Taeguek Oh Jang and The Last Crusade

So what does this form have to do with the 3rd Indy movie? Not a whole lot unless you reach for it and bring in the Breath of God test from the movie and know that the form has roots in the wind trigram from the book 'I Ching'. That's just silly though.

However, this is now the 3rd quarter we've been instructed on this particular form. The dojang has started a new procedure where for the last year before we go into the black belt training classes we concentrate on Tae Guek Oh Jang and Tae Guek Yook Jang alternating every quarter. Traditionally, I think this conforms to the idea of teaching 1 form per full color belt level. We test every quarter but we don't move up a full color belt, only to the senior level of that belt. Switching it up every quarter actually gives us a bit of variety.

The reason it's my 3rd quarter is because of the quarter off my family and I took at the beginning of the year. We had just finished learning Oh Jang the last quarter of last year, skipped a quarter and then came back to the same form. It was cool in that it helped us ease back into the routine without have a whole lot of new learning to retain in my head. It's also interesting to look toward the back of the class and seeing the new students working at something that feels pretty natural to me now. I remember when I was exactly like that, overwhelmed with having to remember everything. I'm not saying I'm perfect by any means. I constantly monitor my stances and I'm now working on being "powerful" with my actions. It's gratifying to recognize and actually see my own progress however.

We are now in our last quarter before we enter the black belt training classes. That's my term for lack of anything better or official. At the end of this year, we test for our Red Executive belts (a red belt with 2 black stripes). We then enter a more rigorous training program with extra classes. We concentrate on doing everything we've ever learned over our entire color belt existence. We also start doing more physical exercises (mandatory number of pushups done a week) and a lot more repetitions of all our curriculum. We also start learning the next 2 Taeguek forms (Chil Jang and Pal Jang). I'm looking forward to it with a bit of anxiety but also excitement. We have to journal everything we do in this period as well.

In 2 weeks, we'll officially be 1 year out from our black belt. It's a minor milestone. It's a little mind boggling thinking about how fast time is passing.