Patience

By Ethan Price, 2nd dan

Patience is defined as the ability to accept or tolerate delay without becoming upset. 

As a Black Belt in CTI, Patience is far more than a necessary skill; it is practicing Patience that has led to attaining a Black Belt in the first place.

Students in CTI do not move quickly up the ranks without being patient. At all ages and abilities, the CTI student will only move as fast as he or she is capable of learning. However, there are set schedules of ‘time in rank’ (via stripes and credits) that mean that even the best students will have to wait for an appropriate amount of time to test for the next rank. 

The patience to work diligently towards the next rank requires self-motivation and self-control. The CTI student must take time to work on his or her skills, and must allow time for growth. Even the best instructors have taken a lot of time to perfect the skills they teach their students. Every baby step is a step forward. It takes patience to see the long view of attaining each rank up the ladder, but patience in small things will inevitably lead to positive results.

An important example of this is exemplified by a study done on children, where participants were presented with a marshmallow on a plate. The children were told that if they waited to eat it until the researcher came back, they would receive a second marshmallow in addition to the first. Not many children waited, and of those that did, they showed, in a follow-up study, that they had better life outcomes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment). This study has had numerous follow up experiments since then, and has shown similar results.

As a Black Belt, patience is a perfected skill, though it is all the more necessary in every way. Black Belts do not learn new poomse every class; they do not learn a new One-Step or Self-Defense technique every week. They will learn, if their instructor sees that they are ready. Black Belts will learn one small chunk of a poomse and then it falls to them to practice over the weeks before they will learn more. Patience is as essential to the Black Belt learning process as wearing the belt itself. However, it is not the patience of a Black Belt that makes them able to learn this way; it is patience gained through every rank that is the reason that they earn that belt at all.

Why Patience is a Must

 By Elsie Mcdonald, Teen Red Belt

Everyone works and learns at their own rate, and for different people, that rate varies. If you are trying to pursue a goal you will also do that at your own pace, and that pace can change depending on how committed you are to your goal. 

At times you may want to give up, but the key to sticking with it and achieving what you want is patience. An example in taekwondo could be a situation where you start your training at the same time as someone else or are on the same level as them at one point, but they progress through belts faster and get to black belt before you. This may feel frustrating, but if you learn to have patience and you keep trying, you will get there one day as well. You will feel so much pride in your accomplishment knowing that you used your patience and did not let yourself give up, knowing how hard you worked to get there. If you learn to be patient you can acquire many more skills by learning to try your best, commit to something and stick with it. Things may not always work out in the way that you want them to, but if you can find the patience to believe in yourself and keep pushing then the outcome could be much brighter than expected. 

Patience pays off in a much similar way that hard work and practice do. In a sense, all three things are related, working towards a goal and practicing in a routine manner exercises patience, because you have to stay with it for the long run. If you do not have patience it may be very difficult for things to go your way, because if you expect to reach a demanding goal in a short unreasonable amount of time this can put serious stress on you. You need to have the patience to accept that it can take a while to accomplish tough things, but if you can teach yourself that the wait and the work is worth it and give yourself the time you need to achieve what you want, you will not find yourself under the stress that not having patience can cause you. 

It is also necessary to build discipline so that you can endure challenging obstacles that may be in your way without giving up and straying away from the goal you are working towards. You also may need patience in much smaller situations, such as activities that you have anticipation for, like waiting in line for a waterslide or reading a book. You need to have patience to finish these simple activities as well. If you practice being patient in normal activities then it will be much easier for you when working towards something difficult.

A Thousand Front Kicks

By Eric Evans, 1st dan

Recently a co-worker and I were discussing a project his son had.  In origami it is considered a rite of passage.  His son was tasked with folding 1000 paper cranes.  As an off hand comment, he stated that I should try it sometime.  So I have.  Around 100 cranes in I started to notice something.  I was getting faster with each crane I made.  I was able to modify the size or make the folds more efficiently.  I also noticed that the majority of the folds for the crane are used in other origami figures.  If any of the initial folds were not crisp, the overall quality of the final product was skewed.

In Moo Sul Kwan Taekwondo, this is similar to our front kicks.  It takes the perfect practice of over a thousand front kicks to become proficient.  The more we practice, the faster we are able to execute the kick. Each front kick can also be broken down into individual components.  Similar to individual folds.  If any of the moves are not crisp, the overall front kick will lack quality and finality.

A front kick must start from a good stance.
The eyes and upper body must be aligned correctly.
Weight is shifted to the front leg.
The knees must rub together as the back knee is raised to the chest.
The kicking foot is brought up towards the back as the knee is raised.
The focus hand is used to provide a target for the kicking foot.
As the Kicking foot is extended, the knee continues to raise.
The ball of the foot is extended as the foot reaches the target.
The leg is re-chambered. This allows for another kick.
Then the leg is placed intentionally back into the starting stance.

These key components of a front kick carry over into the roundhouse.  In a roundhouse kick, stance, eyes, balance, knee position, foot position and re-chambering are all important.  The roundhouse adds complexity by adding a pivot and opening the hips rather than rubbing the knees like the front kick.

Front Kick at the Falls at Camp MSK

The building blocks do not stop there.  The components of a front kick and round house are used in a side kick.  Each of the three basic kicks are then used as the foundation of advance kicks.  This is why it is so important to focus on the basics.  If I attempted to fold the most difficult origami in sculpture, I would most likely fail if I had not practiced the basics over and over.  The same is true for advanced kicks. Thousands of repetitions must be put in place using dedicated effort before a student will be successful at more advanced kicks.

The Art of Patience

By Sally Morgan, 1st dan

    There are many different reasons to get involved in the Colorado Taekwondo Institute.  Some join for the physical fitness, others join to learn self-defense skills, while families may join as a way to spend time together in an activity that is healthy and lots of fun.
    I joined the CTI for a little of all of these reasons.  My daughter joined first, and when asked if I would like to try it out, I thought, “Why not?”  I could share in something my daughter seemed to enjoy, work on my own health and physical fitness, as well as my own self-defense skills.
    And now, three and a half years later, I am in better shape than I have ever been in, and my daughter and I have gotten much closer.
    I joined the Westminster CTI Campus with these expectations, but never anticipated how much more I would learn and how much more Moo Sul Kwan Taekwondo had to offer.
    If you would ask my parents to describe me growing up, the word patient would have never entered into their description.  They would have also called me a perfectionist.  I wanted to get everything right the first time.  Needless to say this is not a good mindset to have in Taekwondo, much less in life.  Human beings are not perfect, and to expect perfection will only lead to disappointment.  Now don’t misunderstand, striving for perfection and expecting it are two different things.  Always strive to be perfect.  You may not achieve perfection, but you will succeed at being the best you can be.  The trick is to never give up.  And never giving up requires a mindset of dedication, perseverance, and above all patience.
    When thinking about Moo Sul Kwan Taekwondo you would never think patience would be a condition for success.  But patience is probably the most important skill you will need to develop your art.
    For instance, in poomse, it takes at least five hundred times in performing a poomse before the techniques and skills are getting good.
    When I was learning some of my poomses, I was very impatient.  I could not understand why it took so long to get new moves or why I would only learn a couple of moves at a time.  It’s only now that I have trained for some years that I’ve realized there is much more to knowing a poomse then just performing the moves.  Among countless things, you must focus on eyes, balance, stances, flow of movement, timing and so on.  It was then I realized that performing a poomse is truly an art form.
    Sometimes things don’t happen the way you expect or want them to.  And when this happens, you have two choices.  You can become frustrated and angry and keep asking yourself “Why me?” Or you can be like water and go with the flow.  This analogy sounds silly, but it works.  When water comes to an obstacle, such as a large rock, it doesn’t try to break or push through it, it simply finds a way to flow through or around it.  It may take more time, but it eventually reaches its destiny.  Patience.