Should You Train Both Sides Equally?

"1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10!  Switch feet!  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10!"

    - Every instructor ever

The most common way to train basics is to practice a technique for some number of reps on one side, then switch feet and do the same number of reps on the other side.  But there are a couple other schools of thought out there.  And which one is best depends largely on what your goals are.

Approach #1:  Train Your Side

One school of thought is that you should prioritize the side that you are most likely to use.  You see this a lot in sports.  If you're an elite sparring competitor, you've probably come across this idea quite a bit.  Almost everyone has a "strong side," which is especially easy to see in, say, boxing.  Fighters are known for being orthodox or southpaw.  If you're not likely to switch your stance, you'll get more benefit for your training time if you practice from the stance that you're going to use.  

And while that is a great idea for winning, it's not such a great idea for overall health.  When you train asymmetrically, you condition your body asymmetrically, which can lead to muscle imbalance, posture problems and injuries.  This phenomenon is especially obvious in fencing, which is an extremely asymmetrical sport.  Fencers typically hold a weapon in one hand without ever switching.  They also spend a lot of time in what is basically a back stance.  If you think about where you're sore after some intense stance work, you can imagine why elite fencers tend to have larger calf muscles on one side.  But often they'll also have more developed muscles on their entire back leg and on their weapon arm, and even on one side of the torso.  Muscle imbalance, besides looking kind of freaky, can give you some pretty significant joint pain and even interfere with your movement.

Which is why a lot of martial artists, including myself, prefer...

Approach #2:  Train Both Sides

If your conditioning is symmetrical, your body will develop symmetrically.  (This is kind of a lie.  There are other things that can cause muscle imbalance, and in fact most people have some minor asymmetry, but for the most part this is pretty safe to say.)  

So if you throw the same number of punches on both sides, you'll stress the muscles on both sides of your body equally and strengthen them equally.  Same deal for kicks and throws and stance work and anything else we do.  

But there's one downside to this, which is why some people prefer...

Approach #3:  Train Your Weak Side

Very few people are truly ambidextrous.  You probably have one side that's more coordinated than the other.  If that bothers you, the natural solution is to give the other side a little more practice.

And there are some good reasons to do that!  But here I would caution people to be careful and think about what exactly you NEED your weak side to do.  If it's just a dislike of the idea that one side is more skilled than the other, maybe consider that it's not that big a deal.  No matter how much you train, you're unlikely to ever have exactly equal skill on both sides of your body.  And if you try, you could end up training your weak side disproportionately enough that you develop some of those muscle imbalance problems.

One way to get around this is to work your technique in an easy, relaxed way.  You can fix very many technical details without physically working all that hard.  And since you're not pushing the limits of your strength/speed/flexibility/etc., you're not forcing your muscles to adapt.  Don't get me wrong, you need to stress those muscles some.  But doing some very light finesse work and then blasting a target 10 times on each side will cause a lot less muscle imbalance than blasting a target 500 times on one side and 10 times on the other.

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Good luck with whichever approach is right for you!

Light Contact Means Light Contact

This week I'm stepping away from my usual fare of talking about travel, teaching, and learning, to touch on the topic of levels of contact.

As a color belt, I attended a school that taught both light contact and full contact sparring. The rule sets were completely separate, and while most people preferred to specialize, I just loved sparring and didn't much care what the rules were, as long as I had someone willing to spar me.  I had trouble with that at one point when one of my seniors got kicked in the face by a wild horse and told everyone that the resulting injury was from sparring me.  Which is a lot funnier now than it was then.

I guess that's a compliment?  Thanks to jdj150 for making the image
available for reuse.

I think there's a silent perception among a lot of martial artists that if you ask someone to lighten up their level of contact against you, you'll be seen as a wimp.  People may very well think that about me, but I'm not too proud to say they can think what they want.  I'm an unapologetic stickler for keeping contact light when those are the agreed upon rules. Hitting hard has a time and a place.  Save it for full contact matches.

Foot-induced nap time is also fun.

For me this attitude had its roots in competition.  I loved to compete, but the adult female color belt divisions were not deep.  I'd be envious of the men's divisions that had sizable brackets, when I had to count myself lucky if I got two fights for my entry fee.  My instructor was adamant that I couldn't fight in the men's division, even though sometimes that meant I got sent home with a trophy just for being the only person in my division to show up to the tournament.  I desperately wanted there to be more women competing in sparring.  When I did have opponents, sometimes I had a significant size or experience advantage.  I started to take pride in my very light, accurate taps that were enough to score the point but carried no risk of driving one of my few female opponents from competition.

I remember one tournament in particular.  I was a head taller and two ranks up on my opponent, who had never been to a tournament before.  She was scared to death of me, and said so.  I assured her that she would not get hurt in a light contact match.  I defeated her soundly while keeping my word--light taps only.  I was happy to see her again at another tournament a few months later.  Sure, I could have hit a lot harder and gotten away with it, but if I made it such an unpleasant experience for her, would I have seen her again?  Probably not.  There'd be one less person on the competition circuit and maybe even one less martial arts enthusiast.  Regardless of the score, I wouldn't call that a win.

Sometimes you're on the side that has nothing to prove.

Beyond the desire to make sure I never drove a competitor away from competition, there was a very practical reason for the very light contact.  In competition, I'm not trying to defend myself in a life-and-death situation.  I'm trying to score a point.  Using the minimum level of contact necessary to score that point means that I'll never get penalized for excessive contact.  Sure, I might get away with hitting harder.  I might even get away with hitting a lot harder.  But why bother leaving it up to the judges' discretion?  Those light taps were an efficient way to win.

But the biggest reason I became such a stickler for light contact came about a year later. I was again at a tournament, this time fighting a friend from the same school as myself.  The match was stopped for the tournament organizer to make some announcements, and I was completely turned away from my friend.  When I looked back, she was curled up in a ball on the floor and unresponsive.  That was the end of that match.

It was days later when I finally learned what had happened.  During the match, I kicked her in the head with my regular very light tap.  It would not have affected a healthy person in the slightest, but unbeknownst to her or anyone else, she had cancer.  The doctors told her that if she had been kicked any harder, it probably would have killed her.

As you might imagine, I felt awful that I had hospitalized my friend.  She told me not to carry any guilt.  She said that if not for that head kick, the cancer might have continued silently killing her for a long time before any medical tests were done.  As it was, they caught the cancer late in Stage 1.  If it had progressed to Stage 2 before they caught it, her chances of survival would have been much lower.

She's alive and well today.

Taekyun as a Combat Sport

Taekyun has been practiced as a sport in Korea since at least the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), when its popularity soared and taekyun matches were first depicted in books. Taekyun is still practiced as a sport to this day, with the most prestigious event being the Taekyun Battle.

Teams of taekyun players gather from all over Korea to compete in the championship, which begins in May and ends in October every year.  I was lucky enough to be in Korea for the finals.

Taekyun Battle 2015 officials, demonstrators, and teams competing for 1st through 4th place.

How The Game is Played

Matches are full contact.  The only protective equipment is a mouth guard and a groin cup, although taekyun shoes have a minimal layer of padding built into the top of them. Beyond that, the players are completely unprotected.

There is no scoring in a taekyun match.  There are two ways to win--either by a successful kick to the face or by throwing the opponent on the ground.  Even though low kicks aren't tracked by the judges, they are still a major part of the game since they are used to weaken the opponent.

Low kicks are used to weaken the opponent.

A kick to the face will end the match.

A good throw will end the match.

At the Taekyun Battle, there are five players to a team.  Two players face off and have five minutes to win by head kick or throw.  At the end of the five minutes, if neither has achieved a victory condition, both players are eliminated.  If one does manage to decisively end the match, only the opponent is disqualified.  The winner stays to fight the next opponent from the other team.  In fact it's possible for one player to defeat an entire team single-handedly.

The game ends when one team's players have all been eliminated.

Taekyun Battle 2015 Finals

The opening ceremony for the finals included speeches by dignitaries and an explanation of the rules.  There were also demonstrations highlighting the aspects of taekyun that aren't immediately apparent from watching a taekyun competition.  One performance showed taekyun as a basics demonstration to live music and one showed taekyun as a practical martial art--both of which were fascinating, but will have to wait for another blog post.

The final match of 2015 took place between Sungju Taekyun Academy and a team of graduate students from Sungkyunkwan University.  Sungju, wearing muted red and green, had to travel about four hours to compete in Seoul.  Sungkyunkwan, wearing bright green, were much closer since their school is in Seoul.  These two teams had to eliminate ten others on their way to face each other in the finals. 

Sportsmanship:  Before the final match, Sungju surprises their opponents with fruit gift boxes.

Here is part of one of the match-ups, to give you an idea of how the game is played.  The nice folks at Kyulyun Taekyun provided this video and uploaded a longer version that shows all of the matches.

The judges confer about whether a high kick was blocked or not.

Kick blocked!  The match continues.

It ended up being a very close contest.  Two matches ended by kicks, two by throws, and two more ended with the clock eliminating both players.  Both teams were down to a single remaining fighter, and it all came down to the match up between Park Hyeonsu of Sungkyunkwan and Son Byungjun of Sungju.  Since it's determined by elimination instead of score, matches can be cruelly short.  Here is the final match-up in its entirety.

Taekyun Battle is finished until 2016.  Congratulations to the top four teams!