TaeKyon

Once I wanted to be the greatest........greatest Taekwondo practitioner in Michigan. So in 2004 I went to Korea and trained with some high school kids for six weeks. When I went back to Michigan I found that what I did in Korea didn't really matter, so I decided to go back to Korea to make my Anthropology degree work for me by becoming an ESL teacher.

A few months before I went back I met the guy who would become my replacement. He was an 8th degree black belt in Taekwondo. He was also a Taekyon master. He eventually ended up stealing some money from our Taekwondo school and he made off with a dining room table that I let him borrow. He also teamed up with an American idiot to go start another school in a different town. He ended up stealing about twenty thousand dollars from that idiot. The idiot wiped out his kid's college fund to go do that. The Taekwondo and Taekyon master eventually bolted off to Canada.

While in Korea I started training Kumdo. Kumdo is pretty fun, but I never lost the urge to kick stuff. Unfortunately whenever I tried to go to a local Taekwondo school for training, I always found myself practicing with little kids.

Luckily, a week ago I was walking around my beloved Geumsan Myeon, when I saw a yellow van that had the phone number of a Taekyon Dojang on it. I had my #1 super wife call up the number. The next week (Last week as of the writing of this) I started doing Taekyon. After three lessons, I have found myself extremely satisfied.

The instructor is very patient and kind. The school is new so I have gotten private lessons with no kids. The martial art is also very gentle yet it provides a good work out in the places where I need a workout.

Taekyon focuses on intricate foot work and stepping patterns that force people to bend their knees and extend their abdomens. The foot work eventually builds power and adds a little extra umph to each kick. Youtube videos of people doing Taekyon show very fluid motions and people getting knocked to the ground with very simple techniques.

Korean Martial arts like Taekyon and Hapkido focus a lot of energy on a part of the body called the "Tanjeon" area. The "Tanjeon," area is located a few inches under the belly button and is supposed to be a place where a person's internal energy or "ki" collects. That may or may not be true, but if you spend twenty minutes or so doing some Taekyon hot stepping where you bend your knees and extend your stomach out over and over again, the next day you develop a nice sit up tummy ache.

So once again, I'm going to try to become the greatest.

Make my fists of solid rock, or at least I can have something else to get me out of the house.