Welcome to Friday night!

Well, it has been an exciting week! Working on the Asian Festival for NOVA Southeastern University in Davie, FL. It will be held in the library as it is every year. We will have Korean fan dance, martial arts demonstrations, mini seminars, music, food, and language/cultural classes. It all starts at 1pm and goes until 4pm this Saturday. June 21, 2008. We always have a very large turnout numbering in the thousands.

We talked allot this week about pressure points and their applications within the techniques. We also touched on many aspects of philosophy and combat mentality vs self defensive mind set. we had some visitors that had a great time and joined our family here at the school.

Please send me questions. I can think of a million things to write about but, I would rather give you the information you are seeking.

One question that was emailed to me is: "Master Allen, what is the difference in the children's techniques and the adults techniques?"

Well, with the children we focus more on breaking the attackers balance and making the attacker throw them self on the floor smashing their wrists or knees on the ground creating an escape for the children to run, scream, and attract attention from bystanders. Hopefully people will be willing to help a screaming child. Most people will run from a screaming person in fear that they will have to inconvenience them self to help another human being out of trouble and in doing so getting them self sued for trying to be a nice person. Sad but true in our modern society.

The adults learn how to dislocate joints and throw people by breaking their balance as well. Sounds like Aikido, but I assure you, it is not as forgiving nor as nice even thought they are the same type of techniques, to a point. You do not want to give an attacker a second chance to get it right. You have to get it right on the first try. People don't give in so easy to the techniques on the street or battlefield.

There are people out there who claim their martial art is better than someone else's. If that were true, the Asians would have taught only THAT art. If it works in the real world, then why is one better than another. Fortunately there are many arts for many tastes and types of people's needs. If it is taught correctly and learned correctly, it should work correctly if applied correctly. You can't base how good a martial art is because you saw one person doing it. You have to experience it for yourself. If you are interested in Hapkido, come in to our school and have a free class on us. We will be happy to share our knowledge with you.

We hope to see you soon. Either at the Asian Festival at NOVA this Saturday, June 21, 2008 or at the school at one of our classes!

Oh, by the way. Don't mistake our kindness for weakness. Many do, many are surprised once they step on the mat. There is a fine line between naughty and nice. My students train very hard. I have learned that some people need to feel harsh technique to see how it all works. Some only need to feel it a little to have an understanding of how it actually works. The latter are the smart ones. The prior usually go home wishing they had never come and bad mouth us after they leave because they were embarrassed by their own egotism. Either way, they learn the technique never fails. ^_^