Training for Week of 9 Mar

For the last few weeks, I have had you concentrate on your Hyungs or forms. This week shift you focus to your hands one steps. As you practice them, recognize your body movement, your shift of weight, the placement of your hands and feet, etc. Can you recognize the same moves, weight distribution, and body position in your Hyungs? Identify and share what you discover in the comments below.

BREAK IN TRAINING: We are currently not able to support a class until I return from Afghanistan. Considering reintegration requirements and block leave, I am look at September before we begin class training again. Please consider checking out Fire Dragon Karate in Cedar Park or Round Rock in the interim.

Meditation for the Week

Concentration – Concentration is a lot of attention, thought, and focus directed to an activity or subject. This week’s meditation is concentration. In Tang Soo Do, it takes a great deal of concentration or focus to practice consistently, to try your best on every technique, and to receive correction. To be an expert in Tang Soo Do, you have to be able to concentrate keeping constant awareness of every tiny muscle in your body. The godly life also takes consistent concentration so that your life will glorify God. Deuteronomy 6 tells us how we practice this type of concentration.

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

Deuteronomy 6:4–7

Attitude Requirements to Master Tang Soo Do

1. Purpose of training should be the enhancement of mental and physical betterment.
2. Serious Approach.
Tang Soo Do is a Martial application as well as a whole person development system. The martial application carries risk, so a serious approach in necessary to keep our training partners and ourselves safe while we practice and learn. 
3. All out effort.
4. Maintain regular and constant practice.
5. Practice basic techniques all the time.
6. Regularly spaced practice sessions.
7. Always listen to and follow the directions of instructors or seniors.
8. Do not be overly ambitious.
9. Frequently inspect your own achievements.
10. Always follow a routine and training schedule.
11. Repeatedly practice all techniques already learned.
12. When you learn new techniques, learn thoroughly the theory and philosophy as well.
13. When you begin to feel idle, try to overcome this.
14. Cleanliness is required after training. Keep yourself and your surroundings clean. 

13 Hyung Interpretation Principles

3. Strike to Disrupt; Disrupt to Strike.

In a fight, the attacker is rarely going to stand in place like a punching bag or leave his arm dangling in mid-air to allow the practitioner unopposed application of his martial prowess. The martial artist needs to strike to disrupt the opponent’s balance and center of gravity or disrupt the balance to deliver a solid strike. In his life’s work, The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi said, “whether fighting an enemy armed or unarmed, keep him on the defensive. Chase the enemy with your body and your spirit. This is excellent strategy. …By constantly creating difficulties for the enemy, you will force him to deal with more than one thing, giving you the advantage.” The Yu Dan Ja must develop the ability to simultaneously attack the feet, ankles, knees, head, wrists and/or elbows just to disrupt the opponent so as to strike the vital core of the body. To accomplish this principle, the practitioner has a necessity to understand how the component parts of the hyung work and how they might be combined simultaneously and in sequence. Practicing a hyung one hundred times in order to perform the shape of it is insufficient to gain the depth of understanding this principle and the previous one requires.