I was sick with weird ear pain on Friday, but I went to work (thinking I wasn’t contagious… sorry, work friends). On Saturday, I felt better and thought I was over whatever it was, so I went to the gym for Body Combat (sorry, gym friends).

**In my defense, I wasn’t coughing yet. Maybe I wasn’t contagious.**

On Sunday, the ear pain was gone, but I felt worse in other ways. I worked out in the garage, anyway, practicing some Tae Kwan Do. There was no one around for me to infect, and I kiaped silently in my head to spare my scratchy throat. Still, I started coughing that night, lost my voice for real, and went to bed with a headache, body aches, and a 100 degree fever. I did not leave the house the next day (yesterday).

Maybe Sunday’s garage gym session wasn’t the best idea.

Be that as it may, I had a good practice session out there, and I recorded it again because that proved to be a great way to spot my mistakes. Also, many of you seemed to like those first two garage gym recording-snip posts, so I thought I’d continue with it.

Here are some of the techniques I ran through on Sunday:

 

 

Not sure why my front foot lifted off the ground before I executed that block. See… if I didn’t record this practice, I wouldn’t have known I did that! I swear, this whole recording business is the next best thing to having an instructor here to correct my form. The mirror helps to an extent, but not as completely as recording my techniques from different angles.

 

 

For some reason, I didn’t clip a picture of the block, itself. Next time.

 

 

I have a bad habit of dropping one of my arms when executing this kick. I need to work on that.

 

 

 

 

Pardon my dirty foot. Also, the shadow under my arm makes it look like I didn’t shave, but I did. Haha.

 

 

I don’t know what this block is actually called. The move blocks the groin and then the face in one continuous motion, so it’s a down block that becomes a high block as you twist into a deep front stance. It looks something like this at the beginning:

 

 

Then it becomes this (practicing from a different angle):

 

 

Tae Kwan Do is mostly structured and precise, but there are some transitions, like this one, that can be more fluid.

Back to precision:

 

 

A Tae Kwan Do uppercut is not the same as a boxing or a Muay Thai uppercut!

 

 

Lots of back stance in this practice session, actually.

Then, as in my first Tae Kwon Do post, here’s a clip of me walking over to the camera to stop the recording:

 

 

La Fin.