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After a bummer weekend of being tired, sick and generally depressed, I finally got a chance to do some kicking at Tae Kwon Do last evening.

In an effort to get us better acquainted with sparrin, Master John was having us “practice spar” for class. It was indeed awesome and it taught me stuff that you just can’t learn from kicking pads or bags. Because with pads and bags, you’re not worrying about your opponent blocking, but during a sparring match you’re trying to do that…and anticipate their moves! For the first time it was very much an overload for those reasons. Most of the time I found myself being rather close to my opponent…to close sometimes. However you must be close to actually execute a strike since if you’re to far away, they’ll be able to see it coming and will be able to counter. So sparring is definitely a game of timing that I’ll have to get down.

Another thing that stuck me was how much like Chess sparring is. That is, since there are rules in how you can fight, it limits what you can do to “distract” your opponent and it also limits how you fight, which make sense. Otherwise it’d be pretty much just be a death match with both sides being whatever it takes to knock the other out! So to actually score, you gotta be thinking of how to trick into thinking you’re doing something else than what you’re really doing. Master John did a great example of this when facing off with Aaron and me. For Aaron, when they were close, he’d do and inside-out (?) Axe kick to the head, which Aaron couldn’t tell where it was coming from since his attention was focused on Master John’s other side. For me, he waited until I was already committed to (if I remember right) a roundhouse to his side and got me with a side kick to the face! Which I might add, resulted in a bloody nose! :O