An Exploration of Tang Soo Do's Eight Key Concepts: Chung Shin Tong Il
SBN Mary Cayte Reiland
An Exploration of Tang Soo Do's that concentration isn’t as obvious Eight Key Concepts: Chung Shin a concept as courage or endurance (coming next month). I had to really Tong Il delve into my past experiences to better define concentration and how SBN Mary C Reiland, USA it comes into training, what truly Tang Soo readers, happy February! makes it “key”. This month, we continue with the discussion of the second of the Tang When I was a newbie, my Soo Do Eight Key Concepts. Up concentration was horrendous. today is Chung Shin Tong Il (IL), also During class, the slightest noise made known as concentration. According me flinch, or shift my focus from to the dictionary, concentration is what I was doing. Instead of focusing “the action or power of focusing one's on my invisible enemy, I would look at my instructor, waiting for the next attention or mental effort”. instruction. While doing a form, I When I think of concentration (or would look everywhere, instead of focus), the first thing that comes focusing on my line of sight. Once to mind is the Karate Kid remake this was made apparent to me, I with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. worked hard to fix it, but it was very They’re training after their trip up the difficult and took a long time. mountain to drink from the dragon well, and Jaden says he already One of the coolest things that helped has great focus. Jackie then nearly to improve my concentration and topples Jaden off the dock into the focus was this meditation drill. We water, saying “Your focus needs more would turn off the lights in the focus.” Not only is this funny, but it classroom, light a single candle, and proves a point about training over sit around in a circle focusing on the time and concentration. Once they candle. We weren’t even allowed to learn a few things, newbies (white and blink, such was our concentration. yellow belts) think they can handle Obviously, we couldn’t do this for anything, but that’s not always the very long, but it was a cool way to case. Concentration and focus come focus our attention. over time, the more you practice, the Last month, in my article about better your concentration is. courage, I had a discussion about When I was brainstorming and a senior master who taught me to researching this article, it came to me do the dragon sweep kick, which
ultimately helped me to conquer my fear of board breaking. That same senior master was a gigantic proponent of concentration and focus. We used to have these drills where we would partner up and practice close-in fighting. Mostly, what I want to discuss about this is how much concentration and focus it takes to fight within arms length of someone else and not actually make contact, or block in time before getting hit. When most people think of fighting, the concepts that come to mind are control of power (#6) and speed control (#8), but it really does take great concentration to fight effectively. Ultimately, we all need good concentration to be good martial artists. Keep fighting, keep practicing, keep moving forward. Take care everyone, and as always, Tang Soo!
SBN Mary Cayte Reiland, USA
30
