Posted 10:17 PM by spitgirl
THE PERFECT COMBINATION

Okay, this probably will sound fairly trivial, but I just found the perfect combination of clothes for hankido. You'd think that it was something really weird, but all I did was throw in a pair of ankle-length Spandex on underneath my dobok pants and all of the problems that I had before of sweaty shinguards was solved almost immediately. So I was Very Happy today, if still a bit sniffly.

Actually, it was less a sniffly thing and more of a stuffed up thing today, but after taking some DayQuil I went to workout. Of course, I took it right before I left so by the time workout started, I was dry as a bone and starting to feel thirsty every ten minutes. Vera was covering for Dr. Ur today, so she led us in some nice jumping warmups and then we got started on some throws. The topic of the day was "throws from kicks." Vera had Kent, Lucille, and I switch out as "lifeguards" to help others with their technique as an outside person, so I got a chance to work the techniques. We handled front kick to back fall, roundhouse to backfall, and roundhouse to face fall, among other things.

The second workout was also led by Vera and Laura, and included some some of the same warm-up drills. But the browns and ups were taken aside to work on kick defenses. However, instead of straight up instruction we were given little slips of papers with strange hankido-esque kicks to figure out throws from. The first two that Lily and I got were "spin heel kick" (easy peasy) and "spinning crescent kick - out to in." I read that and thought... WHAT?! Spinning crescent kick is a nice flashy little kick from in to out, but out to in is one of those kicks that is a little useless. We worked one for each, though... a major inner reap into a face fall for the spin heel kick. We spent most of the time really just puzzling out the spinning crescent kick. I must have had the slightly puzzled look, head tilted to one side, for a full five minutes looking at that kick.

After we all shared what we had learned and figured out, we then went for a second round. I was partnered with Gene for the second round, and we got a roundhouse-turning roundhouse combo. We found a nice one that has you going in during the turn, grabbing the back of the neck for what was essentially a forward body drop. Evil evil evil. Lucille and Kent came up with one for the spin heel kick that was basically a low spin heel kick. It looked really awesome, but it didn't count as a throw, more of a takedown. The second one they came up with was a turn into what would eventually turn into a face fall.

Judo had moved to Albany for that evening, so I had some extra time on the mat while waiting for non-existent people to show up at my office hours. I ended up putting together some spin heel kicks, which looked actually not too bad. I still need more practice on them, though, so you'll probably find me in front of the mirrors doing more spin heels/spin hooks this next month.