Per usual, this weekend I had Taekwondo. My expert (my Taekwondo instructor) did not reply to my email, but thankfully in class, he told me that he had seen it but hadn’t had time to reply. So after class, he helped me improve my Tornado kick. Now, you may be wondering why I’m going back to the Tornado kick after already successfully doing it, but I assure you, there are a couple of reasons why.

Remember how I said I had good news last week? I said I’d tell you towards the end of Genius Hour, however, it looks like I’ll have to tell you now. Well, I have a belt test coming up soon (February 11th). I am testing for my black stripe (one belt away from black!), and I am required to do a combination kick/special kick in the test! This is great news because I have already been practicing my Tornado kick for the past couple of months!! I will be using the Tornado kick as my special kick, and to follow it I’ll be doing a roundhouse kick (which makes it a combination kick). I am really happy that I chose to do kicking as my Genius Hour (and that our class ended up doing Genius Hour at all), as this is a huge benefit for me (thanks Mrs. Englot!). Instead of learning a kick in a month and not being able to do it confidently/correctly, I will be going into the belt test with 3 months of experience, along with confidence. Although, this does mean that I will have to drastically alter my plans. Since my belt test is coming up so soon (and so is the end of Genius Hour), I want to have as much time as possible to practice the kick that I will actually be using in it. I will not be using the Cheat 900/720 for my belt test, and I would like to instead improve and perfect the kick that I will be using in it, so unfortunately, I will have to take a pause in learning the Cheat 900/720. So for the next couple of weeks, I’ll be working on my Tornado kick followed by the roundhouse kick (combination kick), with the help of my instructor. Oh, and don’t be fooled, in the past weeks of learning the Cheat 900/720, my body seems to have forgotten how to do the Tornado kick like it did before. So in a sense, I’m kind of starting a new kick again.

Here’s the video of my instructor helping me.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tTdFy6DTd1LYvyOhOAQX3_FcMO6X1ARO/view?usp=sharing

How has he helped me so far?

• The actual kick itself is the jumping-turning kick. The kick that I was doing was a jumping-front kick when I really was supposed to do the jumping-turning kick. So, he suggested I turn my hip more. He saw my mistake and pointed it out to me so I was able to see what I was doing wrong and improve.
• After I was able to do the Tornado kick decently enough, he came over and showed me the roundhouse kick and then showed me how to do the Tornado into roundhouse kick combination.

See you next blog!

In today’s blog, I spent the entirety of it just continuously working on the email that I will be sending to my expert. After talking it over with Mrs. Englot, she has allowed my expert to be my Taekwondo instructor of almost 7 years. I’ve read over the email many times, but I will also be seeking the advice of Mrs. Englot to improve it even further. Also, 2 weeks ago, Taekwondo class resumed after being given a break from it for almost a month due to some trouble with the dojo. Despite that, I have been practicing my kicks at least 2-3 times a week, because I do not want to throw away the promise I made to myself at the beginning of Genius Hour. I think (and I hope) this practice has been paying off. Anyways, I will also be talking to my instructor about needing his help next week in class.

Here is my practice email:

Here is my new email:

See you next blog!

Today, I spent the block reflecting on the plan that I made a couple of months ago. Like I said I would do, I started with a simple but difficult kick, which was the Tordnado kick. I managed to be successful, so I followed my plan once again and I made my way up on the difficulty scale when I moved onto the Cheat 900/720. However, in my plan, I repeatedly say that if I feel as though I have accomplished my goal, I’ll move on to something else. It seems as though I was a tad bit overconfident about how much time it would actually require to learn and successfully do these kicks. Though, that is not a problem, because if I continue working on the kick again and again over the next 5 weeks, I am hoping that I will be successful in the end. As for all the steps I promised I would take, I think I’ve done all of them. I have a nice, big open space to practice and I record my kicks (yes, even the fails). Although, I must admit, some weeks I was either lazy or busy, and I didn’t practice my kicks as much as I hoped to. But I am happy to say that that happened much less than I thought it would, and I managed to fulfill this promise as well. I also have some good news on how doing this Genius Hour is going to help me! However, I’ll be sharing that news at the very end of Genius Hour. Also, for the rest of the week, I will be practicing the Cheat 900/720 (not recorded.)

See you next blog!