So last Thursday I was alone in the library just sitting and waiting for my next class to start when suddenly I started hearing loud slapping noises followed up by, "YAAAAAAHHH"'s. As soon as I heard it I immediately thought, "It's gotta be Chabot's taekwondo team," so I stepped outside onto the library's balcony. It was actually a fairly hot and sunny day for the fall season. Right beneath the balcony, the taekwondo team was practicing roundhouse kicks on kicking paddles (aka tear drops). Right next to them was a bunch of tents and booths surrounded with flags. Turned out it was a club festival or multicultural festival of some sort, but each booth had a different club in it. There was a DJ too, but he was playing some crap music on his fake turntables. Well they weren't really fake, but it was the kind that have the built-in spinny things instead of having the real turntables with the special vinyls that programs like Serato come with.
Anyways, the taekwondo team was kicking in bare feet on the concrete. Not really the best place to do it on a hot day, but I guess it was for the sake of the festival. Advertising probably.. As I watched them kick, they all looked pretty... bad... No offense to them or anything. The only two people that looked good were the only two black belts there, which was a beautiful asian woman, and a lazy white man acting like he was cooler than everyone else. The rest of the lowered ranking belts... Not so good. But then again, I shouldn't be one to judge because I probably looked like they did when I was a lower ranking belt too. My only problem is how much I disliked taking class with the taekwondo team at Chabot. I signed up for it as a PE class, and it was the most boring three hours of my life. The way it ran was very similar to that of my previous school, Ernie Reyes West Coast World Martial Arts Association, but worse, simply because the instructors were so bad. All they did was talk, plus the way they taught was bad too. Their were a lot of reasons why I disliked West Coast for similar reasons, but plus more. It's just that.. whenever I compared them to my kung fu classes, they made kung fu seem so much better. I think really what it was, was that both West Coast and Chabot left a really bad impression of taekwondo on me. Because honestly, if there's something that enjoy doing in martial arts the most, it's kicking. I've always had a passion for kicking, and once West Coast started making their heavy transition to MMA, it was a real turn off for me.
When I think about it now, taekwondo can really be a beautiful martial art when done well. Something that taekwondo did for me was building a foundation. I have read stories of other people feeling the same way. When I first started kung fu, something that I had that other students lacked was obviously kicks, but in the younger students, I noticed that they lacked discipline. Taekwondo is a very disciplinary martial art. Well all of them are, but in taekwondo you're constantly yelling, "yes sir!" and doing what you're told. At kung fu, it's the complete opposite of that. They don't discipline the students at all. Another thing about taekwondo is that the kicks really add to your sparring techniques. A taekwondo practitioner who learns how to use their hands become deadly weapons. Taekwondo fighters have to ability to maintain proper distance between them and their opponents. I'm almost glad I took taekwondo first because it's making kung fu a lot more fun for me.
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