Today’s class is worth recalling and looking back. Basically I am reminded a few things as a student and not as an assistant instructor. In the first class, J7 likes to go around to lecture the kids while I just do my own thing, preparing my mind to start class. I learned something new about how the GM talks. He focuses on the meaning of TKD and spends a bit of time (about 10-15 minutes) to set a foundation on the new students; how we must do our best and stuff, especially on line-making. The 10-15 minutes are spent merely on forming lines within seven seconds. That’s a ‘wao’.

Second class is much more intensive. The GM does the warmup himself… in some sense he pushes our limit than we actually do ourselves. When I lead the warmup, I do try my best too because of pressure, but I don’t set myself a high bar because I gotta look for the students.

So we had the warmup consisting of simple jumping jacks, jumps, leg stretches, leg raises, ‘superman’ stretches and pushups. For the later ones I basically had to concentrate really hard to not fall and give up. By concentrate I mean close your eyes and think about the activity only. Furthermore, we had the basic front rising kicks and in to out crescent kicks, following by high block- counter punch- turning kick and front leg hook kick turning kick- reverse turning kick. The last one there drained a lot of my energy. I couldn’t get my breath back and had to continue for patterns: chon-ji, dan-gun, do-san, then a break and onto toi-gye, hwa-rang, choong-moo. I got better during choong-moo. Every other pattern I was pretty tired… When I actually caught up with my breathing, I felt powerful again, as if reborned.

Finally our warm down had TaeKwon jumping jacks, pushups and more: sitting stance triple punch, and high block counter punch turning kick changing direction. Due to GM Han unhappy at our effort, he emphasised on trying your best. That gave me some extra mental and spiritual power. During our pushups and the block punch turning kick, I felt like as if I had unlimited power. I just kept going. J7 might have been a bit tired, though he didn’t do much during the class. It can happen if you are idle for too long.

After class I asked the GM about the ready stances A, B and C. So A is the cane of the monk Won-Hyo. Ready positions B and C are concentration points of the heart (B), and of the lower abdomen (C). The heart symbolises the patriot Joong-Gun (named after Ahn Joong-Gun who assassinated the Japanese governor-general Hirobumi Ito) and scholar Toi-Gye.

So that was today’s class… and hopefully I can add more to this.

~shuu.