Tae Kwon Do – Mikey 12th Month

While I may have taken a break from writing these blogs I didn’t take a break from Tae Kwon Do. In this blog, I’ll catch you up on everything that’s happened and what’s to come.

Grading:

The last time I wrote a blog I was a yellow stripe (8th cup) I’m glad to tell you that I’m now a green belt (5th cup) I’ve passed all my grades with high marks (A – A+). As I mentioned in my last blog the grades were getting harder and more demanding and this showed in my previous grading for my green belt).

Here’s everything we had to do for the last grading:

• Patterns (Chon-Ji, Dan Gun, Do San)
• Pad work (Punch combos, demonstraight each type of kick, all while running from one side of the hall to another)
• Line work (sitting stance punches, forward walking stance middle punches, kicks) – this is where they monitor our stances and power.
• Non-Contact Free Sparing (we did three rounds)
• 3-Step-Sparing (we did 1 through 6 in a rotation until they told us to stop)
• Theory (we are given a list of around 4 – 10 questions that we could be asked and are asked 3 by our examiner)

That then marks the end of our grading, we then all come back to the middle of the hall in grade order and do our final bows thank the examiners and the black belts for helping us and we are free to go.

Personal Goals:

Over the course of the months that I haven’t documented I’ve made some progress towards my goals, including flexibility, confidence, Signwave, and overall technique. In this section, I’ll be telling you about my successes and failures.

Flexibility:

My flexibility has increased since the last blog and I have also been told by my Sabom (teacher) at SDMA to try and push my side kicks higher to show more of what I can do during my new pattern (won yo has two side piercing kicks).

Signwave:

After learning my new pattern after I got my green belt I decided to work on my signwave again and ensure that every part of the movements is together and there is never one part stationary, ensuring all parts are together and “flow”, but remain powerful.

Technique:

After working significantly on my left-side coordination I can finally hit someone’s chest with a proper turning kick (roundhouse). This is a drastic improvement from what I used to be able to do where it was mainly an inner crescent kick that I did when I was trying to get it higher.

Confidence:

During these few months, I’ve noticed a drastic increase in my confidence in myself and what I can do. I’ve noticed that I agree to do things I never thought I would and not just inside of Tae Kwon Do but inside of my life, for example this year and next year I’ll be attending conferences and business events that may even mean I have to do a speech, but I doubt I would be doing all this if I didn’t have the physical proof that I can do things that I otherwise would of believe was impossible.

Things to work on:

Lately, we have been doing a lot of competition-style scenarios to prepare us for the upcoming competition in October and this tends to involve some people watching us do our patterns and then helping us tweak it in certain ways.

Breathing:

When I’m doing a pattern sometimes – not always – I breathe just after the move or action and so they have told me to try and work on breathing with the impact of the moves to add an emphasis of strength and “spirit”.

Speed of moves:

When doing my pattern, the black belts and sabom say, that the overall speed of the pattern is good however the speed of individual moves could be faster to emphasise the strength and impact of each stance and attack or block.

The Competition:

The SE Open tournament!

Some of you might recognise this tournament from one of my previous blogs as it’s one that I got a bronze in patterns for well the tournament is coming up again and this time the whole gang is coming, me, my sis, and my dad are all taking part inside the competition as well as some from our classes.

 

That’s all for now,

Stay tuned, Stay Super and I’ll see you in the next one!

Mikey Ryu
Marketing Director