Jumping Saturday

I missed Thursday’s training cause my wife wasn’t feeling to good and I decided to help out with the children. A positive spinoff to that was that I could bargain to slip away on Saturday for about four hours and train with my old Taekwon-do Sensei. I phoned a friend and we rushed through to PTA to see what we can learn from this popular martial art form.

The weather was good and we made it to the venue just in time. The classes are free on Saturdays except for a once off R200 registration. We treated it like a seminar and I vowed to keep an open mind and learn as much as I could. The class was small which suited me well since it has been 17 years since I last did Taekwon-do and I was sure to look like a novice and would require quite a bit of personal attention and patience from the Sensei.

We started off with some stretches, particularly focusing on the legs since Taekwon-do is a kicking art more than anything else. The sensei also spent quite a bit of time talking about tournament fighting and how certain techniques would be best applied in a sparring situation. We focused on three kicks, the round house, the 360 degree round house and the spinning back kick. The latter two kicks were both air born kicks and the spinning back kick needs a lot of practice before attempting it in a fight situation, but it has its merits and might be useful although I need to think about it’s application in a close quarter situation a bit more since it’s really a finishing move and doesn’t facilitate a take-down.

The class ended in a warm down and a bit of a chat with the Sensei who seemed slightly interested in Ninjutsu. We compared notes a bit and then parted ways. It was good to see an old friend again and I take my hat off to him as he stayed true to himself and still use Taekwon-do as his main source of income. His passion came through in his class and even with 17 years of distance between us Martial Arts brought us back together as friends.

Embrace the shadows.