Sharing some Quotes, Notes and other stuff Part 3

I have always been a fan of journaling, and I have tried keeping training journals and I have several notebooks in regards to my Martial Arts study. Back around November 2018 I started with Ryder Carroll's Bullet Journal Method which has suited me incredibly well. Now we are in September 2019 and I have written through a whole book over 200 pages and well into my second one. Ryder Carroll's original system is great and minimalistic but it can easily be adapted to any persons needs, and so for me it is my training journal, my notebook for self study (Martial Arts, Philosophy, Norse Mythology etc), my work planner, my free time planner etc wrapped into one neat book. I have become a much more productive person after starting this and if you are strugling keeping up with things I recommend looking into it. Once I moved out of my old book and into my new book I reflect by going back and looking through the last year of notes. I noticed that a lot of my Martial Arts notes might be of interest to readers of this blog, so I am sharing my martial arts related material here. Everything written in cursive is quotes directly from the book, while stuff written in plain old text is me giving some context or comment on what you are seeing. These are my notes, so things making sense to me might not make sense to you without a little embellishing :-) So without further adu we will jump straight into March 2019:


First out is a quote by Winston Churchil:

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."

I believe in my vision for Taekwondo, including the study of applications within Poomsae. I believe in it so strongly that I put my self out there on the world wide web, and as of this date I can be found on instagram, youtube, here (dooh) and facebook trying to provide a different aspect of taekwondo (the martial and traditional one, drawing on its roots). The thing is, putting my self out there has its ups and downs. Sometimes you get in touch with likeminded individuals, or constructive critics. You might be asked questions that you have not considered before. There is a huge number of things that are great by putting your self out there, but there is also a dark side to it. Trolls, keyboard warriors etc who likes nothing more than to wreck your day is the other side of the coin. You get both..... And so finding this quote made me happy at a point I was a little down. Failure is not fatal either so if I make a mistake (using the wrong hangul/hanja, mixing up a fact or missing a date or year it is not the end of the world, even if it is just presicely that if you are to believe some of the commenters :-)

Then we have another quote by Albert Einstein:

"You never fail until you stop trying."

This quote is suitable for many things in life or just life in general. For practical day to day training of Taekwondo however it is essential to remember this. There are loads of techniques in Taekwondo I have not even come close to "mastery" in yet. I still have to train them though, and not give up. After all I have not failed until I stop trying ;-)

Next I have another quote :-P Wow I noted a lot of quotes in March... This one is actually from my study of Norse Mythology but I will share it here because it is a great quote on the importance of awareness. One of the things we pay lip service to, but do not actually talk, think or train for when it comes to self defense. The quote is verse 1 of Hâvamâl or the words of the high one (Odin)

"At every doorway before you enter,
You should look around, you should take
a good look around - for you never 
know where your enemies might be 
seated within."

Hâvamâl might pop up again if I see more related to martial arts, but the next few stanzas are about being a good host and hospitality (a big deal in norse culture). Awareness, avoidance and de-escalation are perhaps the most overlooked and lacking things in martial arts schools self defense syllabus and training. This verse is a great reminder of awareness and avoidance. Odin of the myths wandered far and wide, and if he says we should be aware of our surroundings who are we to say otherwise ;-) Just a little 1000 year old self defense advice for you ;-)

Next we have a little note for an article I did for Totally Taekwondo Magazine (which I should start contributing a lot more regularly to very soon :-/ )

Parry-Pass
variation one: eulgeul makki (high section block)
variation two: bakkat makki (outward block)
-Parry one linear attack
-Parry a 1-2 combo
-Parry a fake and then a real attack (fake into committed attack)
-Cover much of your upper body.

In the video clip above you will see an example of high section block being used as a parry pass at the end (the clip is short so feel free to watch the whole whopping 45 seconds).

Then we have a short funny (I found it funny) quote from Paolo Roberto:

"Sweat is just fat which is crying." / "Svette er bare fett som gråter".
(I think it sounds better in Norwegain, but it could just be me)

Yet another quote, this time by Norman Vincent Peale:

"Change your thoughts and you change your world"

The power of your mind and your thoughts is well understood in traditional martial arts. It is the reason why we meditate, do breathing excersises as well as "knocking excersises" (banging forearms together etc). If we control the way we think we can make drastic improvements in our life (world). This is something that I have found so profound that I have many quotes by different people stating the same point in different words.

Last thing I will share in this post is some notes I took for my Brief History of Takewondo video on youtube (my second most popular video so far). I tried to sumarize the highlights and distil the complex subject of Taekwondo history into a few bulletpoints. I managed to include all my points below, but the video which was largely unscripted ended up being 18 minutes long. Some might say that it was too long, but a follow up video I am working on is proving to be just as long only focusing on one single Kwan and its founder (which got about 2-3 minutes in the video these notes are for).

Taekwondo History

• Taekwondo is relatively new
• Given its name in 1955
• Modern Taekwondo comes from Kwan (schools) merging together to form 1 martial art
• Chung Do Kwan, Lee Won Kuk, 1944 Shotokan
• Song Mu Kwan, Ro Byung Jik 1944 Shotokan
• Mu Duk KWan, Hwang Kee 1945 Chinese MA + Shotokan
• Yun Mu Kwan, Chun Sang Sup 1946 Shotokan/Shudokan/Judo
• Chang Mu Kwan, Yun Byung In Shudokan
• Ji Do Kwan 1953 Yun Kwae Byung Shotokan/Shitoryu/Shudokan/Judo
• Oh Do Kwan 1953 Choi Hong Hi Shotokan
• Su Bahk Do Association ca 1953-1966 vs Korean Taekwondo Association ca 1953 to present day.
• KTA 1953 (Choi Hong Hi) ->ITF 1966 (Choi Hong Hi and helped by Lee Chong Woo) -> Kukkiwon/WTF 1972/1973 (Un Yong Kim and Lee Chong Woo) 

The video these notes spawned can be seen here:

I am very happy for the finished product. I have no studio, no lights, I record on my mobile phone (I do have an inexpensive microphone though), and I have learned to edit by myself. The thing that takes time is the editing proccess, and the amount of work put into a video like this is huge. Especially when it is just something I do because I want the message out there (stop believing and feeding the 2000 years old ancient myths, the real history is just as fun and interesting).

Anyway we are now in May 2019 so I am sure I will be able to make at least one more post in this series. Perhaps if I have been a good note-taker I can do a follow up next year as well.