Orange Belt Test

My kids and I had our Orange Belt Test over the weekend. Note: this means we were Orange Belts and we're testing to make sure we knew the Orange Belt curriculum so we could be Green Belts.

The test started out with the Student Creed. While I know the creed, I had forgotten to review it in my head and I drew a complete blank on how it went. Uggh. Panic time. I wasn't the only one though. Most of the class didn't know it but one of my daughter's did. This introduced a shadow of doubt in my head that persisted through the next couple of test items: the blocking set and kicking set. I started an incorrect block in the blocking set but caught myself and did a mid-stream correction.

The kicking set is a series of 3 kicking combinations in 1 direction, reverse the direction and repeat, finish off with a jump front kick/punch combo. Going the first direction, I did 2 of the combos and then stopped that direction thinking I was done...suddenly remembered I wasn't done, did the next combo and continued.

The next part of the test were the kicking combinations. There were 7 combinations we had to learn. At the beginning of it, I knew I had been messing up so I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. I knew this stuff. One of the combinations is a back leg roundhouse followed by a narabong (see note below). I have issues with my balance on the narabong where I over rotate. I knew this but also knew if I did it slow enough I would be ok. Well, that deep breath must have helped because I did this pretty well.

After that, we had to recite terminology which I knew very well. We did our escrima stick and board breaking as well. I got dinged on the escrima because I was laying the stick on my shoulder at times.

While doing everything up to this point, I couldn't really watch how my daughter's were doing but I think they did pretty well. They aced most of the test on their score sheets.

I was concerned about the board break (a skip side kick) for my oldest daughter. She is breaking the same thickness of board as I am and did have trouble with the "snap" at the end. Other kids were having issues breaking their boards before her as well. She snapped it on her third try vs. on the first two where she was more just pushing against the board. She did pretty well considering her anxiety over the kick. Our next break for the next belt level is an Axe kick which she's done already in a demo so she should be pretty confident about it.

At the end of the test, I still passed but the tester commented on my lack of confidence. I'm resolving to have all this down pat next time. My kids also passed.

Note: For those who don't know, a narabong is a like a round house except you start out spinning backwards. It's also known as a tornado kick. Here's a video of it in action. Note that the video of it is the normal version of it. We're doing a "ground version" of it where we don't get off the ground. We'll be doing the normal version of it in our next belt level.

Cool! I get to play with sticks!

As mentioned in a previous post, we had signed up for the 6 month basic program. This program does NOT include weapons training. Well, near the end of class one day, Master Lee didn't dismiss the basic program and said to go grab Eskrima sticks. There were only 4 of us from the basic program there that day and we just kinda looked at each other. My oldest daughter wasn't present but my youngest daughter looked at me with that wide-eyed "I get to play with sticks!" look that only a child can have. Master Lee picked up on it right away and made a quick decision to let us stay and try it. He said something along the lines of "Give us a taste". I'm sure it was a marketing decision in his mind as he would like us to sign up for the Black Belt Club.

Eskrima is not a part of Taekwondo. If you read the wiki entry, it is "a class of Filipino Martial Arts". There are a number of Eskrima patterns (for lack of a better word) that we are going to learn as we advance through the program. We pair up and then face each other. The "patterns" involves hitting each other's sticks with your sticks along with some feet movement. I've seen some of the upper belt classes incorporate kicks into the pattern as well. One of the ideas behind Eskrima is that the sticks (or other Eskrima weapons) are really just extensions of your body and if you didn't have the weapon, you could still defend yourself.

Human Weapon on the History Channel has had an entire episode devoted to this Martial Art. It's being broadcast this Friday. I have it setup to be TiVo'ed. If you happen to have an xbox 360, it's one of the TV shows you can download in HD. I'm sorely tempted to do that.

Intro vs. Basic vs. "the club"

I've mentioned some of the progression of how we were indoctrinated into Taekwondo. It's all marketing really. The "Introductory" program was an "afterschool enrichment" program through my kids's school. I'm not sure exactly how the kids learned about it but they wanted to try it. It was a pretty cheap price ($40/person) for 5 weeks. We signed our kids up and then I got roped in. After the initial experience, we then signed up for the 6 month basic program.

The "Intro" and Basic program are structured the same way. We can come in twice a week for 40 minute classes. In those 40 minutes, we do the warmup and stretching exercises and then learn how to do taekwondo kicks, punches, blocks in combinations and sets. The uniform was a basic white uniform with our name written on the lapel in both Korean and English. The name thing is really just so the instructors can get to know us. After 40 minutes of this, the basic and introductory programs are dismissed.

This leads us into the idea of the Black Belt Club. My dojang has in large letters on the wall "We Are A Black Belt School". Their goal is to get you to commit to becoming a Black Belt. Paraphrasing Master Lee, "Do you say 'I want to be a Blue Belt!' No. That's just ridiculous. You say 'I want to be a Black Belt!'

The Black Belt Club gets to practice an extra 20 minutes. In that 20 minutes, the club members do weapons training, one step sparring, board breaking and self defense. The club members also get to come as often as they like during the week, as long as it's to a class for their belt rank. This also includes access to the sparring and forms classes. Note that the sparring and forms classes are classes that are "focused" on those specific aspects of Taekwondo. We do forms in normal class as well.

Once a person has tested through to green belt, my dojang does not allow the person to continue coming unless they commit to the Black Belt Club. That whole commitment process will need to be for another post though.