The Inflation

 It is already some time since I decided to give it a go and pass the exam for 3rd Dan grade. Decided, prepared, made it and had lots of fun all along.

People who do not know me will say "Yeah, what is the point" whilst my colleagues and friends will probably note "It was just about time" knowing I was almost 42 during the exam. Both are right. There is nothing special about it and it is quite normal to improve and earn some grades to prove your advance and the age does not matter, but on the other hand there are many things that bring your motivation down easily prolonging the process of grading to longer periods than usual.

One of such things is what I call the "Inflation of Black Belts".

Despite having such critic stand and finding it as a reason to re-vive this blog, there are many reasons someone has to speak on that matter. I am sure many people do but nobody just listens.

I really thank my Master for encouraging me to participate in the exam and master such a flashy moves like double-kick breaks and jumping over big wooden box to break a board. That all looks great and draws "wow"'s from observers, but is that really all about Taekwondo? Is there not an art, being martial, that is also a way of life, which includes a number of techniques one must master - and know their names! even in Korean - to deserve a Black Belt?

Well, all these techniques - not flashy - are the base of knowledge for one to deserve a black belt. Unfortunately, quick commercialisation of TKD and constant push into Olympic waters with always higher "class" requirements in means of grade/belt to participate, forced many practitioners (what a dull word!) to bite and push in earning their grades for the price of quality. It is so said to watch a young guy, wearing his black belt maybe since he was 16, performing relatively simple 7th apprentice Poomsae (Taeguk 7) like a green belt one. The reason he does so is that he was - like many others - pushed and pressed to train TKD as a sport, to jump, kick, fight, calculate... while the correctness of his technique was left aside as not so important. So we have a number of great athletes fighting in WTF Taekwondo tournaments which do and know very poor Taekwondo.

Another thing producing bad TKD athletes is probably the economic side of exams. I have never heard of someone who failed the belt exam. How is that possible? Well, the money. Belt exams are being paid. Young people tend to get insulted if they are dropped and their parents get angry if they pay for something their kids fail to complete. Unlike schools, martial arts use "soft" approach meaning that no one or rarely someone fails the exam. And that starts with their first coloured belt and continues until black and further, just if they pay or (at luck) perform good in sport aspects of TKD. It is normal to consider someone's physical disabilities and take those in count, but not laziness and poor engagement.

If these were given enough time to train and perfect-ionise their basic techniques while achieving belts they are suited for, results would be much different. When I started training so many years ago - exactly 28 and some month more - I could not see much difference between TKD and Karate. The same as people outside martial arts can not see. But I had enough time to practice the technique to make it complete and then to compare it to Karate's. And yes, then there WAS a difference.

However, I needed half of a year to get my first yellow belt. And I wore my last red belt for one year because the time between exams was growing according to the level. Knowing there are 8 apprentice grades to achieve before you are ready for black belt test, can someone explain me how that time suddenly fits into barely two years? No, I was not disabled or stupid, that was normal at that time - you had to train and learn and gain experience to earn the chance to go for the next level.

Not to blame Masters and schools, that is WTF Taekwondo today. Much flash and colour and great events and happenings, but only few people keeping it up (outside of Kukkiwon, which I consider equally responsible for a situation) with the art itself and persisting in improving it. That is bad, bad for Taekwondo because soon it will become nameless sport like many other disciplines and we will have one big pile of MMA, BTF, GBL, VCW, BUS (yes I am talking nonsense) like in other martial arts and no real profile for which people will be able to say "That is Taekwondo!".

So to get back to the point - I was not motivated to raise my grade for a long time and made big pauses because it seemed pointless to me. I always considered advancing in the Art and achieving grades was about experience and knowledge combined with (a lots of) training. However, I am now overrun by people wearing 5th grades being 10 years younger. And I was able to meet a 10 year old boy with black belt around his waist. What are requirements for a person of that age to earn a black belt? I do not want to find out.

There we are, I think my 3rd Dan stays for a while again. My Master must be right, someone can wear a suit and still be a jerk (pardon my French). The same is about black belts. We have so many. How many do we really have?

Despite all the "inflation", I hope Taekwondo stays Taekwondo for many more years. Later they can give black belt to anyone who signs up and call the art "The art of wearing black rope around your white robes". I don't care.

Back in Black (belt)

It may be not kinda record, but not writing the blog for more than one year must be something. Reasons? Laziness, lack of time, lack of material... all together.

That does not mean that there were no trainings and happenings, they were simply not inspiring enough to kick my butt to sit down and write a post. Things in the club are quite the same, people also, not many new members and maybe a few old ones who come now and then. From one point of view it gives the feeling of having a Hankuk-style club all the time. Master Kim would probably like to have more new members despite I (and some others) even do not miss them too much. Economic approach should not be ignored...

Therefore in this post I would only like to share some (also photo) experiences from TKD camp on Vogar, Slovenian mountain above Bohinj Lake. We went there for reasonable price from June 26th to July 2nd, not knowing what to expect. We got much more than expected, luckily! And I decided quite in the last moment, thinking there is nothing to lose and comforting myself that working few hours a day over very slow mobile internet connection is not taking a vacation.

The team that went up there was small enough to insure decent sleeping rooms organization, yet big enough to make trainings look like more than a bunch of lunatics. Altogether there were 9 grown up people and 9 children, one (10th) guy had to go back after two days. Master Kim's idea was to invite as many people as possible, not necessarily with any TKD knowledge, to have fun. Except for one enthusiastic father (who later turned quite talented and enjoyed trainings as much as his red-belted son) and my sister who joined us to relax her lawyer nerves and renew her skills since she stopped training some years ago, we were all experienced Taekwondo-ists.

While still driving to the top (OK, the mountain is not so high with its 1054m ASL,

but still three times more than normal elevation and very rocky) via roads which took out some performance from my AWD, I felt the presence of doubt about training camp site choice, but as I always say - life is an adventure, you can not plan everything. So I like the rest decided let be surprised.

The first training of all we had was of course dragging equipment and other stuff some kilometers after the last point we were allowed to reach by car. That also gave us the first feeling of what it is to be mountain-mounted. And for several days almost cut-off of the civilization...

It seemed somewhat optimistic to go for Taekwondo training somewhere in the mountain since such mountain places are known only for people who like walking (in small groups or alone) across steep and stony paths up and down hill sides, often half-blocked with fallen trees or rolling stones (extremely slippery when wet). Of course one can not hope that in such woods and cliffs there is a Gym suitable for TKD training, but finding some plain square meters to have a decent surface to do a few jumps, kicks and other common TKD actions is also a challenge. Which shown very true. Like visible on photos, it was an art not to break something or twist some of joints while balancing between rocks on different elevation, shortening steps and redirecting moves with every action. That was the real test for our TKD mastery, more than knowledge itself.

Unfortunately, training on sandy and dusty "terrace" or concrete-paved dining area outside mountain house did not show much more convenient. As much as mountain paths shown practical for morning several kilometers run upside down...

... after which every-morning-7-o-clock tour we started to feel quite conditioned. Fresh, clean air and cold drinking water must really be healthy! :-)

Anyways, the plan was to have three trainings a day, which we fulfilled. In average everyone missed at least one and two were cancelled for overload and hiking. Not to count but guess in six days we had roughly 20 trainings. For me, that WAS a record. Especially in such conditions as extreme heat and inappropriate terrain. I wonder how my Kwon shoes survived...

Relations and socialization were at real high level all the time. For a long time I had not been involved in a happening with more that 10 people where after few days groups would not form and some unpleasant discussions initiated. Here we really experienced a real team atmosphere, even kids were good and did not cause any troubles. Well, except for gambling. At least they did not start drinking... and had no real money to play for.

Well, after all they probably took an example from older party. Texas-Hold'em evenings with excellent red wine (making landlord happy to sell few bottles every day, which is rare event for him) gave the cream to adventure-vacation feeling.

Speaking of relations, of course I took extreme caution in men-to-women relations which resulted in some attitude-correcting actions such as this one... :-)

Beside main training "areas" around the dome, we had two beautiful site-seeing places, on opposite sides of the mountain top, where we could relax in the free time (we had three trainings a day) and at one of them (at the end of running track) we had morning training, trying to scare s*it out of people in the wally. Like we heard from the inhabitant on the last day while leaving, we almost succeeded. :-)

To be real "mountaineers", we took a walk several hundred meters higher to Planina Jezero (Lake Mountain) and few brave among us took a forbidden bath in beautiful cold lake. We had a small conflict with local cows, luckily, without casualties.

The rest of all would probably not be interesting for most readers: nice food (after some corrections in the menu when housekeepers notified we are really going to train hard three times a day and something else than rice on milk would be appropriate), some drinks and good sleep at night. Most of all lots, lots of fun. And hope to experience some so nice days ASAP. And I like to thank Master Kim, all of participants, and our HouseMaster and his assistant for making it even more special.

On photos above accompanied by two blondes - my sister and master Jelka.

For the very end few more photos, description is probably not necessary. Thank you for reading this long post!

Tight-packed Dobok Recepy

While preparing some meaningful material for a new post about our brand-new Gym, let me share with you - my Friends and Readers - a nice method of arranging your Taekwondo uniform (Dobok, 도복) "Korean Style", like my friend, Master Na from Seoul taught me. Thanks Master Na, although I would be even more grateful if he would contact me in some shorter time. :)

So, I chose my bedroom and my bed as background, I hope you don't mind, sometimes even hard-working uniform deserves to be
treated with care, so the floor was out of question. For those with smooth taste, please ignore blanket ornaments.

Let us begin with 도복 itself. Pretty messy just like that, space consuming, not beautiful in first. Depending on quality of material, some uniforms will bend better, some harder, but you really don't need to take much care about bands. Banding in ways I will show you allows plenty of space for uniform not to sustain too sharp bends so you will look nice and ironed when you later put it on, just like you kept it hanged in your wardrobe. 1. The Jacket Today's uniforms are usually marked at least by manufacturer, while I am sure all of you have at least some sign of your team or club printed on it. This one I got from my Korean friends has a nice Korean flag in front so I always try to finish with it showing on the front side of the "package". Turn it face down and bend sleeves toward middle so they overlap. The best is to bend them in shoulder sutures (or "stitches" is the word?) so you don't bend sides before time. You will also avoid unnecessary bending on places where it could be visible after you "unpack" your Dobok. 2. Trousers Bend them vertically as most convenient, keep them straight, and then bend downside up. It does not need to be really symmetrical, just use space so it can fit on your jacket like in next step.

3. All together

Now, put your bent trousers somewhere about in the middle of your jacket. Place it so it does not extend over jacket borders. Then, bend the jacket around them vertically as shown on the picture. You should choose a side depending what you want to have in front of your "package". I want Korean flag to be in front, so I bend the uniform keeping the flag under.


Then, bend the whole package from bottom up, so it finishes a little below collar. Turn your package over to see if everything is fine on the front (or upper) side.



4. The Belt (Di 띠)

OK, not that you must arrange it like I did on that photo, but also think about what you would like to "show" when all is packed. First bend your belt on half, place it horizontally facing down the part you would like to be in front at the end. In my case that was the name. So I faced it down, then turned end upwards, so I can see "face-down" side. Make "name" part a little bigger, since it will have to go "around" more. Put your uniform on it.



5. The Big Finish

Well I hope in next photos you see steps how to tie your belt around uniform so that right things are in right place. Experimenting a little you can find your best method. Aesthetics is usually in the eye of observer so pick your own.


Well, whether you like it or not, such way packed Dobok is really convenient; you can swing around with it, put it in a small bag or sit on it, the damage you make to it's beauty (achieved by ironing) is minimal. Some guys practice tying even their training shoes together but due to smelly reasons and sometimes noticeable amounts of dirt I never do that. Just to demonstrate how compact the package is, I put it on (clean) shoes.

At the end, folks, if you don't find this funny, just do it the way that is best for you - but always respect your uniform and make it look proud. ;-)