A Karate experience

On Tuesday night I held a little Taekwondo training camp for a Karate school (Amphibian Dojos) in Balnarring. When a family friend of mine, Pete Smedley came to me and asked if I would share some of my experiences and take a training class with his Karate school, at first I was a bit apprehensive.
The first thing that came to my mind was "Im not an instructor" and generally being a shy person, I don't feel comfortable doing this.

The following days I spent thinking about what I could share with the class and what Taekwondo techniques I would show them, the idea began to grow on me and when Pete asked me to confirm, I agreed. As this was unfamiliar territory for me I spent the weekend before planning for a hour long class. Taking some notes I broke down a schedule similar to what we would do at Team Carlo seeing this is what I know best.

The first class started at 4pm and was made up of around 30 primary school students. Pete made an exceptionally good introduction on my behalf and with that I began the class. It was the first time I've taken a class so young so it was quite a challenge to try to keep the kids attention. After a quick warm up I had planned to just start with the basics of sport Taekwondo, what Carlo refers to as our percentage shots (four very simple techniques which have a high chance of scoring). They comprise of two attacks and two counter attacks:

1. Round house kick (back foot round house).
2. Running kick (front foot round house).
3. Slide out back foot round house (counter).
4. On the spot front foot round house (counter).

I was struck with a number of challenges while trying to teach the kids. Trying to keep everyones attention while demonstrating the technique, asking if everyone understood the kick (naturally they all said yes but when it was their turn I quickly found I had a dozen or so kids trying different things all at the one time! To put it simply it represented chaos in all forms!) Also I tried to get around to see each pair of students to offer some one on one guidance and trying to accommodate individually the different levels of aptitude in the class.
Thankfully I had Pete and his instructors helping out and with them I think my aims for this level were accomplished.
1. that the kids have some fun and
2. they try something new

Finishing the class with questions, I spent some time explaining my story, why I trained with one arm, the importance of setting goals in your life, believing that nothing is impossible no matter your circumstances and to really follow your passion in life as it will give you great rewards in return.

I had the pleasure of taking two more classes, the teens and later the adults that night. The night seemed to run much more smoothly for two reasons, firstly the classes were more responsive to me, having a better understanding of what I was trying to teach and secondly because I felt more comfortable with what I was doing.

My idea was for each class to start with the basics (percentage shots) then cover the more advanced techniques that we use such as double round house, triples, axe kicks and back kicks. As the night wore on though I found it quite difficult to cram in ten years of Taekwondo experience into one short hour with the Karate class.
The technique I had really hoped to show (but run out of time) was our back kick. Its a great kick and when executed well has enormous power and the ability to knock an unsuspecting opponent out! That lesson will have to be saved for another night.

It was a great honor to have this opportunity to train with a different style of martial art and to give something back to people eager to learn. To finish the evening the class demonstrated their own fighting style and some of the differences I noticed (in the 15 minute sparring experience I was witness to) was they strike more with their hands, can strike to the head with punches etc and have a shorter more front on fighting stance. This seemed to lead to less kicking techniques making me consider why Taekwondo is so profoundly a kicking martial art.
I believe the specific WTF rules of 1. No punching to the head and 2. No grabbing the feet really impact the way we spar and compete. For example would there be such a thing as a double round house if we were allowed to punch to the face? I think not because the technique leaves you head /face open for an easy score hence you would be less inclined to charge in with it.

Often people ask what is the best martial art? Is one better than another? I personally believe every martial art has its strong points and it would be silly to discredit one over another. Therefore it comes more down to the individual, the level of the persons ability within the martial art itself. If you practice and are good at what you do then you can be reassured that if you require your skills to get out of a sticky situation, in most cases you will be ok.