And Now for Something Completely Different.

I'd be lying if I said I only talk about the analytics of the martial arts.  I have been told that I sprinkle my own opinion in to my posts enough to give them a proper amount of flavor, but tonight, I am going to talk about something a little different. There won't be a lot of analysis, no theory breakdown and no talk about technical accuracy or the science of the martial arts.  Tonight, way too late to be starting a project like this, I'm going to just share some thoughts on taekwon-do. 

Tonight my class was visited by a Grandmaster that I always enjoyed working with.  He travels a lot, but training in my youth, I always looked up to him.  Tonight, he watched me teach, and paid me all the praise an instructor could hope for.  It was good, as it always is.  Compliments from people like him, people with those last three bars that alone equal almost all of the time I have dedicated to the art telling you that they enjoyed my class is a tremendous honor and a hell of a compass calibration. 

I can't help but feel a great deal of melancholy though.  I was telling my wife a story about how he and I sparred one night, and how, it was a total mind game.  I was a 2nd or 3rd dan, and still at the top of whatever fighting game I had (I was no slouch, but was never the best fighter in the school).  He must have been 7th dan at the time.  He could have bludgeoned me to victory.  He didn't though, he took me right to the extreme limits of my fighting and kept me there, in a desperate back and forth, scoring points and getting scored on.  He was never in any danger of losing, but I felt the entire time I was on the verge of winning.  It was always a rare state to find a sparring partner like that - one that didn't exert their will on you, but held you at the brink of your limit, so that you could surpass yourself. 

God I miss sparring like this.  Maybe nostalgia and memory make these things into fishing stories; you know, the kind where a minnow caught turns into a shark?  Still, anymore, my sparring matches are completely one sided one way or another.  Either the person I am sparring is no match for me, or I'm simply out of shape and too injured to stand any kind of chance.  It can be hard, but I keep my ego locked up pretty tight anymore.  I mean, I've been there, and I've done that all before, right?  Sure, I have...doesn't make the nights where you miss the old days any easier though.  This grandmaster and I sparred twice that night, and I learned so much, moreso than 100s of other matches I had, with people of the same rank, lower, and even higher.

The match was a game of finesse, and of making the other person do what you wanted so you could score at will.  Good free sparring is a game of dirty sleight of hand, and we were Penn and Teller that night.  Feints, posturing, setups - no points scored on exploiting a slow hand, or with a blind sided attack; rather, every point was scored by causing an opening that simply couldn't close.  It was magnificent.

Today's students are so different than I was when I was a 1st dan and up.  I won't devolve this blog post into a "get off my lawn," rambling, but none of us had the potential that some of my current students do.  They are so very talented, but because of that, their work ethic can be fleeting at times.  I love teaching them, because my hope is that some day, they'll experience the glory, and the epic-ness like I have.  That at least in their heads, if not on paper, or digitally they someday write of an amazing sparring match shared with a classmate or instructor. 

Tournament glory is nice - and I've had my own small share of it.  I can tell you though, even the best tournament matches I have fought don't compare to matches I've had in certain classes.  The time Master Young cut me down with a spinning hook kick sweep and kicked me in the face before I fully hit the ground (when I was literally at the top of my fighting game); the endless matches with Master Pease, who frequently turned me into jello, or the time he spin hook kicked me in the face hard enough to blow the entire top off the "bottle cap challenge" and was shocked when I shook it off smiling; the time I made Master McCarthy nearly puke, or the time I impaled Oaks with my side kick; the time I tried to dive roll between Farrington and Barr, and they beat me to a pulp for it in a 2 on 1 match.  Then there was the time Grandmaster DeStolfo told me what he was going to score on me with (a jumping backfist), hit me with it right in the face, laughed at me, and then told me he was going to do it again, and then did it again, and laughed some more - are memories I will cherish forever.  I remember sparring with my man Jerry from NYC for hours and hours after classes, looking like a dalmatian from all the bruises on my arms.  God, what a time to be a martial artist it was! 

Now the price I pay for even throwing a kick above mid level too many times is 3 days of hip pain, some limping, and a lot of advil.  I'm not, throwing a pity party though, it was worth it all - and if I had to do it again, I would, because at the end of the day, those sparring memories are some of the best times of my life. 

So work hard, enjoy the art, and live for the moment.  If you have potential, stop effing around and unlock it.  Listen to the old heads, because they walked a different road and can tell you so much. 

Of Memes and Messages

If you are a martial artist, and you follow or have a following of martial artists in your social network, you no doubt have seen countless memes about the art and have read a plethora of different martial arts motivation posts. 

The sheer amount of toxicity that gets passed around as "a good post" in some of my network's mind has me absolutely staggered.  Although initial drafts of this post were written in a much more terse voice, I have scaled it back the best I can, because I remember a time when I didn't see the forest for the trees like I do now.  I took a class in college a long time ago, that really explored the messaging in pop culture and how it speaks to us.  It was an eye opening class, one that allowed me to see a lot of subtle messages in the media we consume that sometimes we don't even realize we're receiving. 

What I'd like people to take away from this post, especially school owners, is that your students are very likely going to hang (sometimes unhealthily) on everything you say and post.  My hope is that by pointing out some of the toxic messaging in this, I can get you thinking a little bit more about what you post. 

Let's take this example, a favorite among black belt instructors and school owners as a start:

First off, we attach a picture of the patron saint of all martial arts, the one and only Bruce Lee.  So of course, as martial artists, it must not only be true, but it must be some nugget of wisdom that came from the legend himself right?  No, google "should you be practicing" and you'll find the image of Bruce replaced with any number of other objects and graphics.  That's only one small problem with this piece, another is the messaging itself.

First off, as a working adult, with two kids and a wife that expect me to spend time with them, I can't follow this picture.  Yet, I can't help but feel just a tiny bit of inadequacy when I see peers or worse, instructors post this.  It makes me want to reach out to any instructor and ask them if this is what they really expect from their students.  Having the expectation that your students practice every waking hour of their life is not healthy.  It's not healthy to consider, and it is even more unhealthy to push on your students.  I'm glad as a teenager I didn't train in the social media era, because if my instructor had posted this, I might have quit all of my other activities and my job and tried this.  Hyperbole?  Maybe, but I hung on everything my instructors said - and had they said something like this, you better believe I would have tried.  There is nothing like unsupervised practice to bring out the absolute hardest to break bad habits for most people though - is this really what you want to deal with?

Looking specifically at this picture, the first branch starts a major problem with the message here. "Are you the student - yes or no".  Well, according to a lot of the other propaganda I see passed in the martial arts, I thought we were all life long students - so how can you even have a no answer?!  This is a paradox isn't it?  Let's ignore that glaring detail, and look at what happens when we say no which leads to the real problem with this piece.

"Find the most difficult technique - practice it".  How does this not infuriate you and immediately show you the invalidity of this piece if you know anything about instruction?  You don't get better by practicing the "most difficult technique" at anything.  You accomplish the most difficult technique of anything by being really, really good at what makes up that difficult thing - the basics.  If you don't understand the problem with suggesting that someone practice the most difficult technique as a proper course of action, you should maybe not be teaching.  Do you teach Moon-Moo to white belts?  No, you teach them Chon-ji, but by this picture's logic, we should be teaching white belts the most difficult form in the entire 24 form set.  I have seen with my own two eyes people who can do complex aerial techniques but couldn't front kick out of a wet paper bag.  It's toxic messaging at this point. 

Let's look at another aspect of this that is totally wrong - and sends a contradictory message at best and a hypocritical message at worst to your audience.  "Is there someone better than you?".

You, school owner or instructor or person of influence who posted, or is thinking of posting this meme; is that what the martial arts are you to?  A way to be better than someone else?  What happened to all the other memes about the only person we are competing with is ourselves?  What happened to humility?  You didn't think about that?  You didn't think...but you consider yourself a person of high quality or influence...hmmm.

Look, I get it, I'm not trying to be the fun police, and I get the lighter gist of this is that we could all practice more.  I'm telling you all, that there are better ways to get that message out there.  For instance, instead of a post like this, how about you take a picture of yourself practicing at some strange hour, or while on vacation, and making your own meme?  I have told my students on numerous occasions that when I was a serious competitor, I would watch TV, but get up and hold a stance for the entire run of a commercial break. 

Here's another pair I can't stand:






Ok, these messages are true, but only by default.  Of course the master has failed more than the beginner has tried, he's been doing it for years.  Same with a black belt who "never gave up".  Is this what you want your experienced students to see - that you are equating their only difference to a beginner being the number of times they have failed or the lack of "quit"? 

You want to know the real difference between a beginner and a master?  How about X number of years of dedication to the arts?  What about precision, and technique mastery, of hours sweating, and missed family events for testings, tournaments, seminars?  How about years of self study, of networking and self motivation to be the best martial artist you can be because you surpassed the title of beginner about 6 months into your training?  Did we suddenly forget all of them in an attempt to create a saccharine message for potential new students? 

There are no similarities between a beginner and a master, and there is a heck of a lot more to a proper black belt than just a no quit attitude.  Do you really want your new students to read this and think "all I have to do is survive in class a long time and I'll be gifted a black belt"?  Because, when I read this, that's what I see.  If you are going to bemoan the "participation award generation" for being too soft, perhaps make sure you haven't posted messaging to advance that mentality no? 

Here is by far the worst example of this meme:



With respect, to GM JR West, this is just a completely illogical statement spawned from the pools of over-romanticized nonsense.  Let's spin this another way - if your doctor walked in to your hospital room on the day of a surgery and said to you that he still considered himself a beginner - would that fill you with confidence?   If my hip doctor had said "Well DK, I have done over a thousand of these surgeries, but I still consider myself a beginner at it" I would have walked out.  Beginners are supposed to make mistakes, and that is ok.  If you aren't holding your black belts and masters to a higher quality level than a beginner, you are doing it wrong!

Again, I get it, martial artists like to believe they are humble and like to teach the message that there is always something to learn.  Here's the problem - if you don't just inherently know that there is always going to be more things to learn by the time you get to black belt, then you haven't been paying proper attention.  If you have to remind your student body of this over and over with memes on social media, you are not teaching properly.  Also, and again, way to belittle your advanced rank.  Why even differentiate with rank if this is the way you feel - just go back to the myth that there never were any colored belts and that a black belt was just a white belt that got dirtier and dirtier over time practiced. 

I'm not a person to not offer better alternatives, here's a few I do like that get the same messages across in a better way:



This sums up being a black belt kind of perfectly.  This speaks so much more to what makes a good foundation for an excellent black belt and eventual master - way more so than the previous examples.  It does this without minimizing the work or the accomplishments of your existing body. 

Here's another one, aimed at beginners that I love - because it really makes a great solid point, again, without looking at established ranks:



A simple message, that gets the point across.  Hell, I'd rather be a bad black belt than a dude sitting on the couch. So this message even motivates me, a sixth degree black belt!

These two messages are some of the examples of a messaging type that gets the proper points across.  You're not preaching a lifestyle of unchecked physical conditioning, or bringing down your existing group of students in the hopes of attracting new students by minimizing the amount of work that goes into martial arts accolades - you are using actual positive motivation. 

Memes and messages are powerful, and as school owners, instructors or even people of influence, we need to be aware of what we are really saying when we post things. 

Koenig's Anatomy of a Form (Part 1) Overview

Introduction

I've been working on this for a long time now.  For all of my writings on Taekwon-Do, this is by far the longest I ever worked on an idea before I put proverbial pen to paper.   When the idea came to me, I thought "this is revolutionary". I felt that way, because I had never seen an articulation of forms the way I had in mind. Now, granted I am not the most well read martial artist, so perhaps someone has done something like this, and if they have, I apologize for trying to take credit. I haven't seen it though, so I became inspired. 

After a while, mostly spent moving things around in Visio, listening grudgingly to my wife (a 3rd dan, who I have come to trust on many matters); I decided "this isn't that big of a deal".  It was at that point I was content to let this project die on the PCs I copied said Visio files to.  They'd be deleted in a few more months when I realized how silly I was for thinking that I could do anything actually insightful.

Finally, I decided that I am just going to put this out there, and maybe teach forms with this as an underlying method.  My hope is that at least one person who sees it says "wow, this is great - I never thought of forms like this" or even better, if they can use this to help teach forms themselves.  I think that it will help people take a look at an aspect that a student (or themselves) is struggling with, and help them find exactly what they need to do to improve that aspect. 

The basic idea of my anatomy of a form came from two places.  First, as I get older, and I'm not able to train the way I'd like to, I wanted to prove to myself that I could really contribute to the art without being a person who trains religiously.  There is a heavy stigma though, placed on the instructor who doesn't train like they did in their youth.  I think this is unwarranted, and believe that as long as you are involved in the art in some way, you are connected to the art and can have valuable insights.  I feel like only martial artists seem to think that you can only have something critical to say if you are training like a 20 year old.  

It also came about because I was thinking about what makes a form a good form.  I started to think about all the moving parts of a form, and realized that it is really difficult to articulate all that goes on in a given form.  That led me to realize I had never even seen an all encompassing description of it written.  I started to write about it months ago, and realized that writing alone wasn't going to do it justice. So this post is my attempt to illustrate all that goes on in a form.  Let me say that Visio is not the perfect media for this.  Forms are not flat; they are not 2 dimensional.  Many of the sections of these illustration that you see are happening at the same time as other parts and some are happening because of other parts.  It's hard to put something so dynamic down on on paper.  Forms, good forms are like a complex factory machine, there are a lot of moving parts, many you would never see by looking at it from the outside.  You have to know the moving parts are there. These illustrations I hope are a way to highlight the things you may not be seeing. 

  

Here's a quick reference for what you are going to see.  Try not to get too hung up on the lines and the shapes.  Again, a 2 dimensional medium is not the best way to describe a dynamic 3 dimensional movement, but sometimes, it is what we have. 

Lines:  

• Red Lines - These are the extensions of mental mastery.  These are places where your mind is doing more of the action than the physical side of your body.  
• Green Lines - These are what I call facilitation lines.  I use the green lines when something directly facilitates another aspect.  
• Blue Lines - These are what I call "lead to" lines.  They differ from green lines in that you can theoretically have one side without the other.  

Shapes: 

• Circles - These are intangible attributes.   
• Squares - These are the tangible physical attributes of the form.   
• Ovals - Ovals are the "in between" They are attributes that bridge the intangible and the tangible.  

Section 1 - The Mental

My graphic starts with the top most attribute being "Mental Mastery".  Mental mastery is a very slippery concept because it encompasses so many things.  All movement starts with a thought to move.  So all martial arts start with a mental idea to do so.  Our breathing, which facilitates our life and all vigorous movement, is controlled by the mind (consciously in some cases, subconsciously in others).  At our most basic levels of movement our mind is our engine.  Although breathing is going to play a bigger role in the movement section, I am including it in this breakdown because it is a physical attribute that is directly controlled by the mind.

Moving beyond the basic motor functions, our mind is where memorization occurs, and this happens in several capacities.  First we have to memorize what the techniques are - this is what I call this technique positioning.  For example, knowing that a certain punch in a form is meant to be high section, but also, knowing what "high section" means and where a technique that is "high section" goes.  Next we have application of the technique.  In forms, application of the technique is what sells the effectiveness of the technique.  In order to do a good form, the movements have to look like they would work.  You can have the correct technical positioning, but also, be clueless on its application.  Many times someone who has this shortcoming will look dispassionate;  their movements, robotic or static.

Application of technique and technique positioning feed into each other.  As someone's positioning increases, their understanding of the application can grow, and vice versa.  This won't hold true on every technique - some things need to be shown first, but as you flow from the right side of the mental to the left, you notice that the whole thing repeats.  Each step, in a clockwise cycle increases the effectiveness of the next and it never stops.  

Where "technique positioning" is the static, stopped position of the technique, the bottom 4 technique blocks (from a mental standpoint) would be considered the techniques in motion.  In a good form, the end of a movement is usually a stop, and your accuracy of your technique is often judged here.  There is more to a technique than just the beginning point and the end point.  The bottom 4 blocks are the techniques in motion. 

Surely you have had a student, or saw a student who can throw a beautiful round house kick, but their bottom foot never pivots enough to really release the power of that technique.  This is what the bottom 4 blocks represent in the mental side.  I believe the movement of the technique and the end point of the technique are unique aspects of having a good form so I have separated them.  Simply stated, in terms of moving in that clockwise cycle, once you have a beginning and an end point, you can begin to refine the in between.  

As this cycle repeats over and over again, more mental mastery attributes are gained.  Confidence increases, mental discipline increases, fear is abated, and understanding of the art is gained.  I would like to list everything, but I'd have no room in the diagrams to post anything else!  Suffice to say, the mental aspects of form training are extensive and many are often overlooked.

Section 2 - Movement

We already established that all movement starts with a thought and that breathing is what powers our body.  If we do not breathe, we're not going to be able to move for very long before we pass out.  Afterall, no instructor has ever been heard saying "now hold your breath" to a student doing anything.  Quite the contrary, "breathe" is advice given for so many things.  Students who are struggling with stamina, students that are nervous, angry, or upset - a typical first piece of advice is always to "just breathe".  We take it for granted I think, but breathing is one of the most fundamentally important things we do in life in general, let alone in martial arts training.  Breathing allows us to make the small and large movements we perform in the martial arts.

Small movements are the subtle things we do.  These are weight shifts, hip turns, head and eye movements.  I would classify them as the micro elements that make up actual movement.  These happen before an actual technique is even initiated (like a look, or a head turn) or, like hip rotation or a weight shift, happen during the actual technique. These subtle movements, or the lack of them, can have huge ramifications for a form.  Without a focus on small movements, forms will rarely leave a mediocre state.

Large movements are the movements that aren't part of the actual technique.  I am thinking primarily of stepping, turning and chambering.  Though you can argue that chambering is part of the actual technique execution, I would disagree.  Chambers can vary depending on the technique and the intent of use of the technique.  With very few exceptions turns and stances are not tied to any particular technique, and chambers are the same way.  We see this primarily with how fighting differs from forms.  In fighting, we try to disguise our kicks by throwing them all with the chamber of a front kick.  Though we would never do this in forms (unless, it was called for), that versatility makes chambering belong, in my opinion here in the movement section, and not a part of any defined technique.  If you do not properly chamber your technique, you cannot properly execute it.  So a successful technique depends on this long movement.  The same is true of turns and stances.  These large movements are the foundations of the techniques, if the foundation is bad, the technique is bad.

Negative movements are the stops after each technique in the form.  This is such an important part to doing a good form.  Negative movements keep the proper pace in the form.  Without it, you have movements bleeding into each other, which looks sloppy, or too much pause which makes the form look robotic. The proper negative movements should be a learned execution just as any movement is because they can vary, from technique to technique and from form to form.

Furthermore, negative movement isn't just movement to movement - it's also about the start and stop of the whole technique.  Having the proper stop time means your punches, blocks or kicks don't waggle to a stop, but have stillness factor.  This comes only from refining your movements over years of practice and accomplishing balance in all aspects of your form.

The culmination of small movements, and large movements with the correct stop time in between is body control.  Body control is the figurative balance point where the physical movement and the mental understanding of how to move meet.  Combined with technique positioning from the last section, we end up with a strong foundation for technique execution.  A person with body control knows where everything goes, and gets it there the correct way. 


Section 3 - Technique

On the heels of movement comes the technique portion, and "on the heels" couldn't be more apt.  Think about a single technique, executed from a ready stance, or if in the middle of a form, the stop of the last technique.  You breath in, look in the correct direction, see the target of the technique, set your hips and your weight the right way, chamber - all of the movement section items happen and happening - then: technique!  Your movement items drive the technique.

You'll notice there are a lot more items on this segment of the chart and this is because the technique would be the macro level of everything going on in the form.  Technique is the easiest part to see and the place where many a black belt and master stops looking for improvement.  Still, as we see above, there is plenty of nuance even in technique execution.

On the mental side of things, we see that memorization, technique positioning and application of the technique all factor into the stances, blocks, punches and kicks.  In other words, we need to know how to throw the correct techniques (memorization) and why we throw them (application) to where (positioning). We practice this every time we do a form so this cycles.  Every time we do a form we strengthen, for better or for worse, our mental understanding of what we are doing.  I say for better or for worse because the more times an instructor lets a student make a mistake (for whatever reason) that mistake gets strengthened just like any positive attribute we'd like to encourage.  Furthermore - this is the pitfall of self training.  If one thinks that they have a form "down" and begin unsupervised practice, they could solidify things that are not only poor, but flat out incorrect.  This will obviously make repairing that mistake that much more difficult.

On the physical side, we see a green relational line between the mental side's technique positioning and the physical side's body control.  Body control, which we know from the movement section is balancing point of all the physical movements and their correct end points.  These are really mirror images of the same thing.  Body control deals with the physical stopping, technique positioning deals with knowing where that stop should occur.

This is really where Visio fails me, because the relationship between the next parts and the parts before are really happening on top of each other, or at the same time as each other or even inside of each other.  Think of it sort of as a Russian matryoshka doll (the dolls that are the same but smaller and smaller inside of each other).  Speed and Power and Timing combine in a balance to lead to our kicks, blocks, punches and stances.  These are not all isolated from the movement section, the movement section again, powers the technique.  For the purposes of breakdown though, we'll dive a little deeper into the relationships between speed, timing, power and balance first.

Speed, Timing, and Power are special players in this anatomy.  They are all in their own right worthy of their own breakdowns in contents.  Although my goal was to break a good form down to its most basic parts, there is simply too much to unravel in this section to fit neatly on a chart.  Perhaps someday I'll write a follow up examining this section even closer.  For now, we'll recognize that power is derived from a number of sources.  Weight, muscle mass, and strength are going to play a part in power for instance.  Speed is probably the most faceted of this triad.  Speed can be broken down to raw speed (the actual time it takes to travel a distance) and the illusion of speed (that being how fast a technique looks). Timing is the practice of the balance of technique position and body control.  It is the execution of that culmination.

These three attributes are unique in that they all directly play off of each other.  Power and timing are one of the ways to create the illusion of speed for instance, and speed and timing make a technique look powerful. even if, from a kinesiology perspective it is not.  When these three attributes are combined in the proper proportions you attain balance.

I am not limiting balance to standing on one leg but rather every concept we spoke about in their correct amount for each technique.  This is a balance of the optimum speed, power, timing, positioning and body control.  All techniques should execute from this position and if so, you end the physical side of this chart with well executed punches, kicks, stances and blocks.

Section 4 - The Big Picture

This, my fine readers, is a form - it is any form you do.  All of these items are happening, some at the same time as others, some that are strengthening other sections, while others are making corresponding sections happen at all.  If you are with me so far, my hope is that this can help you troubleshoot a form more effectively, by allowing you to see an X-ray of what is going on at all times.  I believe a person could use this, to look at a student, identify a weakness and then follow this guide to a root cause for correction.  In the least bit, I believe it can be helpful to identify and resolve issues more systemically - rather than relying on older methods which feel more like "shot in the dark" methods than an actual troubleshooting.

In the next post, we'll take a look at how to use each section to effectively troubleshoot issues in forms.