Today I quit my class of Hwa Rang Do/Tae Soo Do. This was a very hard decision for me, because it is the first time since starting college that I felt like I belonged to a group of friends who were supportive and had faith in me (they elected me president of the club). I do feel like I let a lot of them down, but ultimately, my reasons were based on my personal expectations and needs from a martial art.
While I love the concept behind Hwa Rang Do - which is more comprehensive than any other martial art I've yet seen, and very thorough - I have not actually been practicing Hwa Rang Do, but rather the self-admitted sport form, Tae Soo Do, designed to give people with no martial arts experience a foundation of skills before transitioning to the more advanced HRD curriculum. Problem is, Tae Soo Do is unapplicable as a form of self-defense, and I do have martial arts experience. Watering down a form of combat for the sake of making it accessible is fine, but it's just not my thing (you may have noticed my recent CrossFit adventures. Not watered down, not accessible, risky...I'm not a fan of mediocrity).
HRD began to arouse suspicions early on, with its insistence on using only HRD merchandise (sparring gear, uniforms with large prints on them which were more expensive then normal uniforms which are acceptable in other styles, etc.). The obsessive insistence on using a (R) every time Hwa Rang Do or Tae Soo Do is mentioned also seemed sketchy to me. While I understand the need to protect the integrity and authenticity of a martial art, and the need to support it financially, this seemed almost too much protection, as if the creators were paranoid (which I understand they had reason to be to an extent). Tae Soo Do seems like a way to keep HRD a secret as long as possible; use its reputation as a marketing device without actually having to teach it.
In any case, I wanted to practice sparring, grappling, and really applicable self-defense. Most of our time in TSD was spent endlessly drilling forms. While I know it's important to learn things well before trying to apply them, TSD forms are actually fairly simplistic, at least compared to Kenpo forms and techniques. Basically each belt has a theme, and you learn minor variations on that theme. All orange belt forms involved hand swords. All yellow belt forms involve elbows. It's a really slow progression, and you can generally figure out the forms once you get the pattern. While this is great for providing a set, easily learned curriculum, it's not particularly useful for self-defense, which is by its nature unpredicatable and varied. It seemed to me like the whole point of training was just to earn belts, not to learn anything really applicable. We didn't even really discuss self-defense scenarios or how to react in certain situations, the importance of hand placement or adjusting for targetting, except very sparingly. It was very form-centric, not applicable.
Anyway, I plan to continue my self-defense education in the same way I've done everything else in my life: on my own. I'm finding this a really good way to go about things. It may not be the fastest (considering the need to double-check everything I learn to make sure it's correct, constantly correcting bad habits, etc) but it allows me to learn what I want, to tailor it to suit my needs and expectations, and forces me to become very knowledgable in what I'm learning. I have my dad's old Kenpo techniqe binder, and access to a library of Kenpo instructional videos online, which I can compare with the binder and one another. I'm sure I will occasionally find instructors willing to teach me, and I will apply my own critical mind to question and test everything I do, of course. I've got other people, some old TSD friends some MMA guys on campus I can train with, and Klara and I are developing a comprehensive, primal appraoch to fitness and nutrition. It's all self-motivated, and to a large extent self-created. Input comes from blogs and extensive research, but largely, it's experimental. It's a journey.
Wish me luck.
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