Halloween Party 2008

We had our annual Halloween Party on October 25, 2008. It was a blast! The leadership did a great job putting together the festivities. From Pumpkin carving and painting, to our annual dodge ball tournament, a fantastic costume contest, pinatas, and a grand potluck, it was a fantastic effort on everyone's part. The reason I am posting about it now; we have pictures from the party! Master Sorenson's camera was not working at the time, so thanks to Melanie for the great photos! If you want, send me photos of an event, and I will get them posted (probably on Tuesdays or Thursdays)!
Thanks to everyone who came to make this a fantastic outing!

Thankful for Taekwondo

I am grateful for the people in my class last Tuesday night who did not snicker at my super lame back kick. I'm still learning, still learning.

I am also grateful that I FINALLY LEARNED MY FORM for this rank. Man. I am grateful to my instructors for patiently helping me learn the darn thing.

I am grateful for the fact that I can do plank for longer than I could a year ago. Same with buddha. I am also grateful that I have been doing this for long enough now that I can look back and see that I have progressed, that I have grown past what I thought I could do.

I am grateful for the expertise and kindness of those who run our great studio. We are blessed to have such dedicated instructors.

Also, I am grateful that if some creep grabs my arm, I know six different ways of escaping.

I could go on, but I'll stop here, and ask this: what makes you grateful for taekwondo?

-Emily M.

Congratulations, New Black Belts!

If you stop by the studio this week, take a minute to look at the black belt table. Beyond Sports Taekwondo is honoring our newest black belts: James Holley, Andrew Bailey, Mercedes Riggs, Rachel Andres, Tae-Min Yoo, and Haley Pennock. I looked through their scrapbooks today, and I'm impressed. All of them have achieved a goal that commands respect: they are younger than I am, and still I look up to them (and can I say, I love that about taekwondo: seniority is not based on age, but on expertise).

When I first started taking my son here, I looked at the black belts as people who had achieved something nigh-impossible. Now, having taken classes for over a year, I realize that it's not impossible. I remember that James was a blue belt when I first started; after Belt Jump Camp, I'll be a blue belt too. Achieving black belt is something I'm starting to realize I could maybe do, too.

But I think for me, it will be like college was: I thought that when I graduated from college, I would really know something. Turns out that the most important thing I learned was how to learn. I suspect that if and when I become a black belt, the most important thing it will bring me is the confidence that not only have I learned the tae kwon do curriculum to that point, but that me and my body are capable of learning new things for the rest of my life.

So, congratulations to our new black belts! I am always grateful for your patience as you teach me and the other colored belts new things. All of us look up to you--we know you've worked hard to get to where you are.

And this is a shout out to any black belt at our studio: comment and tell us your philosophy of being a black belt. What has achieving that goal meant for you?

Belt Jump Camp

Top Five Reasons why I'm asking for Belt Jump Camp for Christmas:

1-It's a sweet deal, essentially three months' worth of instruction for the price of one.

2-Three hours a day of taekwondo instruction is a great way to jump start my traditional New Years diet.

3-Speaking of three hours a day, I like the idea of having enough time to really develop my technique. It always seems like we end class and there's so much more to do. Three hours a day should cure that.

4-If enough people sign up, it's going to be help from 7 to 10 in the morning (a possible session later on as well), which means I can work out in the morning and still play with my kids in the day.

5-I could actually be a blue belt by January! Whoda thunk?

--Emily M.

Scary Loud Kiyaps

There is something very satisfying about drenching yourself in sweat while kicking on a giant blue bag. And also yelling, really really loud. It's a great stress reliever.

You would think that my feeble little kicks and yelps would not be so satisfying as that. Okay, they don't feel weak to me; I'm giving it all I've got. Usually. But watch Master Sorenson or our amazing instructor Kat have a go at a kicking bag. They boing back and forth, thudding and turning with every kick. So much power.

Still, in spite of my comparatively weak-legged kicks, I enjoy kicking. I like practicing one kick long enough to feel that I've really made some improvement on it. I also like (can I confess this here, to the internet and all the world) being able to do harmless violence. Very liberating. Occasionally I even produce a scary-loud kiyap.

--Emily M.

Sweet Mystery of Life

So, what’s the deal with high fructose corn syrup? After reading this column by Orson Scott Card, who refuses to buy products that contain HFCS, I decided to read some labels at the grocery store. To my great disgruntlement, my kids’ favorite brand of yogurt is laden with said corn syrup. So is my favorite brand of raisin bran.

I have warm fuzzy feelings toward raisin bran. It’s what made my last major diet succeed (forty pounds lost after baby #2): a nice filling bowl of raisin bran every morning. It’s fast, it’s filling, it’s fiber. Apparently it is fructose as well. I thought I was eating healthy, but noooo. Same with the yogurt. I feel grumpy and disillusioned. Why can’t yogurt and raisin bran be health foods, since they are clearly marketed as such? Where else is that HFCS lurking? Do I really have to read every stinkin’ label to find out where the corn syrup lurks, waiting to sabotage my diet?

Apparently so. In the mean time, I am going to have cracked wheat for breakfast tomorrow. Cracked wheat: the new (old) raisin bran, complete without high fructose corn syrup!

--Emily M.

New Schedule

Hello again everyone!

I know I haven't posted in such a long time; you would be surprised how much work is involved on the administrative side of a Martial Arts school. Although tough, I am so excited to help serve our students and their families in any way I can.

Here is the new schedule, including both the Blue and Black studios. We have at least 4 options to attend classes for everyone except the adult male. With future growth, we have the space and capacity to add to our schedule.

I wanted to take the time to thank everyone who is involved with our studio. From the parents to the students, we could not do this without you guys. I also want to give a special thanks to Emily, who shares such a personal part of her life when she contributes to this blog. I hope everyone feels inspired by her postings.

Thanks Everyone!

-Beyond Sports-

Defend Yourself!

My LDS mission companion and I walked the deserted streets of Cuenca, Ecuador one Sunday afternoon. We were whining about our rotten day, and I said "What else could go wrong?"

Not thirty seconds later, I felt an arm wrap around my neck. My first thought showed my naivete: "Who in Cuenca knows me well enough to hug me from behind?"

Then a hand started grabbing for my pocket. "Money, money," he said, in heavily accented English. His buddy was searching my companion as well.

I was paralyzed. She was not--she yelled "HELP! HELP" People emerged from their homes, and our attackers fled. And we were shaken.

I'm still shaken, thinking about it. That incident is one reason I take tae kwon do. I'll be honest with you: right now I can only defend myself from an attacker who grabs my arm just the right way. If someone came at me from behind, like the mugger on my mission, I would not know exactly how to get rid of them.

But I am learning. And I am learning in the safe environment of the Womens' Self-defense class, where I can practice through the awkward state until my blocks and punches feel more natural. I have learned how to twist and lock an attacker's hand, how to escape an attacker's grip, how to do a knife hand strike to an attacker's groin. After a year of this class, I feel much more confident. I feel like I have the right and the responsibility to defend myself.

Even here in Utah, where I think I'm safe, there are creepy weird people to watch out for. I hope I never have to use the things I've learned. But I am going to keep learning them anyway. It makes me feel strong to know that I am gaining the tools to handle attackers well.

Next time (not that I wish for a next time), I'll be the one yelling.

--Emily M.

Quinoa (KEEN-wah)

So last week I made quinoa for the first time. I hear tell, from a friend whose husband studies the wonders of quinoa, that it's a near-perfect healthy food. Wikipedia agrees:
Quinoa is

"highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12%–18%), making it a healthy choice for vegetarians and vegans. Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source.[5] It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten free and considered easy to digest."

And another quinoa nutrition link, a bit more official than Wikipedia, from Nutritiondata.com.

Yay for nutrition! But, um, the two really great things about it, that make this nutritious food a viable addition to my family meals, are:

1-it doesn't taste yucky. It's pretty good, in fact. This means that there is hope that one day my kids may eat it, although they rejected this first try. Of course.

and

2-It cooks up FAST! Instead of waiting a full hour for my rice to be done, I can cook up some uber-healthy quinoa in fifteen minutes!

Apparently you can buy quinoa flakes, quinoa flour, eat it as breakfast food, serve it in all manner of ways. Is it cheap? Um, no. $3.59 for twelve ounces. So not cheap, compared to rice. Or whole wheat flour. Sigh. But you always pay a bit more for fast food. And it's the healthiest convenience food I've ever heard of.

Saffron Risotto

Serves 4
Ingredients
28 oz chicken stock (can substitute with vegan, organic or low sodium stock)
1 tbsp olive, coconut or organic sunflower oil
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 cup organic brown rice
1 cup white cooking wine
Large pinch of saffron
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus shavings for garnish (optional)

Preparation
Bring stock to a low simmer in a medium pot. Heat oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat for 1 minute. Cook onion until translucent, about 3 minutes. Add rice and a pinch of salt. Sauté until rice is translucent, 1 to 2 minutes. Add wine and saffron; bring to a simmer, stirring, until rice has absorbed most of wine. Add 2 ladles of stock to rice; simmer, stirring, until rice has absorbed most of stock. Continue adding stock, allowing rice to absorb it before adding the next ladleful. Cook until rice is al dente and mixture is a little loose. Stir in butter. Turn off heat. Stir in grated cheese. Cover and let sit 2 minutes. Divide among 4 bowls. Garnish each with cheese shavings, if desired.

Can add chicken and pine nuts, but it will change the nutritional statistics.


Nutritional stats
298 calories per serving
8.3 g fat (2.8 g saturated)
39.2 g carbs
0.7 g fiber
5.1 g protein
(w/o chicken or pine nuts added)

Six Dollar Special

Registration for tae kwon do classes is a mere $6 tomorrow, for our anniversary and grand re-opening. That is a steal of a deal. I know from speaking with Master Sorenson that she would love love love to be able to just offer tae kwon do classes for free, so that anyone who wants to could come and work out. I love her sentiment, but I think it would be a bad idea. She would run out of money and have to close the studio, and the rest of us would be stuck working out in front of our television sets. Billy Blanks Tae Bo anyone?

Okay, not necessarily the rest of us. Other people are not like me, with my little exercise video collection I buy, use a few times, and then get tired of. Not everyone in the womens class is a recovering non-athlete. In fact, most of us aren't. We've got a former P.E. teacher, a marathon runner, and a dancer (on pregnancy leave), among others. I was talking with our marathoner the other day. She just completed the Saint George Marathon, a feat which makes me sore just thinking about it. "You're a marathon runner," I said. "Is tae kwon do a good workout for you too?"

"Oh yeah," she said. "It's different muscles, and it's cross training. It's fun."

Which left me thinking about how versatile this sport really is. It's possible for someone like me, who struggles with weight, and with coordination, and fitness, to work out alongside a marathon runner, and both of us are learning, growing, and enjoying ourselves.

So, come to the anniversary party tomorrow afternoon, from 2 to 4. And take advantage of the special: you can't even buy an exercise DVD for six bucks.

If you come to the women's class, you'll fit right in, whether you run marathons or huff and puff walking the kids to school (that would be me). Either way, you will be welcome.

A Modest Proposal for Tae Kwon Do Form Creation

A couple of weeks ago I attended the evening class on a form-practicing night. I like forms, even though I have a hard time wrapping my head around them. I get all the tae guks mixed together, and before every testing I have to review and sort them out again. But I do like the way forms give me a good workout--I practice forms for fifteen minutes, really focusing, and I'm sweating.

But mostly, folks, when they're done right, forms just look cool. At the evening class I attended each belt rank performed their forms, from white belt to black. The black belts did... um, a form with a Korean name that I don't remember. I told you, they all run together to me, especially the ones I don't know yet. But I'm starting to understand things well enough to pick apart what they're doing a little--I identify a block here, a kick there. I watched the black belt form performed twice. Just amazing.

What's missing from these forms for me, though, is the materialization of the Mythical Form Opponents: we're supposed to be blocking and kicking these Imaginary Bad Guys. I want to see the form performed with all the Bad Guys doing their thing, and then the form performer kicking the heck out of the Bad Guys. The Mythical Form Bad Guys, though, are apparently not bright enough to join together and gang up on the defender, by all coming from the same direction at once.

Is there someone in charge of new form creation? (I am so new to tae kwon do, there could be and I've just never heard of it). I think someone should invent a form where the Mythical Form Opponent is a gang of eight or nine thugs all coming at you from the same direction. Smart thugs. That could be more useful. Or maybe a form where you beat up the first guy, and then yell "The rest of you bad guys hiding in all the other directions? Y'all go home now, cause I'm gonna turn around and do the same thing to you I just did to this guy." And then you can give a courtesy Kiyup and bow, and be done.

Or not. Because let's face it, that would look lame. And the best thing about learning forms? Being able to perform something that looks sharp, precise, and just plain cool.

Testing

Tomorrow morning I will line up with a bunch of white-clad kids half my size and demonstrate what I've been practicing in tae kwon do for the last three months:

• Kicks (Doubles. Very tricky for me. My legs flail and I feel like an idiot. But I feel like an idiot with every new kick I do, and I think it's good for me. More on that later.)
• Kicking combination (Doubles, Ax Kick, Runner. DAR. I amuse myself by calling it the Daughters of the American Revolution Kicking Combination, the only other DAR acronym I've heard of. It's hard for me to remember which kicking combos go with which belt, so any little mnemonic tricks help).
• Form: (Tae Guk Sam Jong. One I should have practiced more. It's not as crisp as my last one. Which, um, I don't remember too well. To do tomorrow before testing: review old form!)
• Self-defense (Two types: traditional and grab. Traditional I still feel silly with. But the grab is fun! I like learning the joint manipulation so I can take someone down. Sadly, if anyone actually attacked me, I think I might need to ask them to grab my arm in just the right way so I could use my techniques. Working towards real-life applicability (may I never have to use it!).
  
• Technique (Knife hand strike, back stance, grab, front stance. I think it's the hardest technique so far.)
  
• Board breaking. (We practiced this with plastic ones, and I surprised myself by actually breaking one. I am still nervous about the real boards though.)
• Terminology. (So we have a Korean woman in our class, and I really want to get her to pronounce all our words for us. Because I'm pretty sure my Korean would be unrecognizable in Korea. it makes me feel all authentic to learn them, though.)
  

One thing I find interesting about tae kwon do, and the testing process, is the pattern of humility and achievement. With each new belt, I learn new techniques and kicks and forms, and it's humbling, sometimes even humiliating. I swear no one on the planet has ever had more goofy looking doubles kicks than me. But by the time three months have passed, I've become more confident, enough that I can stand up with all those little kids and demonstrate ... skill growth, if not skill mastery.

No one gives gold stars to grownups. I don't get special treatment for clean toilets or folded laundry. But tae kwon do makes me feel like a kid again, in hard but good ways: I'm subjected, yes, to the humbling experience of learning new things outside my comfort zone, but I'm also rewarded with tangible acknowledgment that I've grown. Gold star? Not anymore. But next week I will get my green belt.

Banana Squash for Breakfast

Master Taralynn Sorenson is all about general healthiness, not just exercise. One goal of this blog is promoting healthy cooking options. I struggle with this, to be honest with you. My main goal as a family chef is making sure hungry people eat something that didn't cost too much or take me too long to fix. Nutrition is a nice bonus. So I'm always tickled when I find something that is fast, cheap, and nutritious to boot.

This recipe, from Cooks.com, is what I ate Tuesday and Wednesday for breakfast. It's sweet and orangey, which makes me forget that I'm eating a vegetable in the morning. I am not completely sold on the vegetables for breakfast idea, but this is one I think I'll try again sometime:

Honey Glazed Banana Squash
2 lb. banana squash
1/4 c. honey
1/4 c. butter
1 tbsp. orange rind
Salt to taste
Wash and cut pieces of squash into serving size, removing all seeds and unwanted members. Place on cooking sheet, rind side down. Bake at 375 degrees until tender, about 25 minutes.Melt butter in saucepan over low heat. Add honey, salt and grated orange rind. Pour on squash pieces and bake 10 minutes, or more to glaze. Tip: Hubbard squash will work as well.

It was tasty! It passed three of my four cooking goals:

1-Is it easy to make? I'm all about easiness in cooking. This could hardly be easier--the hardest things are grating orange rind and not scraping your fingernails, and having to smell the stinky inside-squash smell when you clean it out. But overall, pretty easy.

2-Is it cheap? Practically free, since my neighbor with a huge garden (he is my buddy. Wonderful man.) gave it to us. Oranges were the main expense; everything else I had on hand.

3-Is it nutritious? Heck yes! Love that squash! Okay, the honey and the butter, not so much. Especially the butter. But I'm the kind of girl who thinks I ought to get a few perks if I'm eating squash.

And, number four, the Holy Grail of cooking: will my kids eat it? No way.

But all my neighbors did at the potluck. And they asked for the recipe. --Emily M.

What on earth am I doing here?

That's what I think sometimes when I come to tae kwon do. I feel out of my element. This may not be a bad thing, given that my current element is a messy house, complete with sticky kitchen floor and random toys in the bathroom. But really, the gym? it has never been my friend. This goes back to junior high p.e., and my memories of maroon and gold polyester shorts and a loud, intense, strict teacher. I itch when I think about those shorts. Bleh.

The fact of the matter is that I have never in my life been athletic, in the sense that I have Pursued a Sport. I have exercised, yes, but biking away in front of the television while David Archuleta croons on American Idol is a very different thing from actually attempting to coordinate my body.

So, what makes tae kwon do different? Why am I overcoming years of anti-athlete conditioning to sweat and kick and yell?

I don't know, exactly. Part of it is that the women's class feels safe to me. People are nice. It's only women. No one so far has mentioned my girth. And part of it is the amazing instructors. I have been attempting to learn the doubles kick ("attempt" is the key word). And the other day I made a kind of breakthrough, and I finally got a feel for it. I rotated and kicked and it seemed to flow. Taralynn was exuberant on my behalf. She was thrilled for me, delighted that my body seemed to catch on to what she'd been telling me.

It felt good. Beats junior high P.E. any day. Plus the uniforms don't itch.

--Emily M.