C'mon baby, let's do the twist.

Being only one day after graduation, with one of Ma'am's star pupil's Dean (good kid, like him, talented kid) going up for his 3rd degree at Master C's tonight, Leadership class was rather quiet. The Drs. P (husband and wife, each with PhDs) were the only other attendants, and they are both 2nd degrees, but very pleasant. Ben is their son. So, it was almost like getting a personal session tonight, as Mr. A worked with them and me. Tonight was my last class for a while, as I'm leaving for vacation on Friday, and won't be back until Labor Day weekend, so no classes-- and no entries, most likely, until I get back! (So you are forewarned! :-P) Mr. A nonetheless started working on some skills tonight that were all new and related to my new form, Chung Jung #2. Uck, I hate it already. I will say that I think the theme for tonight was doing the twist, because heck if I felt like that was the crux of most of what I had to do that the balls of my feet were getting sore from all the twisting, in addition to my waist and hips. Tonight was more about learning some skills related to the form instead of learning the first section, which was fine. Since I was by myself, Mr. A had me mostly working on the pads. First, he had me working on doing hook kicks. Evidentally, I swing out too much-- I think that my inclination to do that was a residual from my dance years. No sooner do I feel that I've figured out how to do this on each side, I now have to figure out how to do a reverse hook kick. Damn. I kept losing my balance just in the turn before even chambering for the kick, and Mr. A helped me fine tune that with a simple foot repositioning, and then it helped with the balance issue, so I was getting a little better. Next was working on a ridgehand move. Mr. A started me with working on a proper jab, and then working it into the ridgehand. I could get the body rotation, but the hard part was keeping a bent arm. It was a lot of work getting it right, or at least trying to get it right! We then worked on weapons. After doing bahng mah ee for SOO long, I decided to trade it for the ssang jeh bahng, since I won't be getting my bo staff thing until after Labor Day. I was just going through some drills on the stuff I remember and the stuff I know, and then Mr. A asks if I know a blind pass move or something named like that. Um...nope. Theoretically, it makes sense. But putting it into practice, well, let's just say I'm going to have to practice it a LOT. It's a tradeoff move, meaning it's where you are transferring the weapon from one hand to the other and then back, but in a series of specific moves. Or at least I call it a tradeoff move, I'm sure that's not the technical term. But you get the idea. Oy, something I'll have to work on. Next, board breaking. I think I figured out that my problem in doing the roundkick break was that I wasn't angling my body correctly. Tonight, I got it on the second or third try, and I wasn't getting my toes this time, so I was happy. Sparring wasn't too bad. Mr. A worked with me on some punching stuff, as I feel that's a big part of me weakness. He's very good with his sparring training, which is good, because for the most part until recently when he started working more with me, I felt like I was just thrown to the wolves and developed a learning curve from there. Now I'm actually getting some direction. So, overall, I was learning a lot of new stuff tonight, which was cool. I'm a little anxious about the next session. Chung Jung 2 is way up on the color belt forms-- it's the red/red-black form, so this is going to be tough. I'm about halfway up the pike in getting my black belt now, and doing an almost black belt form is intimidating. Just working on the stuff I had tonight was intimidating. Broken down, each part I could handle, but to put it all together...man oh man. I think I will need this vacation. And when I return, I will be working on a makeover of sorts. I need to lose weight, and I've set the goal to start after vacation, and put more time into getting into shape so that way I can do better in TKD.

So, see you September!!