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.