Thrown...

In hapkido, each belt has a separate set of skills attached and I struggled through every single set of skills I had to learn on my way to black belt. At times it was a tortuous process, probably more so for my long-suffering instructor and fellow students, and even today I still find myself making basic errors on things I should know.

The only time this didn't happen, though, was on a set of skills called Yew Sool, which are the Korean equivalent of judo throws. In doing Yew Sool, I suddenly found something I could do and understood almost automatically. Suddenly my off-balancing, timing, momentum and foot movement were all happening in the correct sequence and I could throw people bigger and heavier than me.

These skills also opened up a lot of other hapkido techniques because through understanding these skills I suddenly understood what was happening with other skills and I started to realise what I'd been doing wrong and how to correct that.

Sadly, I've recently returned to these skills after not doing them for a while and suddenly I really suck at quite a few of them. And one of them in particular, which in judo is called ashi guruma or leg wheel.

I've spent a bit of time in class on this recently and I'm really struggling to collapse my opponent by dragging his right elbow across his body to collapse his hip and knee with my left lower grip, while at the same time hook punching my right arm with my higher grip to get his shoulder turning and complete the off-balancing. 

I'm starting to sort it out but it's a salutary reminder that if you don't use it (or at least practice it) then you do lose it.