bloodyrosemccoy | Keep Track Of Your Kicks

One of my chief embarrassments as a black belt—aside from the fact that I now look more like the Pillsbury Doughboy than, say, one of the Furious Five—is that I have never, ever been able to master the Taegeuk poomsae.

A Taegeuk poomsae is the tae kwon do equivalent of tai chi chuan: a poomsae is a sequence of movements from one pose into another, and these particular ones employ the tai chi philosophy of yin and yang. However, unlike that tai chi you’ve probably seen, it’s not done in slow motion; usually it’s done in sharp movements, with quick exhalations for every kick, punch, and block. There are also set moments where you get to kihap.*

And for me—kinesthetically, spatially challenged me—they’re murder to try to remember.

I tend to start in one and end in another—or end in a completely different, non-Taegeuk technique. Or I get stuck like a broken record in the middle, or just generally forget what I’m supposed to be doing next. I could commit them to short term memory for belt tests, but they tended to empty out of my head once I’d actually gotten the belt.**

But as I was looking forlornly at the diagrams of each form a few days ago, it hit me: if I associated each form with something my brain can differentiate, I may be able to remember which is which.

Which is why I’ve been out on the lawn for the past couple of days, picking one song a day from the new Taegeuk playlist on my iPatch, setting each form to music.

I think it’s going to work, you guys! After spending half an hour blocking and kicking with “Ghostbusters,” blasting into my head*** and if I don’t have flashbacks to Taegeuk Ee-Jang every time I hear that song, I will eat my belt.

Now if I could only get control of my roundhouse kick again.

*Yell.

**Don’t ask about the black belt test. You have to remember all eight. THIS IS HARD, OKAY?

***Note I didn’t say they were good songs. They are memorable, though, and that is the key to the whole strategy.