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As many of you already know, I train Taekwondo since 1992, being a 2nd degree black belt. Last weekend I went to the World Taekwondo Hanmadang 2008, held in Anaheim, CA.
Hanmadang is a different kind of competition, focusing on the martial art aspect of Taekwondo (Mudo, in Korean), like forms (poom-sae) and breaking (kiok-pa), which are the aspects of Taekwondo that I like the best.
I was very excited in competing, as this would be my first international-class competition.
I was really disappointed with the organization. On the first day nobody knew when exactly I was going to compete (which day). My name was in the wrong division for the fist breaking and my name wasn’t on the list for the finals on this category, even though I was a finalist. Then after getting 3rd place, my name wasn’t on the list for getting the medal! For the poom-sae competition I had to wait from 1:00 PM to 9:30 PM. Unbeliveable. Basically they decided to put kids and adults to compete at the same day, so we had to wait until all kids were finished. They could simply put the kids to compete on a different day. On the good side, the location was perfect and many could arrange a vacation to Disneyland while in Anaheim for the competition (Disneyland’s main gate is within walking distance from the convention center).
I always try to see the bright side of everything. I decided to see this tournament as a hands-on training experience for the next one – because I know that I could do a lot better, see below – and also training for my 3rd degree test, which I should take in Q2 2009.
Below I describe my experience on all categories that I participated, all on the senior (31-40 years old) division:
Knife-hand breaking: I didn’t have a clue on the material they would be using. On the official website was written that the material would be granite and I didn’t know exactly what kind of granite they would be using. Of course they chose the hardest granite, the same kind used on kitchen countertops, 1-inch thick. I couldn’t break even one. Now that I know the material I will train for next year or will give up this category. The person that broke the most granite slabs was a Korean master, which was able to break 10 of them. Simply amazing. All competitors gave a standing ovation to him.
Fist breaking: On the preliminaries I was able to break four out of seven plastic tiles, which allowed me to move to the finals. On the finals I broke eight out of ten “real” tiles. I got third place (bronze medal) with this performance. The first place was able to break ten tiles and the second place, nine. Below you can see the videos for both the preliminaries and the finals. I think I could break all ten tiles, I know what my mistake was and I should correct it for next time (in fact watching my performance on the preliminaries I could clearly see that my left foot was on the wrong place and because of that my fist slide when it hit the tiles; I fixed this on the finals).
Foot breaking: On the preliminaries I was able to break four plastic boards, which allowed me to move to the finals. Plastic boards are harder to break than wooden ones. In fact, 2/3 of the competitors couldn’t break the boards on the preliminaries. On the finals I made the mistake of putting too many wooden boards to break (ten), and I wasn’t able to break any. The first place broke nine wooden boards. I think that I can improve a lot here. I was overconfident because I broke the hard plastic boards on the preliminaries and that was my biggest mistake. On the video below you can see my performance on the preliminaries.
Poom-sae: I performed Keumgang, which is the form for the 2nd degree black belt. My biggest mistake was shaking a lot on my last hakdari seogi (crane stance); even if you are a layman you can clearly see that I am shaking a lot at the end of the form. Another thing that probably cost me some points was that instead of answering “yes, sir!” when the referee asked me if I was the competitor shown on the screen I made a thumbs up signal (which can be clearly seen at the beginning of the video below). I got an 82.00 score and a 4th place. Watching the video I can see a lot of other minor mistakes; I could do a lot better. I will train a lot for my next poom-sae tournament
