Simple training drill for forms applications

Me and Ivar played around a little with forms applications after a regular training session was over. I got Synnøve to film us so this blog post will have both text, aaaaaand video to accompony it ;-) The applications in this drill consists of a haymaker defense using sonnal geodeuro makki (knife hand guarding block), limb control using han sonnal bakkat makki (outward knife hand block) and bakkat makki (outward block). A few minutes of playing and you get applications from different Poomsae in one short drill.

New Taegeuk Il (1) Jang video clip (Micro post)

I recently managed to pull off one of the video projects I have wanted to make for some time :-) A video where the solo performance of the form and the applications to the form is cross cutted back and forth so you see the clear link between the solo form and the practical application of the movement. I am super excited about this and hope that it is a video that will be shared by many :-) There are scores of martial artists out there that think that the taekwondo forms have no value, and the taegeuk series especially have faced a lot of opposition. I hope that this clip can show that perhaps people can get a little more out of it than what you usually see:-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH4qidojs_M&list=PLgcu8sdxIYE5aSbXehlLXnVv1oj1OEUdP&index=2&t=0s

Amazon affiliated links (a new way to support the blog)

If you check out the sidebar to the right of the blog now you will see that the adsense is now gone and instead I have put up a few products with amazon affiliated links. What that means is that if you follow the link and buy the product (or anything else for that matter) I will get a small commission for the purchase. Going through these links will therefore be one way of supporting my work and research. This also means that I have 100% control of what products I put up there, and I will only put up things that are relevant for my blog and that I know are good. Right now there's a link to Stuart Anslows Ho Sin Sul book (affiliated link), one for Kukkiwon Textbook (affiliated link) and one book by Iain Abernethy on arm locks (affiliated link). All of them will probably be a good read for people who follow the blog, and all of them are books that I own and enjoy myself. I will change these around thought, so depending on when you are reading this post you might find other products or books there, but it will always be:

1: relevant for the blogs overall content
2: always be something I myself own and use myself

If I use links within articles, blog posts, for instance a book review or something that is an affiliated link I will always put (affiliate link) after the link. The reason for this change is that adsense that I used to have did not really work for the blog as it constantly showed unrelated stuff (for me anyway) that was not interesting. It did not pay much either (since 2011 I made juuust enough money to buy one book :-) ). I hope that with these kinds of links the blog might revenue a little more than that so I can invest more into my own research, and I do hope that you, the readers do not find this alarming or negative :-) Do not hessitate to comment if there is anything you are wondering, I will answer any civilized question that you might have :-)

Pyung Ahn Hyung Series Part 2: Tidbits about the forms

In this part of the series I want to share a few tidbits that I missed in Part 1, such as the meaning

behind the name, a few musings from Iain Abernethy on the reason (or part of the reason) why Itosu chose the name he ended up with, debunk a myth about Hwang Kee and the forms series and possible more stuff as they enter my mind. In the upcomming posts in the series I will go into the forms themselves, but there were a few things that I thought I should tackle before starting looking at the forms themselves. So if I have awaken your curiousity, and you forgive my many spelling mistakes please click the read more button to see more :-)

Index of Poomsae Applications 2011-2018

I'm looking through my old posts on Poomsae Applications, and since I am already doing that I thought it might be convenient for readers to get a post that could function as an index where you could easily navigate from one form to the next, or look into all posts that centers on one form. There's a lot of posts not included here that falls within practical poomsae applications category (posts explaining the meaning of "Makki", "stances", how to find them etc), here I have only gathered posts that show one or more specific examples to Poomsae applications. I hope you guys enjoy, I know I did :-D Unfortunatly some video-links and pictures to the older posts have dissapeared, but I think everything is still understandable, and if not do not hessitate to send me a question, either comment, or PM me through facebook :-) (Apparently you can find me on something called google+ as well but I have no idea how to use it).

Pyung Ahn Hyung Series Part 1: History

I recently (at the time of writing) got back from a seminar with Iain Abernethy focusing on the
combative applications from the Heian/Pinan Kata (often called Pyung Ahn in Korean). A few years back I toyed with the idea of making a book demonstrating the differences between how the different Korean Kwan (schools or styles) performed their versions of the Pyung Ahn and Chulgi series. The reason for this is that I collected and studied all kinds of older texts from Mu Duk Kwan, Chung Do Kwan, Oh Do Kwan etc and I was getting a lot of different material that is not generally seen today in my personal "library". One of these things that I found fascinating was how the Hyung was very similar, yet they had their small differences accross the different schools. When I saw that Iain Abernethy was going to hold a seminar in the south east part of Norway I knew I had to attend that seminar. I have followed his work for probably more than a decade now, articles, books, youtube, podcasts, Iain is prolific and a great sharer of knowledge, and I find his stuff to be very interesting. Since he was going to focus on the Pinan/Heian series I thought I could brush off on the forms I had collected notes on, but never finished the project so that I came "prepared" to the seminar. Since I have been working on learning the solo performance of the series, revisiting my old notes and now learned a ton of applications on them from the most best known "applications guy"across styles I thought that perhaps some of my readers might be interested in learning a little more about them, and how the versions vary among different schools. I abandoned the book project because I never managed to find a version from all of the major Kwan, and I really thought that if I were to charge money in the form of a book, it really should contain versions from all the major Kwan and not just 2-4 Kwan.

Taegeuk Il Jang, Solo performance + Applications

I have made several videos on Taegeuk Il Jang over the last year, and as I have done in written form on this blog I have covered the form move for move throughout the complete Poomsae with practical applications :-) In this blog post I thought I could make a convenient way of gathering all this into one place. When I get a little more time I will try to make a "master post" where there are pictures, text, history, videos of performance and videos on applications in one place, but this short one will do in the meantime :-)