Mdgwrites Confidence, Taekwondo Training Tips

How Taekwondo Has Helped (and Hurt) My Pool Game

Billiard

About a year ago (and some change) I started playing pool with a friend. At first it was just something to do once in a while on a lazy weekend. I had never played before and was really looking forward to it. I had visions of lounging around in a dark dive bar, telling jokes, and swigging beer while my friend and I easily played round after round of pool.

That’s not quite how it happened. The beer and hanging around in a dark dive bar definitely happened (and still do; the bartenders are cracking open my Coors Light right when I walk in the door), but it was much more difficult for me to pick up the mechanics of pool than I thought it would be. I was TERRIBLE and I was SO frustrated. It felt difficult and clunky. I couldn’t control my hands or relax my shoulders or get my angle right or do anything that my brain was telling my body to do. I couldn’t let myself just have fun and keep trying.
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Mdgwrites Challenges, Class Diaries, Confidence

The Best Birthday

Happy-Birthday-Cupcake

“Turn. Face Melanie,” my instructor said at the end of class. It was a Friday night and we had practiced my favorite techniques: hand strikes, forms, and breaking. What was coming next? Wait a minute, we’d already done the standard bow-to-the-black-belts part of our closing ritual: master, second degrees, first degrees. What’s going on? Is there something spe—oooohhh, right.

“Start singing,” he added, giving me a smirk as he strolled to the front of the room. The whole class sang “Happy Birthday” to me. I grinned and covered my face.
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Mdgwrites Challenges

Sparring Multiple Partners

multiple-attackers-ip-man
Ohhh…crap, I didn’t think this through.

“Black belts, get up and make a line in the center of the room.”

During sparring class that’s my chief instructor’s cue for us to line up and let the lower ranking students take a stab–or well, I mean punch–at us. For a while he would assign one student per black belt, but lately he’s been assigning two students to each black belt for two-on-one sparring. If I get the little kids, it’s more funny than anything else, and I spend half my time coaching them on how to get me rather than really fighting them.

It becomes more serious when I’m matched with partners my size (or larger, which is often the case since I’m fairly small) or worse, with other black belts. The larger partners have more brute force, and the black belts fight smarter and know how to work together.
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Mdgwrites Inspiration, Leadership, Taekwondo Training Tips

When You Know You’ve Found Your Tribe

chairs

I am not, by nature, a loyal person.

Connecting with other people has always been difficult for me. Although I come from a close-knit family and have been a serial monogamist in romantic relationships, when it comes to groups of friends or associates I tend to shy away. I truly enjoy interacting with people, especially those with whom I share similar interests, but I have a little problem with commitment. When things start to move too fast, and it starts getting too close, I bail. Once the fun wears off and things get serious, I don’t want to stick around. To be honest, I’m a bit of a player. I like the flirtatious rush at the beginning, but I don’t want to deal with the long-term time and energy investment.
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