Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Intensive Hapkido…

I had a full four hours dedicated to hapkido training this weekend and, for me, it was a chance to reconnect a bit.

For long periods of time recently, forcing myself to train has been a bit of a chore. It’s nothing to do with hapkido or any sort of falling out of love with it either. For the past three years, I’ve simply faced huge additional demands at work and that pressure has squeezed my free time elsewhere, and it’s affected pretty much every aspect of my life, from my family to my writing, and from my pool playing to my fledgling attempts at learning BJJ.

I have, however, managed to retain some type of weekly hapkido training schedule and my progress has maybe not been spectacular but it has steady

So this weekend was a time to spend a precious four hours in the dojang with my teacher and my fellow students and it was hugely enjoyable. It involved basic principles such as nailing down the fundamentals of base and balance, some work on retaining hip integrity during roundhouse kicks, and some work on employing one technique to open up others.

On the last point, we took the principle of the standing armbar and hyper-extending a joint and employed it with a thumb lock from a handshake to a kneebar from several takedowns. We even played with a rolling kneebar at one point.

We also did some sensitivity drills. This involved running through a series of wrist locks to defend wrist grabs, then repeating the exercise wearing blindfolds and executing the wristlocks bereft of the visual stimulus.

It was solid training time and a chance to reconnect mentally as well as physically with a lot of hapkido principles and techniques. It was like catching up with an old friend who’s always about but you haven’t properly seen in a while.

It also reminded me that, after about 13 years of training, I should be much better at this by now. But I'm still managing to be an OK black belt and, at 46, I’m still training and learning and, with pressing time demands elsewhere, I’ll settle for that. For now.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

In the Reptile House...


I've just finished reading 25 Years in the Reptile House: British Gothic Rock 1976-2001 by Dave Thompson.


As a Goth, of sorts, I love the music and the book is a comprehensive and thoroughly engaging review of the bands and the period. It's nicely written and Thompson has a lovely turn of phrase as well as a real love of the subject.


The layout is a bit hit-and-miss at times, but it's certainly not enough of an issue to detract from a lovingly crafted survey of the music of my teenage years and beyond. It told me lots of things I didn't know, refreshed my memory about lots of music I'd forgotten and it also made me smile.


Though, I'll keep the smiling bit quiet at my next Goths Anonymous meeting. Smiling is frowned upon. As are most things...

Monday, January 11, 2016