TKD UPDATE

TKD lesson was great today.  Too easy to let them run super long.  This is the last week of school, so soon we can really drag them out.

Taught 2 new breakaways from a position of someone grabbing your shoulders from behind.  Not the most threatening position, but I've actually legit used it when I was in middle school.  Good way to get some dude messing with you to knock it off, and it led into a good discussion of how the trunk is the source of power when it comes to martial arts.

Basically, you can either reach your arm up high, turn toward that side and wrap up both of the dudes arms in your own (leaving you free to punch, elbow, headbutt, etc), or you can put your hands up in a fighting stance, lock them in place, and spin your trunk hard like a washing machine agitator to knock the hands away.  Both work, and it's like a magic trick.

From there, I got to do something I'd really wanted to do for a while: have chambered punches make sense.  I wrote a pretty long write up of this over on the combat section, and I'll link there for those interested in it

https://forums.t-nation.com/t/is-tae-kwon-do-worth-it/265032/34?u=t3hpwnisher

https://forums.t-nation.com/t/is-tae-kwon-do-worth-it/265032/35?u=t3hpwnisher

But basically: chambered punches aren't meant for prolonged stand-up striking fights.  For that, you wanna use boxing.  TKD style chambered punches are meant as part of a sneak attach offensive to quickly defuse a situation/create space.  They work by taking your non-punching hand, grabbing the opponent with it, and then pulling them to you/off balance while you fire a short straight punch to the stomach/face/whatever. 

This makes the forms make SO much more sense (why the hell do I have this arm out in front of me?  OH, I'm grabbing the dude and pulling him into my punch), and it allows TKD style of punches to co-exist with boxing style.  It also means training the chambering hand to move JUST as hard as the punching hand.

A lot of what I've been teaching my kid the value of keeping your balance and taking your opponent's balance away, so the premise of "pull them off balance and punch them while they can't roll with the punch" works so well.  Having reconciled this in my brain makes it easier for me to teach these style of punches now.
 

Teaching TKD has really been awesome for me: I've been discovering a lot of the things I discarded before and able to make far more sense of it.

I let my kid pick what to do next, and that was HUGE for them.  I'm going to do that every lesson.  5-10 minutes of whatever drill they want to do.  I feel so stupid for not remembering that trick earlier: when you give students ownership of the lesson, they take it a lot more seriously.  Now THEY are responsible for their own development, and it's a big moral victory when you get to do what YOU want to do.  My kid picked stance transitions, which was great.

We finished off with push kicks, round kicks and roundhouse kicks.  The round kick is now trickier for my kid, having been exposed to roundhouses, and I get that.  The roundhouse slams into the target and has a wide arc, while the roundkick is very precise. Still good to have the diverse selection.  Kid went to kick combos from there: push kick to roundhouse.

I swear, if I had a roundhouse like my kid does when I was there age, I NEVER woulda gotten as bullied as I did growing up, haha.  I'm not at all worried if my kid ever has to scrap: only worried about the kind of trouble they might get into...