Tae Kwon Do
Back when we were all little, my cousins used to do Tae Kwon Do. They got fairly good at it, I believe; I think my cousin Daniel was really close to a black belt (black belt red tip, maybe?). At one point I expressed interest in doing Tae Kwon Do, but Daniel managed to talk me out of it. “The girls’ tournaments are brutal,” he told me. “They get kicked in the nose a lot, because girls kick really high.” That squashed any vestige of interest for me, in addition to the fact that I was really wussy as a child and also very lazy.
Since then, I haven’t really had much interest in Tae Kwon Do per se. I did like the Tae Bo tapes (who wouldn’t like Billy Blanks, with his fancy girly umbrella moves and the cheesy 80′s dance tracks?), but as any Tae Kwon Do enthusiast will tell you, Tae Bo is nothing at all like Tae Kwon Do. I guess the fear of being kicked in the nose stayed with me, until recently. The boy was having a party at his place, and a girlfriend of one of the boy’s friends managed to talk the boy, the boy’s roommate Garrett, and I into doing it. She said it was the single most worthwhile experience she’s had in her college years. It’s changed her life, taught her discipline and restraint. Her nose looked pretty straight to me, so I said, what the hey, I’ll try it.
Tonight was our second exposure to Tae Kwon Do class. The boy and I went this past Sunday for some preliminary training. It’s a little weird getting used to all the little rules and protocol that come with the martial art. One can’t simply waltz in, kick people in the head, and scurry off to play basketball; one must bow when they enter the room, bow to the teacher, avoid placing one’s hands on one’s hips, etc. Apparently if you put your hands on your hips, or cross your arms, that’s very super bad and taken as a challenge to the martial arts instructor. One of the new guys whose first day was today kept placing his hands on his hips, and I wondered whether or not I should tell him. The brown belt that was training us eventually informed the new guy, and new guy kept engaging in said behavior. Uh, I’m wagering that he will be properly schooled in no time.
As for tonight’s class – we haven’t started sparring yet, but strangely enough, I feel like my ass has been thoroughly kicked. It was pretty light on Sunday because the Sunday practices are informal, consisting of some extra training and catching up, and maybe light sparring for the higher belts. Today, after we entered and bowed and lined up and bowed some more, the teacher barked, “okay! One hundred jumping jacks! Now!” Though the boy and I have been working out for the past month or so, I am disgustingly out of shape – by the 65th or so I couldn’t count out loud anymore (luckily us newbs are situated at the back of the formation). It felt like military school, or at least what I’ve seen on TV of military school (episodes of Maury Povich in which they send sassy adolescents to boot camp). Then followed two hours of kicking, punching, lunging, and running around, which wasn’t too bad at first but towards the end, my hamstrings and gluteals were whining.
Now, the teacher had said at the beginning of class that us newbies could leave after an hour or so, but the brown belt guy that was teaching us, though very nice, showed little sign of wanting to let us go. At one point, though, he did ask all four of us if we wanted to learn new moves, or review the ones we’d just learned. Maybe that would have been a good time to say “for the love of God, I’ve got sixty pages of reading left to do tonight, please let my people go!” but that doesn’t sound like a very tough-girl thing to say, and of course none of the guys were going to admit that they were tired.
Overall, though, it wasn’t bad. I could take most of it, except at the very end, when we rejoined the rest of the class and the teacher made us do fifty pushups before he excused us. Now, I don’t know about you, but fifty pushups is a lot for an out-of-shape dough-girl like myself! On top of that, instead of counting the pushups, he made us chant the five tenets of TKD: “courtesy!” “integrity!” “perserverance!” “self-control!” “indomitable spirit!,” repeating them over and over again. Now Mr. Teacher “my biceps are bigger than karenology’s waist” Man may have an indomitable spirit, but I assure you, my spirit is quite domitable.
In all honesty, I actually feel pretty great and I’m glad that I’m doing this. Let’s see how I’ll feel tomorrow.