legs) complaining about it today. Even managed to over stretch on a side kick causing my left leg to twitch all day today.We went though some self defense towards the end of the lesson. Master Drury gave a great bit of advice - above all else DO SOMETHING and do it QUICKLY. If it doesn't work (maybe your attackers' grab is too strong etc) do something else RIGHT AWAY and keep doing different things until the attack has been stopped. Once I heard it, it was so obvious, but just prior to that I'd been standing there scratching my head wondering what I should do. Don't want to get caught like that in a real situation.
Are patterns (forms) useful in Martial Arts? 2007-08-19 08:13:00 Many practitioners of other martial arts seem keen to question the usefulness of learning patterns (forms). Particularly those training in MMA (Mixed Martial
Arts) and other purely combat based systems. The argument runs that learning patterns does not in any way aid fighting ability. There are two problems with this.Firstly, Taekwondo is not just about fighting & self defense. It is a complete martial art in that the student is learning a wide range of skills that apply to situations in life other than combat situations. Mental discipline and physical fitness aid the Taekwondo student in most aspects of their lives. Learning patterns helps with mental discipline, gives the student a means to practice when alone and is of course the backbone of the grading syllabus. If Taekwondo were merely about combat ability a grading/belts system would not be needed. The senior students would be simply measured by their success in defeating other opponents.Secondly, patterns, when executed co Read more:Martial Arts
How long does it take to achieve a black belt in Taekwondo? 2007-09-08 16:58:00 The length of time required to acheive the coveted 1st Dan Grade (Black Belt) is an oft talked about topic. Should it take a year, 5 years or 10 years. I really got thinking about this after reading and commenting on a post here and after talking to a couple of girls on holiday this year who'd achieved their first Dan grades within 3 years.I've been training a long time, although I will be the first to admit my attendance is by no means the greatest. I always make at least one training session per week, try to get to two and on the odd week I make it to three. Realistically, a first Dan is AT LEAST another three years away from my grasp (and I am aware that I may not get it if I train for another 100 years!).How long it should take should be irrelevant. It's a question of a number of factors which will be different for every student including fitness, talent, number of hours trained each week, commitment and probably many more aspects.If a club tells you you WILL get a black belt in
How much do you pay to take a Taekwondo grading? 2007-09-05 12:09:00 I recently met two Taekwondo students from the north of England. The subject of the cost of taking grading
s in TKD cropped up and they told me at their club a KUP grade cost £45. On top of that, failing to pass the grading would result in having to pay the grading fee again.By comparison, at my club a KUP grade test is £15. If you fail it, you can re-take it at no further cost. I don't know what our instructor charges for Hapkido gradings (another Korean Martial Art he teaches) but would be surprised if there was any difference.The two Northerners told me they had achieved First KUP grade (red belt/black tag) in three years with their club - that'll be a topic for another post later...So how much is the "right" amount to pay for a martial arts grading? Should it be dependant on what the club needs to charge in order to stay operational? A quick glance at the BTCB website didn't offer any kind of guide, but I'd say £45 sounds expensive.
Blue belt grading - 4th KUP 2007-09-30 14:27:00 This weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to take my 4th Kup (Blue Belt) grading
. My son James was also grading for his Green Tags (6th Kup). James, I felt, did me (and himself of course) proud. His pattern (while of course not perfect) was in my humble opinion well carried out, and he certainly has understood the sequence of moves, and how to get the stances right. I could clearly tell the difference between his long and walking stances, and that back leg of his has stopped bending in long stance. I didn't spot any errors in his three step sparring, and he was as exuberant as ever in free sparring - maybe a bit too keen as I did notice the odd bit of contact when he was sparring.My grading was a little longer - there were three other 5th Kup grades and we got to do Taegeuk O Jang, Sam Jand and Ee Jang. O Jang (the fifth pattern) being the main criteria for the grading. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I did my worst on that particular one - the last move in particular I managed t
Grading results! 2007-10-15 11:52:00 Well, we didn't get to go for over a week after the grading what with one thing and another, but we did finally get to a lesson on Friday. James did exceptionally well - he was one of only three people Master Rose rated as A* for their grading. I'm the proudest dad alive! Here's a pic of James with our instructor Mrs Gibbs and his certificate.Unfortunately Mrs Gibbs has her eyes closed in the photo, but you can see how happy James is.Despite my poor performance with my pattern, I got through as well and have moved up to 4th Kup - Blue Belt at last! It's odd, I really saw it as just another step on the ladder prior to the grading, but once I put the belt on I had a very real feeling that something had changed. It's difficult to put into words but it feels like a really significant transition going from Green to Blue. Read more:results
Finding a good Taekwondo (or other Martial Arts) club 2007-08-27 16:49:00 First up, this isn't purely relevant to Taekwondo - feel free to apply this to ANY martial arts club you are either already at, or considering attending.We met a great family on our holiday this year - the two younger girls in the family were twins, and when the subject of Taekwondo came up they told me that at their club you achieved black belt in three years ie it was not a question of anything other than time (and paying for the gradings of course!).I would suggest this is a great way to find out whether the club you are enquiring about is run purely to make money, or has instructors who are genuinely keen on passing on teachings and developing their students. If the answer is "you'll get a black belt in X number of years" you need to ask more questions. If the answer is "not everyone achieves a black belt and there is no specific time frame" you are probably in the right place to learn. Read more:Martial
Bad news 2007-12-23 03:33:00 My son (James) managed to get himself into trouble at school in the last week of term, tripping another child during a PE lesson resulting in a broken arm for the poor boy he tripped. James is heartbroken to have caused this injury to one of his friends, but his punishment seems inappropriate.After speaking to the school, my wife and his teacher have decided he should stop training in Taekwondo. I'm absolutely devastated - James really enjoys Taekwondo, and I love doing a sport with my son, but I'm not the kind of father who won't support decisions made by his mother and his school. I would understand this if he'd used a technique learned in a Teakwondo class but this just wasn't the case - he was just involved in a game another child had started. James, through no fault of his own, is quite a bit bigger and stronger than his peers at school.Hopefully this will blow over soon - I'm going to try and speak to the teacher myself in the new term and let her know just how important I
Chungdokwan Nationals 2008-03-09 17:43:00 I attended the Chungdokwan Nationals this weekend. Despite a great desire to come away with a gold medal I'm afraid this year, yet again, I came home wearing silver. I'd have to say, I was appalled at how badly I fought (losing by 7-0 in the first round) but am humble in enough to admit that even at my best I wouldn't have beaten the young man from Portsmouth University Taekwondo that I was lined up with - he was definately quicker, stronger and all round better in the ring. I'll be back next year of course and am hoping to get to some other tournaments this year, in particular the BTCB competition in Bournmouth.Unfortunately, my son James did not get the chance to defend his Gold Medal from last year as a pressing social engagement meant he missed the tournament. A lucky escape for whoev
James is allowed to train again (at last) 2008-02-22 02:59:00 James came back to training this week. Great to see him training again, and we both have high hopes of progressing this year. He'll be working on Taegeuk Sam Jang as he hopes to rise to Green Belt. Many thanks to all those who left comments, or sent messages through the contact page expressing their dismay/surprise at his not being allowed to train - I sincerely hope this will never happen again and that his mother and school come to appreciate that his Taekwondo training is only beneficial, not detrimental to his physical and psychological development. With James training again, I get to go more often, so from a personal point of view this is also great news - more Taekwondo for me!We're both hoping to compete in the upcoming ChungDoKwan National Championships next month. Hope to meet lo Read more:James
Something different 2008-02-19 02:34:00 Got an e-mail this week through the website contact form which I can't help but talk about. Mark sent me a link to his online collection of Taekwondo stamps. Check it out:Taekwondo StampsI didn't even know philately went on online, but obviously it does. Thanks mike, very nice work! Read more:different
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