KJN Giacobbe in Cornwall!

This last weekend was spent entertaining a very important guest who had come all the way from New Jersey to see us in Cornwall Last October four of us from ISK travelled up to Bedford to attend a seminar taught by Grandmaster Giacobbe which we greatly enjoyed and I’m sure is mentioned in more detail somewhere in this blog. We must have made an impression for the KJN offered to come and teach us down in Cornwall and although it was a bit of a nerve-wracking week trying to organise everything so it was all perfect for the Grandmaster’s visit, it turned out to be a fantastic success.

KJN arrived from Wales on Friday night and the next morning a small group of us took him around Falmouth, visiting Pendennis Castle (which was new for me as well) and then going for a quick lunch on the harbour. Luckily it was the most beautiful day so we got to show off Cornwall at its best! After lunch we whizzed over to the Dojang for our three hour seminar which was both hard work and a great lesson in the history and spirituality of Tang Soo Do. After a little work on basic line work and a loose warm up and stretch we worked on the Pyung Ahn forms which was great for me as my next grading form will be Pyung Ahn Sa Dan and I’ll possibly be competing with the 5th one in America so it was very good to get the opinion of an 8th dan on them! We then worked on Bassai Sho, one of the hidden forms that he had taught at the last seminar, which I’d been practising occasionally so still vaguely remembered. The form is a lesser relation of Bassai Dai, and is not widely known outside of Korea so it was a great honour to be taught it by the KJN. After splitting off and practising the form for a bit we then came back together to work on something called Ti Ji Ne bo (excuse spelling please!) which are a set of nine military yoga forms which were taught to soldiers in…oh dear it was either Korea or China, memory fails me!! Will have to check back on that Anyway, these forms are only 8 or 9 moves in each direction, moving on a single line with the focus on perfecting each stance and moving fluently between each one. The forms revolve around the philosophy of Um and Yang. Tang Soo Do is essentially an aggressive art – we learn how to kick, punch, etc etc and sometimes neglect the softer and more passive side of learning a martial art. These yoga-style forms aim to counterbalance this aggression and allow the mind and body to relax. Having said that, the forms were incredibly tiring! Holding very low stances for ten or fifteen seconds is exhausting and builds up a serious amount of lactic acid in the thigh muscles. The seminar was absolutely brilliant and the KJN will hopefully come and visit us again later in the year.

That evening after a quick rush home for a shower and change we were off out again, this time for dinner in Truro at a little Chinese restaurant which none of us had been to before. This was something of a mistake as the service was pretty awful and the waitress didn’t seem to know that there was more to wine than red or white. However the food was good and the company was awesome Grandmaster Giacobbe was full of interesting anecdotes and was eager to recount stories from his journey in Tang Soo Do. Like the first time we met him, he again came across as a very energetic and honourable person who I have been very honoured to meet and learn from.

Tang Soo!

General Moaning

Hmm been a while since I updated, oops!

Lots of things going round and round my head at the moment, I seem to be juggling a few too many things all at once. I finally know what it feels like for one of those stress balls – pressure coming in from every flipping direction. Okay so…here’s a list of the stuff:

1. Tang Soo Do – training four times a week plus trips to Bedford for 4 hours training and a 700 mile round trip every 4 weeks.

2. Boyfriend – wonderful happy happy times don’t get me wrong here, having a proper working relationship isn’t a bad thing, its just the pressure it puts on other things e.g. my friendships, that I never thought would happen. Shows what I know about serious relationships!

3. Uni – degree work really really takes a hit when I’m exhausted from so much training which usually leads on to illness – according to my journal I’ve been ill once every two weeks for the past couple of months, wtf?! Unfortunately lecturers have started to notice my absences so will have to step it up a bit. Or just not get sick. Obviously its possible to tell your immune system not to fail, mine has a bit of a temperamental nature though so I doubt it’ll listen.

I’m pretty sure there was a no. 4 but I’ve totally forgotten…I think I’m getting old. In fact I’m pretty sure I’m getting old – clubbing is no more and I only occasionally get drunk. Having said that our recent trip to Bedford resulted in a good old party with the EMTF during which I had an unfortunate incident with the drinking game Buffalo. Just how hard can only drinking using your left hand be?! Very…apparently.

On a more positive note, training is going pretty well I think. I’m deep into preparing for the World Championships which are in Florida this year with squad training sessions once or twice a month plus normal training. We’re having issues adapting to the rules coming out of the USA and the fact that we can only now do one Hyung rather than both Chil Sung and Traditional is a bit of a sting, particularly as you have to pay a set entry fee rather than the cost based on however many categories you enter. However, its fun training for such a massive event, though to be perfectly honest I’m more looking forward to going out to America with all my friends and spending a good couple of weeks in the sun with Boyfriend I’ve been picked to possibly represent Great Britain in the women’s team sparring – I’ll know for sure soon hopefully though I believe I have to fight it out with anyone else who wishes to be in the team. I’m in two minds about it really. On the one hand it would be a real honour to represent GB and I think it would help boost my confidence in sparring a lot, but on the other its a big responsibility that I really don’t believe I could live up to. Sparring in front of so many of my seniors in a foreign country would be a pretty huge thing to screw up! So I’m going along to Viper Squad every Sunday to try and improve my fighting technique.

The next Gup grading is this Sunday when I’ll be going for my 4th Gup (10th Gup is white belt, 1st Gup is the step below Dan grade/Black belt). I’m pretty confident as I do know the stuff though there are quite a few butterflies appearing, hopefully they won’t paralyse me on the day though I’m sure that as always, as soon as the physical starts all nerves and awareness of anything but the pain will vanish. I’ve been feeling pretty run down recently and am still recovering from yet another fluey type thing but hopefully that won’t impact too much on my grading performance. One of the guys going for his 3rd Gup is doing it with two cracked ribs so I don’t know what I have to complain about!

After this grading it’ll be just one more in June till the British Nationals and then on to the Worlds, so lots of martial artsy things to prepare for!

One last thing before Music – I’ve just received season 4 of 24 in the post so will be starting that asap, can’t wait!!

So hmm…listen to Black, Last Kiss and Even Flow by Pearl Jam, Feeling a Moment, Forget about Tomorrow and Love Pollution by Feeder and Numb/Encore remix by Jay-Z and Linkin Park.