Seeing Red!

Apparently I am now officially quite dangerous! I completed my TAGB Red ‘Tag’ grading at Tae Kwon Do (the first part of my red belt) last week and was awarded my new belt tonight. It was another big step up the ladder towards black – only two more belts to go now before I take my black belt. I have to wait 6 months until I can upgrade again to a full red belt, but my blue belt now has a red stripe through the middle signifying that I’ve taken the first step towards the new colour. I don’t know what grade I was given yet, (I’ve had 6 straight A grades until now, but I’m not so confident that I’ve kept the run going this time as I made a couple of minor mistakes) but I should find out on Friday.

Tonight I started to learn the new pattern that I will have to know in order to upgrade again in the summer. I’m told that Toi Gye is quite a difficult pattern to master, as there are many new techniques involved. Apparently it is almost guaranteed that it will be one of the patterns requested by the examiners when I eventually take my black belt, as it is supposedly the most difficult of the pre-black belt patterns to perform well. Because it is so different from the previous patterns, I found memorising the pattern quite easy, but I can already see why people find it difficult to do well. There are a lot of moves that require coordination and simultaneous blocks/strikes in differing directions. I can see it twisting my brain (and my arms) in knots to get some of them right.

Toi Gye is the pen name of the 16th century scholar Yi Wang, who was regarded as an authority on neo-confucianism. There are 37 movements in this pattern, to represent the 37th degree of latitude on which he was born. If you drew out the floor movements into a diagram, it would form the korean symbol for scholar.

Addendum: Found out today (19th December) that I managed another ‘A’ pass, which brings my tally to seven in a row. :-)