Haidong Gumdo: the beginning

My journey into the martial arts world was nothing spectacular or any point of enlightenment, mine started as a 13 year old overweight boy wanting to do a bit of exercise and do something cool; and what better way than to wave a sword around in a skirt?

I (left if you haven’t seen me before) also dragged my cousin (right) into it: who (for the record) also quit

Haidong Gumdo is a Korean martial art focused with sword fighting (”gumdo/Kumdo” and “Kendo” both mean “the way of the sword” except one’s the korean pronunciation and one’s Japanese). The basic breakdown of it is it’s very similar to its traditional Japanese counterpart (and I don’t mean the “I keep slapping your head” type), though what I gathered has a greater focus in wide arch slices for multiple opponents and some differences in the stances; but they still use the Japanese style swords and the forms have the same type of movements. I’ll just leave out the history of the art simply because there’s just a lack of legitimate evidence of its origins and development.

Haidong Gumdo is a very simplistic martial art (not saying this in a bad way), the techniques are very direct and allows for a lot of freedom in terms of attacking angle and defending area. With that said there also isn’t that much to really learn, and it’s mainly just developing the skills to use them and training. I often have people tell me that the stances (especially the short stance: basically your usual long stance but you tuck your back leg in so that the knee is directly below you and your front knee is in front of your hip..) will screw up your legs, but I reckon that does the art injustice: the stances can seem awkward, but if you have the calibration of your hip and trunk the movements are ergonomically fine. One point that I think should be emphasized is that these movements are designed to support the SWORD, so you wont have the same balance or dynamics of the body as your average combat type martial arts.

I never really had many problems with the art itself, I left mainly due to the whole McDojo phenomenon happening, i.e. the head instructor (who was actually very good) pretty much stopped teaching and the classes just became systematically the same everyday mainly comprising of workouts; the fees were at a ridiculous level (fuck I paid like $450 [something like that, it's a sum that people will slap me for anyway] for my blackbelt, and this didn’t include my sword..); and pretty much anyone who grades gains a level, and this happened every 1.5 months till you get to the grade just below 1st dan (I know some people that make it to BB in a year…), so we had have an overflow of posers and kiddy black belts, and a bunch of people that were teaching me that I would probably easily take down in a fight. Finally the most disappointing part of the training is that there’s no sparring (if you want to refer to the pictures in this post, they we pre-rehearsed fighting sequences), so I don’t even get the chance to prove my point… so all these factors simply just forced me to leave.

However I am definitely happy that I joined the club: it got me fitter (the training there is still the toughest I’ve experienced), gave me a better understanding of myself, and some of the skills and techniques I still use in my own training (and I actually still practice, just not as often as I should). Well, that’s my summary of my Haidong Gumdo experience that lasted for over 5 years (more on my old blog if you want to flick through some entries), some of it was frustrating but most of it was fun. For those that do Haidong Gumdo out there, I will once again state here that I am not meaning to insult or degrade the art, I have just simply moved on… to things that are more practical (trust me, you won’t get that many chances to swing a samurai sword around when you go out). I also further reemphasize it was some of the PEOPLE and clubs I had issues with (and taken into account how many people leave after black belt, I know I’m not alone…).

[Those people that I've complained about above, if you know who you are: go kill yourself, you're an insult to humanity and degrade all those that deserve the title of a martial artist. If you are as incompetent enough as to be incapable of suicide: leave me a message and I'll lend a hand. If you're not sure if I'm talking about you: leave me a message and I'll lend a hand...]

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Random picture of the day: homosexual prostitution market at depression

[taken in the University of Queensland refectory]