Why Taekwondo? Why now?
A couple of years ago I began to work more and more in London, often staying over during the week to operate from our London office and avoid the commute. As a martial artist the downside of this is obvious, I was disconnected from my local Aiwakai club. Oh and I was getting a bit porky!
With no Wadokai club in the vicinity, I found a local kickboxing class which turned out to be the fight-club night for a taekwondo group, and as time went on I began to attend their technical classes too. I found that I could reasonably well separate my karate brain from my taekwondo brain (although some bleed-through was inevitable which I’ll cover in a later post) and enjoyed the completely new way of generating power, the focus on breaking and on flexibility.
I was happy training in TKD during the week and picking up my karate at the weekend, and I worked hard at maintaining my wado technique. As I began to spend more time in Leicester again wanted to continue to learn about taekwondo and train in karate (I know, greedy right?) so I joined a local ITF school and now I do both!
After 25 years of wearing a black belt, wearing any other colour is strangely liberating as it allows you to shrug off the expectations placed on being a senior grade, and the role of sensei (both of which, don’t get me wrong, I relish as part of being a black belt for the other half of the week).
So this is me, buying a few new tools to put in my toolkit, testing them and seeing which are the best fit for which job, whilst still trying to ensure the old and trusted tools don’t fall out!
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