The il dan blue pattern has been my most challenging pattern to date and given the COVID restrictions on training and testing in the dojang (imposed both by the health department and myself), I’ve had more than the normal time between tests to work on this one.
The pattern goes like this. Begin in a right front stance and perform a twisting block immediately followed by a front-leg swing kick and land in a side stance. From there, it’s a spinning side kick, landing in a good left front stance, followed immediately by a front (left hand) knife-hand strike. Then launch a rear inward palm strike with the right, an upward punch with the left, a downward vertical with the left, a dodge, and then, just to keep it weird, a left upset punch followed by another vertical downward punch with the left. This completes the forward direction. Shift your guard, look 90 degrees to the right and it’s time to perform the same set of moves to the right. Repeat these techniques three more times and you’ll be facing left. Finish off the pattern with a rear inward palm strike.
There is so much to explore and master here.
Let’s start with that initial twisting block. This pattern really draws one’s attention to the strange trajectory that the fists follow in the execution of this block. The front elbow goes up so that the front fist can go down – but not too far. You want the fist leading the elbow as it travels from right to left in front of your chest; dropping the lead fist too low results in a more vertical forearm and a much weaker block. Like so many techniques, this one is easy to get right when performing it slowly, but is much more challenging at “demonstration speed”.
At the same time that the right elbow comes up, the left hand comes a little forward from where it was guarding the head so that it can duplicate the arc that the elbow is making. As the fists reach apogee on the left, it’s time to bring that right elbow back down, parking the fists in their original position.
Of course, the twisting block begins at the same time that the right (front) foot pivots to push the torso back. There are so many places for me to focus my attention here. Am I leaning back as I should, or do I lean a little to the left? Do I resist the urge to start the front swing kick early? I have a tendency to start the swing kick as the hands are still on their way home. As I finish the block, are my hands back to their starting positions relative to my head?
This brings us to the front-leg swing kick. In the early days of trying to master this pattern, I noticed that my right front-leg swing kick felt decidedly better than my left front-leg swing kick. It took a fair bit of mindful practice to understand why. The first breakthrough came when I noticed that when performing the right side of the pattern (the “better” side), my rear foot would stay fixed in place during the twisting block. When performing the left side however, I would pivot on the ball of the rear foot, ending the twisting block with that foot pointing slightly backwards. Perhaps it is due to the morphology of my hips and pelvis, but this made it difficult for me to chamber the front leg as part of starting the kick.
But this wasn’t the whole story. The kick executed with the right leg felt almost graceful while the one executed with the left side felt awkward and lurching. Only after weeks of practicing this pattern did I finally figure it out. When executing the pattern’s right side, I would finish the twisting block with most of my weight on the rear (left) foot, leaving the front (kicking) leg very light. However, when executing the pattern’s left side, I would finish the twisting block with my weight more evenly divided between my front and rear feet. This forced me to lean back in order to lighten up the front leg before starting the kick, thereby leading to the ‘lurching’ feeling.
Well, we’ve launched the front-leg swing kick; now let’s talk about landing it. I observe that many people “overshoot” the side-stance landing when executing a swing-kick-to-spinning-kick combination. It’s an easy mistake to make. Overshooting the landing is a bit of a cheat that renders the wind up for a spinning kick just a touch easier. But this comes at the expense of giving a little bit of your shoulder and back to the virtual opponent you should be visualizing as you work through the pattern. To mitigate the “overshoot”, I find that it helps to focus on the thigh when executing the front-leg swing kick. With this kick, it’s so easy to “fire and forget”; once the lower leg has extended and the foot (with good foot posture!) has moved past the target, it’s easy to put that leg on autopilot and turn one’s attention to the spinning side kick that’s coming up. But the thigh and hip flexors are the real engine for this kick. I find that if I focus on the thigh and the oval trajectory that my knee traces, and if I think about the lower leg being “just along for the ride”, then the kick feels much more in control until the foot finally lands. And that landing overshoots a good side-stance far less often.
So we’ve finally landed in a good side stance and it’s time for that spinning side kick. I’ve written before about the swing-kick-to-spinning-side-kick combination, but that was for the rear-leg swing kick executed in the context of first dan speed drills. When I started practicing the il dan blue pattern, I was truly surprised by how difficult I found the front-leg-to-spinning-side-kick combination given my hours of deliberate practice with speed drills. Keeping my balance as I rotate on the balls of my feet, winding up for the spinning side kick, was the first, and easier, challenge. Then there’s the challenge of not over-extending the kicking leg – simulating the impact with a target when the knee is still a little bent. Over-extending makes it look like one is aiming at a target sitting at two o’clock rather than one that is simply offset a foot to the right of your centerline. The final challenge, and for me, the most difficult one, was maintaining balance and control during the kick and then executing the small pivot on my planted foot as I rechamber the kicking leg. This little motion is key to landing the kicking foot in a proper left front stance.
Now for the flurry of strikes. As the kicking foot is landing, the left arm is unwinding with a knife-hand strike. As the left hand makes it home, you launch a rear-inward palm strike with the right hand, making sure that you’re in a solid, balanced left front stance, and aren’t still moving or leaning too far forward after your spin as you execute the rear inward palm. Now we get to what has to be the weirdest part of this pattern; a front upward punch followed by a front vertical downward punch, a dodge, a front upset punch and then (aren’t we done yet?!) another front vertical downward punch. I work hard to remember the plantar flex that goes with that upward punch. And will I ever reliably keep the upward and vertical downward punches close to my body, as if my imaginary adversary is inches from my face? On most days I’m sure I won’t. It’s a platypus of a sequence; fur paired with a duck’s bill that looks weird and feels weird and I’m convinced that I’ll never make it flow.
But thankfully that’s the last technique for this direction. It’s time to look 90 degrees to the right, reverse our hands so that our right becomes the front guard, and execute the pattern to the right. Look right 90 degrees, reverse the guard, execute. Look right 90 degrees, reverse the guard, execute. We put a bow on the whole thing by following the final Platypus Sequence with a satisfying rear inward palm.
That’s “all” there is to it. I’ve been practicing this pattern for at least six months now and I feel like I could practice it for another six and still not feel competent. But then, that’s one purpose of patterns, isn’t it? They present not only a physical challenge, but also a mental one. A challenge that teaches us perseverance, and often humility as well, if we pay attention and let them.