Sibling Rivalry

So I was thinking about Judo, and it brought up some of my favorite memories from being a Taekwondo instructor, and I thought I'd share.

At my old do-jang, we had both Taekwondo and Hapkido (Korean grappling). And for some reason unknown to me, their was a "friendly" rivalry between the Hapkido instructors and the Taekwondo instructors. I attribute it mostly to the old grappling vs. striking rivalry, but it went deeper than that. Pranks were pulled, insults called out across the do-jang, and classes interrupted purposefully just to annoy one another. One of the the Hapkido instructors absolutely favorite things to do was to interrupt the Taekwondo class going on right before Hapkido started, and throw whichever TKD instructor happened to be on duty around in front of all of the students. Then they'd give a short little speech about how much cooler Hapkido was, and leave to their side of the mat.

Well, yesterday as I was being thrown across the room, the instructor expressed his surprise that I'd picked up the falls so quickly; because most beginners can do it on the floor, but not after being thrown. He said it'd take like 1-2 years before it was instinct, but I was doing extremely well! And I was all like, thanks! And then was like....actually, I did spend 2 years getting thrown on my @$$. Before I even allowed the Hapkido instructors to touch me, I made darn sure I knew how to take a fall. After all, their object was humiliation, not actual hurt.

Not that this makes me a Judo prodigy or anything, I just thought it was funny that getting thrown around all those years is actually helping me out now.

Now, some of you may ask, did they Taekwondo instructors ever retaliate in turn? Go over to their classes and beat them up? Well, no. Not really.

There's a big difference between getting thrown on the ground a few times, and taking a flying fist or foot to the face. TKD is not just going to leave you sore in the morning, it will leave you bruised and broken.

HOWEVER, we did take great pleasure in very rarely dressing up one of the Hapkido instructors up in full pads and using them our kicking pad for a few minutes. I think I yelled out "Where's you flippy magic now?????" right before delivering a spinning hook kick (it was pulled) to the head.

I miss those guys.