Personal Blog

This past week I saw a commercial for a wireless company. While the actor is talking about dropped calls, and whining about her celluar service, there are kids in doboks in the background standing in 2 lines, demonstrating some of the weakest punches I've ever seen in my life. Ever get the limp wristed "dead fish" handshake from someone? Well, these were dead fish punches. Shame on the director. Once that woman switches to new cell phone provider, she also might want to switch her kid to a different martial arts school!

I don't know how it is spelled, but I know that the ki-ahp works outside of Taekwon-Do. Case in point: it was Sunday morning, and the dogs wanted out NOW. But alas, someone, who shall remain nameless, had shut the back door way too tightly and the doorknob wouldn't budge. I tried to pull it left, then right, but it simply would not budge. Even the rubber kitchen device used to open stubborn pickle jars wouldn't work to open the door. I began to become increasingly frustrated as the dogs looked at me with desperation, their big brown eyes looking sad, tails wagging, as they began to whine, which in dog speak is "Mommy, we REALLY have to go out!" Then I gave it one last shot, with a hefty pull and more importantly a loud ki-ahp...and the door popped open!  read more »

I was watching TV and just learned something new (and sadly it wasn't on TLC or the Discovery Channel). Apparently, the World record for self-inflicted front kicks to the head is...or should I say was, 42 in a span of a minute. The guy on TV broke the record by only a few kicks. Had to laugh since hitting yourself in the head is what Sabumnim warns us not to do when doing rising kicks. I was thinking that it would interesting to see how many of these kicks I could do in a minute (without the hitting-myself-in-the-head part of course).

I forgot to bring my heart rate monitor, which also has a calorie counter to class, so I was disappointed that I couldn't measure how many calories class burns when we spar. So far the monitor measured the following (some of which I tried to measure more than once in my half-baked attempt to be scientific):

1. Cardio kickboxing class - about 400
2. 8 hours sleep - night after a kickboxing class - 700-800
2. TKD class w/o sparring, but about four 30 second rounds of going against the bags.- about 430
3. Advanced step class at Bally's - 364
4. Overnight with about 8 hours sleep on a day when I haven't exercised - 200-300  read more »