Time to Get My Poop in a Group…

We had a special post-Thanksgiving Day class at LTSD that I’ve taken as a good kick-in-the-ass to get back to work. I missed a lot of classes in September and October due to business travel and November and December are always challenging with the holiday season.  Time to get back in the game…

My goal has been to achieve 3rd Gup (red belt) status by the spring/early summer shim sa. I already missed out on one promotion due to travel and absences so there’s no longer any wiggle room. Time to stop trying and start doing again.

FitnessProtection


Exercise on this day: Crunches: 100 · Hyung: Basic · One-Step Sparring (Basic): 1 through 5 · Push-ups: 100 · Squats: 100

Thoughts About the Gup Shim Sa

Tonight’s promotion to 5th Gup Green represents the highest rank I have achieved in Tang Soo Do. Not that reaching 6th Gup several months ago wasn’t important but it really just represented catching up to where I left off back in the 80s when I drifted away from Tang Soo Do.12108932_1631670740414532_5804057196336022403_n

Honestly, I wasn’t happy with my performance. I was sloppy and my lack of training over the last couple of months was painfully evident. I can’t let that happen again.

 

Drops Against the Stone

Drops Against the Stone Book Cover Drops Against the Stone
Brandon Sieg
Smashwords
10/7/2013
eBook
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/drops-against-the-stone-brandon-sieg/1117444505?ean=2940045424622

After fifteen years of teaching martial arts in both the collegiate and commercial setting, author Brandon Sieg has seen just about everything and has an opinion on most. Drops Against the Stone is a compilation of essays written to educate his students beyond a one minute “mat chat” at the end of a class. It goes deeper, to the heart of things. Some discussions might be held over dinner after training—anecdotes and somewhat cathartic tales about students who do or don’t “get it,” or musings of the benefits of the martial arts with real world examples. These are often mingled with martial arts history, culture, and tradition as it is relates through the eyes of an academic. It is martial arts and the world at large viewed from the lens of a martial arts eccentric—a martial arts education through rants, ravings, musings and memoirs. While written to guide his students, chances are much of it relates to your own martial arts journey as well. From training to trends in the martial arts and society at large, you won’t always agree with his opinions, but “Drops” challenges you and encourages you to sincerely pursue the martial way.

[review in progress]

“Paralysis by Analysis”: Reflections on my day at the 2015 Summer Interclub Tourney

I wish I’d coined that phrase. It’s perfect. And I’m growing intimately (and annoyingly) familiar with it.

Analysis paralysis is a critical problem in athletics. It can be explained in simple terms as “failure to react in response to over-thought.” A victim of sporting analysis paralysis will frequently think in complicated terms of “what to do next” while contemplating the variety of possibilities, and in doing so exhausts the available time in which to act.

The Summer Interclub last Sunday was my second Tang Soo Do tournament and, all in all, I didn’t do all that badly.  Not that I couldn’t have done better.  I’ll save that for next time.

Ironically, I did best in weapons where I demonstrated a bong hyung (staff form) that I only did from end to end unassisted for the first time the day before.  The competition was probably only the fourth or fifth time I ever did the entire form without someone coaching me in one way or another; either as a video recorded reference or in person.  That form was the highlight of my day which went downhill steadily from there on out.

DaffyStaff
Ho! Ha ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust! Sproing!

I often refer to the classic Daffy Duck as Robin Hood cartoon where he has some problems breaking down his quarterstaff technique and trying to pick out where things are going wrong. That cartoon pretty well summarizes how the rest of my day went — just not with the staff.

After weapons, we moved on to hyung without weapons.  I’ve been working on the second “peace and confidence” form, pyang ahn e dan, since shortly after my last belt promotion and thought it was ready enough to use as my tourney form. Not so much.  Although it began well, it deteriorated the further along it went as I drifted away from doing the form towards thinking about doing the form until I became hopelessly mired in the last four movements thinking about whether or not I was framing my blocks correctly. Classic “Analysis Paralysis”…

brain-out-to-get-youContinuing the pattern that would define the rest of the day, board breaking didn’t go well despite my having done the same break before in practice.  My “dwi yuck soo do kong kyuck” (spinning ridge hand) that was supposed to be a speed break was a flop.  It should have been a good break and I’ll have to revisit it one day.

And then came sparring.  Not my long suit to begin with but that’s when analysis paralysis truly came home to roost. There is no time to dwell on what you’re going to do next sparring.  You’re either doing it already or it’s too late.

I have until the end of October before the next tourney to stop overthinking and start doing and my next TSD class is tonight.


 

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