Since I suspended my formal training of Hapkido for the time being, I’ve taken up Taekkyeon again. I started with Taekkyeon on Monday and will be going to the dojang twice a week – Monday and Wednesday. The Taekkyeon gym is situated in Insadong, which is a tourist friendly street in Seoul, focused on mostly traditional Korean memorabilia, traditional teashops, and it seems also traditional martial arts.
I did Taekkyeon before, but stopped going for two reasons. The times clashed with my day job and my fellow practitioners were all old ladies. I don’t have anything against the elderly, it is just that after about two months of training my learning curve reached a plateau and I realized that it was not going to improve that much. One major reason being that the dojang caters for health enthusiasts, not for combat practitioners. If I wanted to learn about Taekkyeon’s martial applications I had to go to another school. Well at the time my program was already too full, so I just quit Taekkyeon for the time being. In the meantime, an opening in my program presented itself so I found a new Taekkyeon gym with the help of my Taekwon-Do instructor – it is the main Taekkyeon school in Seoul. Unfortunately, like with my Taekwon-Do school, it takes me more than an hour to commute from my home to the gym.
I’ve had two classes so far and have practically just practiced the basic stepping that is iconic of Taekkyeon. It is much more difficult than it looks, and it seems that my previous Taekkyeon exposure has taught me some wrong habits, which is somewhat hard to break. The instructor says that it takes about eight months to master the basic stepping. I understand the importance of building a sound foundation and basic training; however, I do hope that I’ll get the stepping right in less time.
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