Brian Corrales

Here’s a YouTube video that explains the art I study.

A few weeks ago, I went on vacation in Santa Barbara visiting some family. I was able to meet Master Jang who is a high ranking Sa Bom in Soo Bahk Do. I had the privilege of training with him for a full week and learned many principles during that time. I hope to be able to record some of the insights I received from him.

One of the concepts taught to me was correct breathing or ho hup cho chung. Everyone with a good background in MA will tell you the importance of breathing. However, I believe most practitioners, including myself, knows one, and possibly two types of breathing–slow and fast.

Jang SBN taught me that your breath needs to reflect your action. You’ll see slow movements performed with very loud, aggressive breathing—HAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!–but does this really reflect the action? The complete harmony of your body is essential to any technique and this includes breathing. Slow techniques should utilize slow, passive, relaxed breathing, whereas fast techniques should use quick, explosive, aggressive breathing. The actions are two polar opposites and your breath should be a reflection of that.

Now before training with Jang SBN, I pretty well understood this concept. What I didn’t know, is that different sounds give off a different energy. He spoke of the Yuk ja gyol 六字決, or the six natural sounds. Each sound utilizes a different part of your body and will allow your technique to have a different feeling. When performing a front kick, for example, you will probably make a sound similar to “Shuuuuu!” whereas other times you will use a “Chuuuuu!” sound. The difference will reflect your intent. As you make the two sounds, ask yourself what emotions are released and how does your body react? The Sh sound seems to be generated higher in the chest and gives a more deliberate feeling. The Ch sound is generated lower in the abdomen and is more quick and spontaneous.

Those are some of my initial thoughts any way. I’m sure others have more knowledge on the subject and I know I will continue to explore this section of moo do training.

I’ve been working on this for a long time.  I get this error when trying to work a sql statement like so:

@names = CommonGivenName.find(:all, :conditions => [ “common_given_names.name LIKE                                   #{params[:descendant][:given_name]}%’”])

I keep getting this error:  malformed format string.  I couldn’t figure out the problem, but apparently, Rails doesn’t like the % sign.  After adding a second one, the query ran just fine.  If anyone has any ideas on this, I’d be interested in learning.  I just know it works this way.

Having a clear understanding of your style’s and instructor’s roots is vital to understanding who you are as a martial artist.  For example, having a deep understanding of a form’s history and creator can help you understand its purpose and characteristics.  The same applies for your art in general.  The history and tradition behind your martial art can not only give you a sense of pride, but also help you get to the heart of the art.

As an example, my martial arts lineage is as follows:

• Hwang Kee (Founder of Soo Bahk Do)
• Jae Chul Shin
• Chuck Norris
• Victor Martinov
• Jeff Moonitz
• Oliver Whitcomb

I attribute my lineage to Oliver Whitcomb, who issued me my Cho Dan in Soo Bahk Do.  Prior to training with Master Oliver Whitcomb, I had received my Cho Dan in Tang Soo Do under Earlene Burk while I lived in Challis, Idaho.  Del Low, who was her instructor was the one who issued me the rank.  As far as Del Low’s instructor, I’m not sure.  If anyone has information on this, that would be awesome!

Interesting, I just found a youtube clip for Yuk Ro Sa Dan Hyung, also known as Yang Pyun. This is the 4th form of 6 created by Soo Bahk Do founder, Hwang Kee. Korean subak (hand strike) is an ancient martial art that has been lost in time. One of the few remaining documents of this ancient style is found in the Moo Yei Do Bo Tong Ji, a 300 year old text on Korean martial arts, armed, unarmed, and horseback. Within the Kwan Bup (Fist Method) section, you read about Yuk Ro techniques, of which there are 6. Hwang Kee took these six movements and created a form that was based on the technique’s characteristics. Unfortunately, the text is written with Chinese characters, making it extremely difficult for scholars to translate. Even once translated, the documentation is very crude and does not give a clear explanation of techniques. Figures depict many, but not all of the movements, and unfortunately a still image does not do a physical technique justice. Though the true style of subak may be lost in time, it is through Founder Hwang Kee’s style that we can take a glimpse of what that style might have entailed.

We do know that the book has Chinese and even Japanese influence and that it comprises the Sorim (Shaolin-hard style) and Tae Kuk Kwon’s Nae Ga (Soft style). You’ll see variations of Shaolin long punch alongside Tai Chi movements in this form.

To get started in the right direction as I begin to have discussions on martial arts topics, I thought it would be good to give a brief history.  I began training in the martial arts when I was 5.  I did it with my dad in Logan, Utah studying Chung Do Kwan.  This style was one of the 5 original schools, and together with the Moo Duk Kwan was probably the strongest school.  It later unified with the other “kwans” and formed Tae Kwon Do.  I didn’t get very far before my parents moved to Idaho.  I found a Shorin-ryu school there where I trained for maybe a year.  Shorin-ryu is an okinowan style probably most closely associated with the Chinese Shaolin style.  The instructor quickly retired after a logging accident and I was able to find another instructor, Earlene Burk, who I trained with starting April 9, 1993, which I consider my birthday in the martial arts.  This is when I began studying Tang Soo Do.

Tang Soo Do is a generic style of Korean karate that can trace its roots back to Hwang Kee’s style, the Moo Duk Kwan.  Through the years, Tang Soo Do has evolved to be more of an American martial art with a plethora of organizations and variations, Chuck Norris, being one of the more known members.

After receiving my dan (black belt) and being issued dan #1025 (meaning I’m the 25th most senior member in that organization), discovered that a 4th degree Master-level instructor (called Sa Bom), was moving to Sun Valley, ID–only 2.5 hours away.  He belonged to the parent organization, the US Soo Bahk Do Moo Duk Kwan Federation.  Understanding that he was the key to me furthering my knowledge of Tang Soo Do, I transferred schools and began learning under his guidance in the art of Soo Bahk Do.  Soo Bahk Do is the parent style of Tang Soo Do and has a mission to try and uncover some of the ancient training methods of Korea.   I retested for my 1st dan (dan #36364) in 1997 and currently hold a 3rd dan and am a kyo sa (certified instructor).

This category is dedicated principally to the further knowledge of Korean martial arts.

Soo Bahk!

Alright, so my next post is technology based. I’ll get to some martial arts stuff soon I promise. Jimmy showed me this youtube video on these guys did a superb job at explaining the joys of Ruby on Rails development. Imagine setting up a database schema and throughout development you add a table here, or a column there. Your code and db schema evolve throughout the process. Then BAM, you need to revert your application code to a previous version. I’ve found it quite difficult to revert my db schema back to the same version. Well, Ruby on Rails has a nice module called migrations. Migrations are 100% Ruby code which can create your db schema for you. As you add tables, modify a column, or whatever you need to during the db schema lifecycle, migrations keep a record of every change you make and an easy way to revert at any time. Once migrations are set up, reverting is as easy as typing “rake db: migrate VERSION=10″.

Enjoy the film:

Well, I was thinking that it was time to customize my own theme.  So I went online and used the wuhan theme as the base and customized my own graphics.  I’ve focused solely on writing technical blogs and hope to be able to begin writing some blogs that are more geared towards my martial arts background as well.  I feel I have a lot to offer the blogging community in that realm as I have quite a bit of experience studying the Korean martial arts.  Don’t worry, I will continue to blog about technology, especially Ruby on Rails development which Apriux seems to be focusing on lately.  Let me know your thoughts and critiques on this new theme.  The old one just didn’t seem all that eye-appealing like this one.

What an exciting day Jimmy and I had during Seth Godin’s presentation on his new Book, The Dip. It was a wonderful presentation that focused on a very unexpected topic–failure. The presentation helped me put into perspective that to be really successful in life, you need to narrow your focus to what you really excel at and go full throttle. In order to do this, you will need to give up a lot of opportunities. To determine what you should give up and what you should pursue, look at the long term effects and determine whether or not this battle will end in added opportunities or a dead-end.  In short, pick your battles and find the battles that can yield the most benefit.

Seth advised Jimmy and I one on one while driving him to the airport (yes, Phil’s Mercedes broke down in Salt Lake, we passed them on the road, picked them up, got lost on I-15, turned around, and finally made it to the airport in time to get Seth onto his flight).  Seth asked if our web development company Apriux was a local business or going national.  We responded that we were currently local but were looking to possibly do work nationally as well.  Seth told us that if we had a really slick and efficient process, then we could go nationally or we could just be hyper-local.  He said that trying to do both was basically suicide.  I was listening to Seth’s lecture, I promise.  I guess I didn’t have time to let it sink in.  Pick your battles, find what you’re good at and do everything in your power to be the best at that.  Jimmy and I had a nice conversation on the way back to Provo about our business strategy.
Those are some of my takes from the conference.  I’m sure I forgot a ton of stuff.  Anyone else have some thoughts?

It’s been about a month since graduating with a Bachelors Degree in Information Systems from Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Management and things have been going really well. Together with my partner, Jimmy Zimmerman, we’ve started a web consulting business called Apriux LLC. We have a site under construction at www.apriux.com. So far it’s been quite successful and are busy developing a handful of php and ruby applications. Our clients are great and in the next month or so you should begin seeing some of the sites go online.

Our current technologies have been CAKE PHP and Ruby on RAILS.  CAKE is a derivative of the popular RAILS framework and really speeds up the development of php projects.  Our preferred language is Ruby as the RAILS framework was designed specifically for Ruby.

We’re always looking for new projects and if anyone is needing, or knows of anyone needing, web development done, I hope you’ll bring them my way.  We’re also in the process of looking for skilled CAKE PHP and  Ruby on Rails developers to help us complete some of our projects.