T.A.G.B. Code Blue

Did my blue belt grading last week … and darn if I didn’t make a mistake on my very first movement! In my keeness to show speed and power I overcooked my very first block, threw myself off balance and staggered through the first four movements of my first set pattern. Annoyed? You have no idea! I did manage to recover and finish the pattern with reasonable finesse, but it was irritating to make such a basic mistake.

I also learned a valuable lesson later in the test as well … never draw attention to yourself when being tested. The examiner can’t watch everyone at once, so if you do something wrong, forget it and move on. In my case I didn’t make a mistake, but stupidly drew attention to myself anyway. The grading had reached the ’set sparring’ phase, and for those who know anything about Tae Kwon Do, this is fairly straight forwards as long as you are comfortable with the moves, which I was. I didn’t know my partner - he was from another club. We were doing Two Step sparring and I was attacking. I correctly attacked with a high fingertip thrust followed by a side kick when my partner commented aloud ‘Wrong one!’. Without thinking, I automatically responded by saying ‘Sorry’, which drew the examiner’s attention. About two seconds later I realised that it was he who had made the wrong defence, but the examiner’s attention was drawn to me, because I had apologised! Grrrr! Won’t do that again.

Despite a less than perfect practical, I knew all the answers to the theory questions, so I must have picked up the score a little there. The result was my sixth straight ‘A’ grade, but I feel somewhat lucky to have scraped in with this one.

For the next grading there will be a lot of new things to learn: a whole host of new moves, a complex new pattern, more two step sparring combinations, one step sparring, semi-free and free sparring, to say nothing of a mass of new Korean terms for the theory part of the test. It seems like a big step in comparison to some of the other grades, but I was a little way ahead in learning some of these things anyway, which should make it a bit easier.

The new pattern I have to learn is Joon Gun an appropriate pattern for me to learn in some ways, as I started learning Tae Kwon Do in part as research for my book Imperial Assassin. Joon Gun is named after the assassin, An Joong-Gun who assassinated the first Japanese Governor of Korea, Hiro Bumi Ito. The 32 movements in the pattern represent Mr An’s age when he was executed in Lui Shung Prison in 1910.

Again I would encourage any who lives in the Northamptonshire/Warwickshire area who is interested in perhaps taking up a martial art to consider Tae Kwon Do. The Jackson White Dojang I attend in Daventry is excellent, but it is just one of several such clubs in the area. Give it a go. It’s a lot of fun.