더 남강 도장 The "Nam River Dojang" Ideal November Training

Since Monday I have been found a nice routine for exercise. Jinju is an extremely quaint city that has many nice things for its citizens. One of these things is an enormous riverside park that boarders the river and stretches from the man made lake "Jinyangho," almost all the way to the easternmost village of Daegok. The park is simply a bike path of red concrete. A small path of the park has a track on both sides of the river. The south side plays host to the Jinju Namgang Lantern festival each year, where most of the food, games, and goods vendors pitch tent for ten days.
Many places in Korea put up exercise equipment in public places like this. Weight benches, waist twisty things, chin up bars, parallel bars, push up bars, and sit up benches can often be seen in such places. The Jinju Namgang park is no different. All along the river there are places to play basketball, play soccer volleyball or do many of the above mentioned exercises. The residents of Jinju make heavy use of the riverside park in the spring summer and autumn, however, when the weather is too cold the park is rather sparsely populated. It is these cold conditions that have made the place ideal for me to practice poomse or forms (also known as kata). The exercise is quite nice. I start with a beginning jog from my house across the Jinyang bridge (진양교) to the park, and from there to the Namriver bridge (남강교) It feels like a mile and an half to two mile run. After that I do a poomse recital.

Hailing from the International Academy of Martial Arts, I am well versed in three schools of forms, the Taekwondo poomse, Modified Karate forms, as well as the forms made by Grandmaster Chung Sun Hwan. For me that makes about 34 poomse that I can practice well. (I left out three or four because I have forgotten them.)

This has proved to be a nice beginning and supporting workout for the night. Since it is November at the time of this writing the weather has been cold and it has been getting dark at around five thirty. These conditions scare other people away from the riverside. For me I have the benefit of not being distracted or feeling that other people are watching me. (Korean people sometimes have a staring problem. Sometimes they don't too, I remember climbing up a mountain one time to do a breathing exercise. I stood with my knees bent slightly and my hands in front of my face as I breathed slowly. I heard a person approach. They were swinging their hands behind their back and clapping them as they came forward. Neither of us stopped what we were doing to acknowledge the other.)

Another benefit is the fact that the area is beautiful. The river flows between me and a busy street muting the sound of traffic to a gentle murmur. Green lights illuminate a mountain cliff while the river moves with a rapid steady. This is also the place where, four hundred years ago, many fell to the Japanese army while others stood their ground and beat back their attackers. Then a year later the Japanese attacked again and the city fell. Practice of martial arts along the banks of this historic river is a fitting exercise in the cold November air.

On a New Model For Taekwondo Schools

Taekwondo as a martial art, has been dying in the limelight recently. MMA has been grabbing a lot of attention, and to become good at MMA, one should probably practice Muy Thai and some kind of wrestling, Judo, or Juijutsu, or just tie them all together with Russian Sambo. Taekwondo is good training for people who want to have gymnastic like kicks, and most movie stuntmen or Martial Arts actors have some sort of Taekwondo training, but it would also be wise to learn some wu-shu for the fancy blocks an punches.

With all that said Taekwondo does have some benefits that might appeal to some niche consumers.

1. It isn't as dangerous as other martial arts. This is a major bonus for parents who want to enroll their kids in a martial art, but who might worry about injuries or the potential for turning their kid into the school thug, which leads to the next part.

2. Taekwondo has moral codes that go along with it. Most martial arts do. Granted many of the things that kids have to memorize for their belt tests are a bit cheesy, but they aren't too harmful. (Different schools might have different sets of lists that students might have to memorize for their belt testings. I have heard of some schools that use them as a means to preach a sort of cult of personality for the instructor. Stay away from those schools, an instructor should let their resume speak for its self, also you should challenge your instructor for the meanings or some sort of explanation of what you are expected to regurgitate. Some schools are run by fanatics who might alter some sort of Confucian text to give high praise to a god or a country and actually try to brainwash their students.

3. Lastly Taekwondo is a good workout.

It is with this point that I would like to build a framework for a training style that looks at both Korean and American cultures to see where there is some overlap or to cut out something that doesn't work and replace it with something else.

Many people join Taekwondo gyms because they might seem like a nice way to loose a few pounds or at least get into shape. For some people though, loosing weight isn't going to be achieved mainly through exercising. In fact, joining a Taekwondo gym just might make people loose confidence in their weight loss goals. So I think that such schools should have libraries. Now included in each library, there should be three basic books for Taekwondo schools 1. The Art of War 2. the Book of Five Rings and 3. Moo Yea Dobo Tongji. These are the big three Chinese, Korean, and Japanese martial arts strategy books, so having them is just the foundation.

On top of that though, it might be wise to stock diet books that can be loaned out to students who might want to increase the effectiveness of their workout goals with a diet. Last Spring I tried a diet of my own. I went on the "Instinct Diet," for 2 weeks and lost 10 pounds. I still have the book and I am willing to try it again. I have a few problems with the book its self though. First it is too pop-psychology like. It makes a lot of claims with out any scientific citation. It was written by a woman who claims to be a scientist though, and she refers to her own research at a weight loss clinic extensively. The downside though is that a lot of the reference to her research doesn't explain a lot of things, but rather it seems to be more for self promotion. (Look I already bought the book, you did your part.)

Another drawback has to do with the fact that the book has a lot of cooking in it. That is good for people like me who make delicious food. For people who are hopeless in the kitchen, too bad. On the plus side though I found the diet to be really healthy. Normally I suffer from heart burn, and while I was on the diet, that was never an issue. Another bonus is the fact that the recipes in the book are really good, and I did manage to loose some weight.

Now this diet isn't for everybody, so a few diet books might fit well into the collection, there are others like the South Beach Diet, or the Adkins Diet. Whatever. I recommend stocking some of those books, reading them and then maybe a creative instructor could make a special weight loss curriculum for such students. I envisioned a system where in the first week of training (A special weight loss student) a student could keep a diet journal to write down all of the food that they eat in a week, and how much the food costs. They could review it with the instructor who can tailor a diet to their needs and check up on them when they come to class. The first two weeks of training wouldn't even involve any practice of techniques. Just a bunch of conditioning exercises to get the students into shape (and feel good, maybe some rope jumping, easy jogging, and a lot of easy stretching).

Now their are dangers to this. Said students and teachers should consult with physicians before doing this kind of thing, and the instructor has a responsibility not to make these students feel self conscious, but rather the training and dieting should be goal oriented, and both should realize that progress won't come over night, and it may not even come ever.

It should be also pointed out that most Buddhist monks who train Martial Arts in temples are all vegans. Temple food contains no meat, but it has a lot of vegetables and is incredibly healthy. So dieting has long been a part of martial arts anyways, and any instructor who can actually help their students feel better about their appearance can go a long ways towards boosting that student's confidence and can turn that person into a loyal customer, and good reference.

Welcome

Hello everyone, this is 3gyupsal aka Jim Kruska from Funtimes in South East Korea. As many of you my know, I teach middle school English at a school in Gyeongsangnamdo Korea. I first came to Korea to practice martial arts, and I came back to teach English and further practice martial arts. In America I earned up to a 4th degree black belt in Taekwondo and have some extensive training in Hapkido. After I arrived in Korea I took up Kumdo/Kendo.

The purpose of this blog is to reflect upon Taekwondo/Kumdo training and strategy from an introspective point of view. Some posts will focus on training aspects, some on sparring strategy, and some will be ideas on how athletes can find valuable training ideas when they don't feel that they are being challenged enough. All of the posts on this blog are simply my opinions on matters and may or may not be of any help to anyone. Mostly it is an avenue to get my ideas out there and for me to explore some things that I have been thinking about on my bus rides to and from work. The inspiration for me to keep a blog like this comes from a youtube video that I watched one time about the Japanese Kendo 8th degree black belt test.

Kumdo/Kendo is an extremely mental martial art. There are really only about eight techniques in the whole martial art. (Sword skills that is, there are many different names for things that people can do with their feet and the direction that they are going, and the situation in which an attack or defense may occur, but there aren't really too many different things that you actually do with the sword) For this reason the Kumdo/Kendo practitioner focuses on improving each of the individual skills and uses the various duels that they participate in as ways of reading opponents and trying to determine an opponents intentions before they attack or defend. For this reason Kumdo/Kendo practitioners try to improve their thinking skills as well as their physical skills. In the National Geographic video that I mentioned before, I remember one of the test applicants talking about how he not only trains Kendo, but also keeps a journal about finding the right state of mind that one should have when practicing Kendo. That is that the practitioner should be emotionally detached from the outcome of the battle, but have enough invested so as to make the best decisions when in combat.

This blog aims to explore states of mind and training techniques to help not only myself but others grow as martial artists. Any comments are certainly welcome, and if this blog attracts any readers who can comment and share their own experiences or make any noodle baking comments that can alter epistomologies then that would be great.