Dieting

I've been dieting for the past few weeks. I guess that the month of June makes me want to diet more. I've found a few simple ways to loose weight.

1. Don't drink alcohol for a while. I think this time around my weight was as high as 87 K.G.'s . Giving up alcohol for a while is a good way to go. Since I got married, I've been trying to drink only on the weekends. Three weeks ago I decided to do something like phase one of "The Instinct Diet," that curbs drinking for two weeks. Beer has a lot of calories so cutting it off is good. When I'm not dieting I like to have beer and snacks, or wine and snacks. Pairing alcohol with some kind of snack isn't a very good idea. If you really like beer and wine, cutting back can be difficult, but if you aren't spending money on drinks, you aren't spending money, and that can be good.

2. For lunch, eat a salad. Salads are really great to eat in the summertime. When it is super hot out, all you have to do is pack a salad and throw it in a fridge, then later you have a nice cold salad to eat. If salads don't fill you up, also pack stuff like yogurt, a few almonds, some walnuts, a piece of bread, or even a baked sweet potato. Baked sweet potatoes go really nice with coffee.

3. Eat whole grains like barley, and oatmeal. They are high in fiber. If you live in Korea like me, you have the problem of having white rice everywhere. If you like rice, you can get around this by blending rice with barley. Or you can blend brown rice with barley and beans. In the past I have made curry fried rice where the fried rice was a mixture of barley and brown rice. I've also made Thai style fried rice with brown rice and barely. In America you can get a lot of different whole grains.

4. Exercise. I exercise through practicing martial arts, riding my bike, and playing soccer matches on the weekend. If you are a person who is disciplined enough to do something wretched like going running, then do that. Personally, I enjoy combining exercise with an objective. If I practice martial arts, then I'm exercising while keeping my mind occupied. When I'm riding my bike, it is because I don't have a car, and I have to get somewhere. A few years ago when I was living in America and working at a Tae Kwon Do school and trying to graduate from college, I really enjoyed days when I could ride my bike to and from work, because on those days I didn't have to buy any gas money. Lastly, a few of us in Jinju enjoy a good football match on Sundays. I really suck at playing football (Soccer) but it gives me a chance to run around. As I mentioned before, running is hard to do everyday because it can be so boring and painful, but if you are chasing a ball it is a little better.

Soccer is good conditioning for martial arts like Tae Kwon Do. Tae Kwon Do is mostly anaerobic requiring short bursts of energy and speed. Soccer is very much the same way. Also in soccer games you have to try to read situations and try to position yourself as to where the ball is going to be. When you are sparring in Tae Kwon Do you need to try to develop strategies to overcome an opponents defenses, or develop strategies to cope with an opponents attacks. So the two compliment each other well.

Exercise also makes you feel good too. That is a pretty important aspect that should be mentioned as well.

5. If you eat snacks, eat a piece of fruit or something. Also drink something like water, tea, or coffee. It will help you feel fuller.

6. Cook for yourself: If you have to loose weight, try to find good tasting healthy foods, and then cook them. You know what you like so if you can make something healthy and delicious it might be likely that you don't view dieting as a chore.

7. Have fun. If you see progress, it makes you feel better.

My One Degree of Fame

The owner of this site is proud to further the cause of Taekwondo as taught by Grandmaster Chung Sun-Hwan's Moo Sool Do system with the endorsement of Master Kevin Nilson's poomsae (Forms, Kata) D.V.D.s entitled "Tae Kwon Do-a visual guide to forms." and "Tang Soo Do - a visual guide to forms."

Nilson, an incredible technical expert demonstrates his exquisite flexibility in breaking down step by step the poomsaes of Taekwondo and Tangsoodo. Practitioners of Tae Kwon Do and Tang Soo Do will find these guides to be invaluable in their pursuit of black belt or advanced degrees of blacks belt Tae Kwon Do and Tang Soo Do.

3gyupsal

aka
James Kruska 4th degree black belt

How to Win Friends and Influence People

I recomend this read to martial arts instructors or teachers of any type. It is a good starter book for developing ideas to get the best out of other people. I read the book last week and found myself nodding in agreement many times. I don't have much practice in employing the techniques described in the book, but I noticed that people who employ those methods are good at leading other people.

If an instructor is naturaly confident and charismatic, the book doesn't have much to offer. But it does give tips on how to get other people to want to listen to what the instructor might have to say.

Breaking Boards

One of the finest and most fun rites of passage in martial arts like Tae Kwon Do or Karate, is the practice of breaking stuff with some kind of kick or punch. If you have done it enough then it is generally an easy thing to do. (That is if you are breaking a simple test piece of pine.) There are a few basic principals for breaking a piece of wood.

1. Aim for the middle.

2. After aiming for the middle, actually hit the damn thing.

3. Hit it hard enough so that you break it.

These are guidelines for a simple side kick break, but they are generally applicable to other techniques as well.

Now I tried to make these principals easy because when breaking boards there is a lot of other stuff that gets all messed up in the heads of people breaking boards. It is usually pretty funny to watch over bearing parents stress out their kids when the kid is trying to break a board.

"Tyler now just focus."
"Hunter, just think that the board is your sister."
"Porter, you aren't screaming loud enough, just do what master Lee told you two weeks ago when he had that balloon."

It is also kind of interesting to watch people try to break boards with speed breaks. A speed break is when someone holds a board in one and tries to break it with the other, or they try to hold the board with two hands and try to break it with their foot. Basically, one side of the board isn't supported by something. Anyway, I remember watching a poor guy attempt one of these breaks one time.

He was a big strong guy with a military hair cut. (I don't think he was ever in the military though.) He grunted, hemmed, hawed, and screamed, but he never broke the board. The reason for this was a mental block.

Sometimes we make or own martial arts endeavors harder than they have to be. Attempting a speed break by grunting and making faces at the board, only gives the board too much respect. In reality, a speed break is really quite easy after you have done it once or twice, however if you attempt to do it five to ten times and then don't break the board, your hand will hurt for about a week later. Most importantly you have to decide that the board will break.

There is a difference between hoping that the board will break, and deciding that it will. This decision is made before you even pick the board up to break it. It doesn't require any psyching up or anything. Don't make any faces, grunt, or try to stare the board down, just break the damn thing. It goes back to the three principals from before, hit the board in the center, actually hit the thing, and hit it hard enough so that it breaks.

Sorry

I took a few weeks of from training. It looks like the training by the river was just a Novermber thing so far. Next week I'm going to go to the home of the Hwarang spirit, the Korean city called Gyongju. Gyongju was the ancient capital of the Shilla kingdom and later Shilla dynasty. I have been there twice before. Once was just a simple visit, the next time was to train at Go Gool temple. This time I will train in the ancient art of ESL (English as a Second Language). Hopefully I can master the sacred techniques of total physical response, and the transmission of information in L2. (Sorry martial artists, you might have to briefly study applied linguistics to get an idea to know what the hell I am talking about.)

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.