Tae Kwon Do

I had a great day at Tae Kwon Do today. I haven't written about it before because I don't have any pictures of me doing TKD, but it's such a big part of my daily life that I wanted to write about it today.

I've had several aborted attempts at martial arts in the past. I started TKD when we lived in Houston, probably did it for about a year, then we moved out to Pearland, and it was just too far of a commute. So then I started Karate at a place closer to us. I did that for about a year, then they closed. So I found a Kung Fu place nearby and tried that out. I didn't like it as much as TKD or Karate, and we were about to start a family, so I quit that after a couple of months. I stopped almost all forms of exercise for the first several years of our children's lives. Now, finally, since we moved here I've found a martial arts center that is right for me. The atmosphere is supportive, challenging, respectful, and friendly, and it's been in the community for a long time, so I'm not worried about them going out of business while I'm on vacation (like my Karate studio did).

After two years of training, I am about halfway to earning my black belt. I go to TKD classes about three times a week, and I've started going to kickboxing classes, as well (about 3 or 4 times a week). The kickboxing is a great cardio workout and a good support for TKD. I teach kids' classes about 3 times a week, too.

Today I attended my weekly semi-private class for instructors. (Our Master Instructor wants all of the instructors to be really good at what we do and to be good examples for the rest of the school, so we get to attend extra classes, and he is super nit-picky about all the details, which helps us tremendously.) In that class today, I was tested on my current form and on fitness, and I passed both tests, so that started off my workout nicely. I'm an intermediate level belt right now (blue), so our fitness requirement is 50 push ups and 50 sit ups. For the black belt test, I'll have to do 100 of each and run 3 miles. The running shouldn't be a problem, but I'll really need to work up to the push ups. After working on the rest of our current curriculum, I stayed for the next class. It was a regular adult class, and the agenda for today was sparring. We wear full protective gear (headgear, mouthpiece, chest protector, gloves, shin guards, foot gear) and always strive for safety first. It's not at all like a fight or a brawl. But it is intimidating to face an opponent and try to hit and kick them and know they're trying to do the same thing back to me. The very first time I sparred as a white belt, I cried after class. I think it was just a release of tension because I had been so stressed and worried about it. I've never had any bad experiences with sparring, but it was never my favorite part of martial arts. Recently, though, as I've improved my technique and my confidence, I've actually started to enjoy sparring and to look forward to it! It is an incredibly tough workout. What we did today was a bunch of 2 minute rounds, switching opponents after each round. Sometimes we'd have to stop and do push ups in the middle of a round, then go back to sparring. We probably did that for 30 minutes without more than a few seconds of breaks while switching partners. It was exhausting! There were only 5 of us there today: myself, Chris (who is about the same belt and ability level as I am), another man, who is an advanced belt and really tall, and two black belt women. Everybody did a good job of challenging and pushing each other, without pushing too hard. It was great. It was a good experience sparring with the men, too. I haven't done that much. For our black belt test, we will have to spar 10 one-minute rounds in a row, with a new opponent each minute, both men and women. So this was good practice for that.

This afternoon (after having lunch with John, who got off work early today - what a great refresher in the the middle of the day to be able to spend time with him!), I went back to help teach a Juniors TKD class. That's for 8-13 year-olds. They were also doing sparring. Their sparring experience is very controlled. They work on one technique at a time (for example: "You're going to be attacked with a punch. Here are 3 possible defenses you can use. Practice.") I enjoyed helping out with that class.

All in all, it was an adrenaline-filled day of martial arts. I loved it. And tomorrow, I get to do two kickboxing classes! :)