Thanks. He's actually not a black belt yet - recommended black belt, in his probationary period before he tests, sometime this summer. And - he's still in high school!

Glad you like it!

That's why we don't have our students wear chest protectors - they make it ok to not fight cleanly and with control. There's no fear of getting hit. The first school my family belonged to, 20 years ago, all equipment was banned - even mouthpieces. We fought contact-style in class 2-3 times a week, with no protection. LOTS of injuries, and I do mean LOTS! But it taught you to block and cover, and not get hit. So we continued that (largely) in our school, but with a few controls. Our students spar without gear in class all the time, they only put gear on to practice for tournaments. And we only use chest protectors for target practice, to let people see what it feels like to hit someone hard and to get hit hard - 40 or 50 times in a night.

Actually - we are an adult school, and Chung Do Kwan was the original root-source of training for the ROK Army and the ROK Marines - and still is. , Also, our school is non-standard, we don't fit the US babysitting model... we normally run 80% adults. The kids who are here are required to behave the same way as the adults - so they learn discipline outside the forms. The kids here test right along with the adults, and are required to demonstrate techniques and break real boards - and answer the same questions: purposes of stances, weight distributions, and so on. Right alongside the adults. Even the 6-year olds. There's a big difference in what Chung Ko Kwan forms were meant to be. These forms are an encyclopedia of techniques... as opposed to Japanese and Chinese forms ('kata's in Karate, and 'styles' in Fu) which are running fight sequences. Chung Do Kwan has .so.many. techniques that the normal human being could not realistically memorize them all. This system is pure genius - that's why we opted to change over to it 12 years ago. If I gave you a pile of papers with 400-500-600 techniques on them and told you to memorize them, you never would. Ever. BUT - the originators of this (Won Kuk Lee, Nam Te Hi and others... and later on Choi) devised a better way to do it. They broke the movements up into groups (small at first, growing larger as you progress). And the forms teach other concepts in ascending levels as well (you'll find that in Chung Do Kwan you will learn a technique in it's most basic format at white-belt/beginner level... say for example X-Stance, and then as you go up through the forms, that concept is presented in more and more complicated forms. So taking X-Stance, you first learn it straight up as a pivoting move. A few forms later, you learn to do it in a sweeping stance transition into a different direction. Then later you learn to use it for a standing reverse spin kick. And then later on you learn to do a reverse-spin kick ... on the standing leg of the X-Stance. This ascendancy of technical difficulty exhibits all through the forms: Weight distributions, stance transitions, back/front leg techniques, spins, jumps, front-stance, rear-stance, 65 different hand techniques that get harder as you go up (from standard punching fist, to Mongolian Long Fist punches to Open-Fist punches - and so on. I was disgusted with American/Olympic Taekwondo and the ridiculous self-defense being taught in it. Then a wandering master (for real, he was a medical intern doing stints at hospitals all over the US) landed for a couple months in the school where we practiced. He put me on to the old ways and he and I and a group of 9 other Black Belts ended up spending 3 1/2 years tracking down old-timers who had practiced in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korean in the 1950's and 1960's, tracing old videos, magazine article and filmed interviews and demonstrations. It's the real deal, and I'll never go back to Western Style TKD/Karate.