As some of you know, I have been studying the Korean martial art of Tae Kwon Do for a while. The school I’m currently studying at has a specialty in sparring technique so my sparring style and skills have been steadily improving month after month. They started at abysmal and have progressed to simply poor.
Yesterday, the school hosted a sparring clinic / mock tournament between the two sister schools run by our grand master. Sorry, no pictures. The school I’m at in Massapequa is very new, having opened it’s doors about a year ago. The Bayside school has been running for about 10–12 years. Most of the students at my school transitioned from a school started a few years ago across the street. That school failed financially and Master Oh took us in and honored our memberships. The old school taught us a lot of street techniques, dedicating a number of classes each week to the study of Hapkido, another Korean martial art, and weapons training which included the use of a bamboo sword used in the Japanese fencing martial art Kendo. I miss the Hapkido training but I have a long way to go in Tae Kwon Do. There’s no need to spread myself thin.
The students who came from the sister school were well matched in age with our own young competitors but there were very few competitors over the age of 20. I felt a bit old when one of the other adult students (from my school) noted that all of the competitors were half our age or less (I’m almost 36). HALF OUR AGE!
I diverge.
The first 1.5 hours were filled with endurance drills. I had a lot of carbohydrates the night earlier (triscuits and beer) while I was gaming with my buddies so I had plenty of stored energy. That may not be the best way to prepare for the event, but I seemed to have plenty of energy in any case. I made it through the drills without much of a problem, though I suspect the sheer number of students attending the clinic had something to do with it. We do the drills in a line and there was a lot of waiting when you queued up for the next drill.
When is was time to spar, we had 20–30 matches between the students of each school. The matches were fun to watch. It was clear that we’ve gotten much better over the past 12 months.
When it was time for me to spar, I was matched up with what looked like a 14–year old kid. His technique seemed better than mine but I had a height and weight advantage so I won in sudden death overtime, so to speak.
We should have these clinics once a month and I’ll try to write about the next one when it comes around.
