Pat over at Mokurn Dojo has posted a challenge for martial arts bloggers. It’s essentially a strategic plan for your blog that’s based on a tried and true business model. Over break I may do this. However, in the next month look for Striking Thoughts to move to the WordPress hosted platform. After the move is done I may take Pat up on his challenge.
His related post on SMART Goals is also worth noting. It’s a way to assess and improve a technique that’s giving you problems. Again, this post was brought to my attention at a bad time. I’ll soon be testing for 1st dan so there’s not much improving I can really do in two weeks. After that, I have a few weak areas that I do need to work on before the Board of Masters’ test. These would be 1) Polishing all the poomse, 2) Polishing all fundamentals, and 3) Specifically working on all varriations of the hook kick. The latter is still my problem kick.
Now there are some long term taekwondo goals that I could develop if I pursue 2nd dan. However, that’s looking to be unlikely at this point. So, if I do SMART goals it will probably be in relation to what techniques I’ll thread into my at-home practices.
His post made me think of a post I did about a year ago. It’s Beasly’s Matrix for the martial arts. It’s subjective in that it assess which art YOU would be most effective using in a real-world situation. However, it’s NOT designed to assess which art is the best overall combative art. So, I thought now might be a good time to run myself back through the Matrix. Here’s my results:
| Out-fighting | In-fighting | Ground | Personal Pref. | Real World | Skill Level | Average | |
| Taekwondo | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1.5 | 1 | 1.6 |
| Boxing/WC | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1.5 | 1.6 |
| PPCT/Ground | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2.3 |
Last year’s results were as follows:
- TKO – 2.0
- Boxing/WC – 1.7
- PPCT/Ground – 2.2
(the lower the score the more likely you are to use said art in a real-world situation)
The biggest trend I see from a very personal and subjective self-assessment is that both striking arts went up. The Boxing/WC category went up because at intermediate rank and above we start to practice basic boxing strikes in our tko curriculum. It’s not even close to what you’d see in boxing, kick boxing, etc. However, it was enough for me to shake off a little rust. Plus, despite not specifically emphasizing them, I pick up tko hand strikes really fast and always have a blast with them. As always, I’m much better with my hands than I am with my feet.
Overall TKO went up for an obvious reason: That’s where 85% of my practice times goes. In fact, despite ranking it lower in a “real-world” situation, my self-perceived skill level mediates that ranking somewhat. In English: Even if your art has a lot of fine motor skill techniques, acrobatics, aerial kicks, etc., I think your skill level will give you a better chance of using it (or adapting it) in a real-world situation. I’m certain that Sabum #1 at almost 4th dan could pull off some of tko’s techniques in a real situation that I could not. In addition, having dabbled in other arts has given me a good idea of how to adapt certain tko techniques to a street setting. (e.g., keep the kicks waist level and below, etc.)
My ground game continues to be my weakest link and it has suffered (not that it was ever great to begin with). It’s been been 10 years at least since I’ve had to wrestle with a knuckle-headed inmate so this comes at no surprise. As close to the ground as we ever get is to sweep or throw someone and strike them while prone. We do practice the round kick and side kick from kneeling and occasionally practice how to sprawl (i.e. avoid being taken to the ground) but that’s about it.
Anyhow, right now I need to go practice!
~BCP
