Yesterday morning, on my way to tutoring, I found a bunch of folks practicing tai chi, on the courthouse steps at Foley Square.
What many people may not realize, is that while it’s mainly practiced by older folks in this country, as a series of slow exercises, it has its roots in martial arts. Just as with capoeira - a lot of the moves were originally blocks, sweeps, strikes.
I did tae kwon do for a bunch of years – my knees still make all sorts of clacking noises, and as I watched these guys yesterday(actually, mostly women), I recognized a lot from the forms that I used to do. Below is one of my favorites.
The guy is very good, but I’ll say this – when you do these hyeong, a big deal is made of the ‘snap’ your dobok (uniform) makes. People put in a lot of starch for competitions. Still, I think there is a bit of audio ‘enhancement’ being done here.
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