Kihap - shouting in Taekwondo

One of my favourite topics - the Kihap (the loud shout made when you perform a striking technique or adopt fighting stance before sparring).

When I first started Taekwondo, I (probably like most people) felt very self conscious about shouting at the top of my voice in front of a collection of new people. There were other people in the class (some quite high grades) who were also fairly quiet. On the other hand, there were some people there making more than enough noise for the entire class. It only took a few classes and I decided I wasn't going to be the quietest in the class. Funnily enough, while I see myself as quite self conscious, once I started using a loud Kihap, I actually felt more comfortable in the class. The irrational fear that everyone else would start laughing turned out to be...irrational. From time to time I might get it slightly wrong, and a girlish scream might escape causing the odd snigger, but no matter.

At the Chung Yong club all the instructors encourage both juniors and seniors to Kihap loudly, and aggressively. It really works and is an important thing to get right because:

1. A loud Kihap right at the beginning of sparring helps you channel up some controlled aggression, and if done right will put fear into the heart of your opponent.
2. Kihap before performing a break to channel energy and confidence.
3. Kihap when striking (either with the fist or foot). The exhalation of air helps again in channeling energy, and stops you getting winded if you're counter struck by your opponent.
4. A Kihap forces you to breath - some students seem to forget to do this at times!

Louder is better ;)

Site progress for Tomcat's Taekwondo

I've been working on the Taekwondo site on and off for 2 years now. I thought at this juncture it might be a good idea, for my own record, to show the stats to date. The counter was installed 28th September 2006, and StatCounter tells me that since then:

Pageloads: 94731
Unique Visitors: 33745
Returning Visitors (my favourite one!): 4684

So...I've reached out to over 30k people with the site, and hopefully most of them were either already involved in, or considering getting involved in, the worlds biggest and (as far as I'm concerned of course) best Martial Art - Taekwondo.

The site is generally done, with the obvious exception of the pattern pages which take an absolute age to complete, but I plan to get them done and dusted shortly. I might even have a stab at presenting some of the higher level patterns once those are complete.

The Blog was without doubt the best thing I did, and a close second the contact page. The site has got me in touch with Taekwondo practitioners worldwide. It's always a great pleasure to get comments on the blog, or comments through the contact form.

Just as a by note on the off chance anyone's wondered why I chose "tomcat" as an Internet Pseudonym, this hails back to the days when I played Quake a lot. I chose tomcat as a player name, because the F14 "tomcat" was capable of engaging and destroying 24 targets simultaneously. Seemed like a good name at the time and I'm too old to change it now. I don't play Quake any more, as Taekwondo is much more interesting! There's only a week to go till the Dorset Championships and I'm looking forward to that. Rest assured my performance (and that of my son James) will be posted shortly after the end of the day (June 1st).

So what's next for Tomcat's Taekwondo? I've got more ideas for presenting some important aspects of Taekwondo training & techniques, which I plan to get done in the near future. I toyed with the idea of including a Taekwondo Forum, but decided it wasn't something I was up to the task of making a success of. Forums need lots of participants and I'm not sure I can attract enough to make it worthwhile. I am seriously considering adding a club directory to complement the work I've done over at the ODP to help UK Taekwondo clubs gain exposure. I've been working on some tweaks to the layout, which should be published this week (they're based around general improvements in readability and overall design factors).

***update*** Have now republished the blog with the new layout. It was a LOT harder than I thought it would be, but the layout is much more how I'd like it to be, better colours, better CSS & XHTML and a new logo. I'll probably post some details on the coding on my personal blog when it's completely done.

Just to end this post - my heartfelt thanks to everyone who visited in the last two years and not only found what they were looking for, but chose to take the time to let me know by using the contact form or leave a comment on the blog.

Yours in Taekwondo

Andy Fletcher

Press ups on knuckles in Taekwondo

Taekwondo students over 16 ought to do press ups on the knuckles. This has a few benefits, which I'll cover further down. If knuckles are injured, you shouldn't do this though. It's particularly important that children do NOT do press ups this way as it can interfere with bone development and cause problems later in life.

It's vital that the press up is done on the first two knuckles (index and middle) and not on the "softer" ring and little finger knuckles. One of the reasons for doing press ups on the knuckles is to toughen them up so they make effective weapons, and won't let you down when you are asked to break a board or a brick at your grading or a demonstration.

However, I see the most important reason for doing this being that it "teaches" you to align your wrist correctly for punching. If a bent wrist is used to throw a punch, the wrist is likely to suffer a sprain or even a break. When you do press ups on the first two knuckles, you are forced to correctly align the bones of the fist, wrist and forearm into a straight line which is incredibly strong. Once you are using this straight line when punching, you will avoid injusry and maximise the effectiveness of your punches.

What makes Taekwondo different to Karate?

Seems there is a lot of confusion about the difference, and which is "better" between Taekwondo and Karate. There are some fundamental differences of course:

1. Taekwondo is has a focus on destruction and high spinning kicks. These are distinctly Korean aspects of martial arts. As a result, Taekwondo practitioners will have a tendancy to use kicks at least as much, if not more than hand techniques, particularly in competition. Karate (which means "empty hand" incidentally) typically focuses more on hand techniques.
2. Taekwondo comes from Korea. Karate originates in Okinawa. Both are really international martial arts today with high Dan grades of different nationalities to the art's founder country spread across the globe. Korean martial arts were influenced by Japanese styles during the Japanese occupation of Korea. But the flipside is that some distinctly Korean techniques (destruction & high spinning kicks) made their way into Japanese styles.
   
3. Taekwondo has just two major styles - WTF (World Taekwondo Federation) is the style I train in. It's the bigger of the two and is the one that is now an Olympic Sport. ITF (International Taekwondo Federation) is a breakaway style of Taekwondo started by General Choi (one of the original founders of Taekwondo). Karate on the other hand, is split into hundreds, possibly thousands of different styles. There is no unifying body. This makes it impossible to make an Olympic Competition sport.

Personally, I know practitioners of various Karate styles and some are quite similar in many ways to WTF Taekwondo, others are extremely different.

So which is better? Neither. Unless we want to bring in personal choice. I'm passionate about Taekwondo because I enjoy almost every aspect of the way it is taught and practiced. I've visited a few Karate classes but only found one I liked which was the Wimbledon Kyokushinkai club. Kyokushinkai seemed very similar in a lot of respects to Taekwondo, so while I enjoyed the lesson I attended, there seemed little point moving styles, particularly as Wimbledon is further away for me.

The choice between schools/clubs should come down to the quality of the school itself. And that comes down to who is running them. If the master of the club is both passionate about, and accomplished in the art he teaches, you're in the right place.

Taekwondo injury

Taekwondo is a contact sport of course, but this week I got a shock with a nasty swelling on my left elbow as a result of a kick from Wayne during sparring at Wednesday's squad training. Boy, does he kick hard - I had my arm protectors on, and yet the swelling is quite something. Hope it goes down soon.

Val was cornering me, and wasn't shy about the fact I really need to evade kicks rather than block them. We did some footwork excercises and I'm hoping they'll help.

I also spotted a very bad habit that's no doubt high on the list of reasons my tournament fights haven't been going so well. I'm kicking with my front foot nearly all the time. I can't imagine why as the moment I thought about it, it was obvious this is hardly ever going to score a point with an attack to an opponents body armour - there simply isn't enough power there. Time to work on making the use of the back leg automatic.

BTCB Competition - Dorset Championships

The Dorset Championships are set for the 1st of June (Sunday). Apparently there's a patterns competition on the 31st May (the day before). Can't wait for this one - missed it last year due to family commitments. From what I hear this is the biggest BTCB Taekwondo Competition held in the UK or at least one of the biggest. Looking forward to meeting lots of fighters and, of course, hoping to improve on my lackluster performance at this years Chungdokwan Nationals.

The Dorset Taekwondo Association run this event - their website is here.

Particularly hoping to bump into Phill Payne as he says he'll be attending this event. He's got more information about this event on his Taekwondo Site.

See you there!