First of all...thank you for these notes!!!
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- “They stressed frequently that Taekwondo should be natural, so for example the old correction of when performing a back stance outer forearm block not having the rear arm in a teapot shape goes out of the window, the don't want the waist unnaturally twisted to be 90 degrees to the direction of travel.”
I’m not sure I follow. What are they recommending as the correct shape for the rear arm? Are they saying it IS okay to be a teapot? (I'm already short and stout.)
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- “The Kukkiwon advocates forming in-between new tests between Dan ranks also called (confusingly) geup tests, but say it's up to the master.”
It’s interesting how many of the things in your notes we already do in our school…but that may be because so many of our instructors are recently-trained by Kukkiwon. FYI, our color-belts learn the Taegeuk forms of course, but then our black-belts learn the Palgwae forms as “in-between” tests when they’re moving up to 2nd and 3rd dan. So our in-between tests consist of: a Palgwae form, a relatively long kicking combination (like 7-8 kicks), 3-station breaks, and sparring. Honestly though, this sometimes feels a little bit like filler, as in "Okay, it's gonna be a couple year before you get promoted again, we don't want you to get bored, so here's some new things to work on to keep interesting..."
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- “The want failing to break to be a failure, it's not a scored item. Again, this was clarified that if someone fails to make a break, they don't get a retry they fail. I think most masters in the room were thinking "yeah, right!"”
Yah that makes no sense to me. For instance, sometimes a failed break is the fault of the board holder.
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- “The Kukkiwon isn't intending to say that all headings should be by panels, just they don't want people jumping between masters.”
In my naivety I didn’t even realize this was a problem! But after you mentioned this, the head of our school said yah…he gets a lot of people coming to him looking for “special” testing. (He says 'no' of course.)
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- “They want to ensure that masters are teaching poomsae not kama, bo or other styles such as Jiu-Jitsu, Karate or other forms of Taekwondo.”
I wonder, do they care if instructors are
-teaching- weapons as long as they’re not
testing on weapons? We don’t do weapons at our school, but a lot of schools around here really seem to enjoy their weapons classes.
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It’s interesting how much emphasis was placed on meditation.
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- “The main problem though is that the course was billed as an Examiner's Course. But in fact, most of the content was on: how to perform poomsae, how to meditate, loyalty to instructors, how much money people make from Taekwondo and free training with each other.”
Yah honestly, it sounds more like a “We want to make sure that YOU are a good black belt” test than a “We want to make sure there are consistent standards in testing” course.
Excellent notes!
