Limerick HanMooDo

Unpossible

Hi all,
I've started a HanMooDo club, training is on wednesday's from 7-8pm in the L.I.T. Sports Arena, Moylish park, Limerick. When you go in the door we are up the stairs just inside the door.
Its for Teens & Adults with a special rate for 3rd level students.

Here is the wiki entry for the art. This will be the first HanMooDo club in Ireland (and the first outside of the nordic region).

dlofnep

Throws and takedowns resemble Judo and wrestling techniques but are done more elegantly.

Good luck with the club btw.

Unpossible

dlofnep wrote: »

A Finn wrote it it must have lost something in translation.

pma-ire

congrats man!

hope to get to see your club in action some time

yomchi

Good look man!

Another Irish pioneer!

Tim_Murphy

I've started a HanMooDo club, training is on wednesday's from 7-8pm in the L.I.T. Sports Arena, Moylish park, Limerick. When you go in the door we are up the stairs just inside the door.

I used to teach Taekwon-Do there back in the day.

Best of luck with it.

Hephaestus

Unpossible wrote: »

Hi all,
I've started a HanMooDo club

What differentiates HanMooDo from Hapkido?

They seem very similar to my untrained eye.

Unpossible

Well I have never studied HapkiDo so I cannot really compare the two, I'm sure there are some similarities as HanMooDo has Hapkido roots, but I think there is probably more influence from Hoi Jeon Moo Sool than Hapkido. At least from some sparring videos they seem similar, plus the founder Young Suk was the head of the Finnish Hoi Jeon Moo Sool organisation for a while. According to wikipedia Hoi Jeon Moo Sool broke away from the International Hapkido Federation, so I'm not sure if it is still classed as Hapkido.

Anyway, if your in Limerick you can always pop in and have a go and if you want afterwards we could talk about the two arts and see if there are many similarities/differences.

Oh and when watching videos remember that there is a different martial art called HanMuDo, I think they might be closer to Hapkido.

--amadeus--

Cool

So sell it to us - what makes this MA interesting / different to the others? What does it have in common and what sets it apart? Are there patterns? What about belts & gradings? How did you come across it? Apologies if you are well known on here but what's your own background and experience? Have you founded clubs before?

I'm in Limerick and interested in hearing more about this. Apologies for the interogation but the more we know the more we may go!!

Unpossible

I'll answer as best I can.

Are there patterns?

We have what may be reffered to as a pattern for Nunchucks, Bo-staff and Katana, but otherwise no.

What about belts & gradings?

There are belt tests students would typically grade twice a year. Until recently only the two top teachers could give belts, but the new rule allows 2nd degree black belts to give colour belts. To get a black belt you must be personally invited to the black belt grading by the founder of the martial art. Being invited does not mean you are going to pass. To be invited you must be attending competitions & training camps.

How did you come across it?

I moved to Finland in may 2004, that september I started training in it. After the first year I was training 3-4 times a week at it for 1.5 hours each time, right up until my daughter was born in january 2008. Then life went a bit topsy-turvey and I only got a hand full of lessons in before I moved back to Ireland. Despite having permission to start one, I couldn't open the school earlier because I was working odd hours, then when finally off those hours I couldn't find a good hall with mats. Now everything has fallen into place.

Apologies if you are well known on here but what's your own background and experience? Have you founded clubs before?

Years ago I dabled in a few martial arts, but usually the clubs would close down (hopefully I have shaken that). The only other martial art that I spent much time on was judo with I.T.Tralee, I did roughly 3 semesters but never graded. In Finland for a while I also did some BJJ training alongside my swimming and HanMooDo, but it led to a crazy schedule where I was sometimes training twice a day and I couldn't sustain it and I wanted to concentrate on HanMooDo. I realised at one point in my training that I wasn't as good as I wanted to be and it hit home when I failed a belt grading (over the last few years there has been a high failure rate for higher belt gradings), so I spent a year not grading and concentrating on my technique training as much as I could. It paid off and appart from losing a little flexibility from not training so often here, I can honestly say I am more closer to being the martial artist i want to be as a result of that year*.
I have never open a club before, but I have taught and coached swimming (I'm one of the O'Connells from Kingdom SC), so I'm not afraid of standing up and teaching.

*edit: and I got the belt and a compliment on how much I had improved.

Unpossible

And the hardest question.

what makes this MA interesting / different to the others?

This story starts in Finland in the late 70's when Young Suk's brother came to Finland and opened up its first TaeKwonDo school. Young Suk followed in the eighties and helped teach TaeKwonDo and Hoi Jeon Moo Sool which he was head of in Finland. The story goes that he thought it was strange to see students study more than one martial art, ie TaeKwonDo & Kendo. Apparently thats not how they did it in Korea at the time. His theory was that its not good enough to simply learn the techniques of different martial arts but they have to "fit" together so that the artist does not have a conflicting style. So he took the knowledge he had of Korean martial arts and started combining them to form a new, more rounded martial art. I have heard that he also looked at non-korean martial arts, but I cannot confirm what others he looked at or in what detail.
HanMooDo today is still improving and refining itself, bit by bit.

Personally it has everthing I want in a martial art. I always wanted to learn how to do high graceful kicks, but after being bitten by the Judo bug I want to know how to throw someone and at least handle myself enough on the ground to get back up, I am very interested in weapons. I don't have time to go to different clubs, and being as awkward as I am I certainly could not put them all together effectively. The fights in competitions are full contact and allow throws from kicks and "regular" throws. There is even nunchuck fighting in competitions. There are even self defence techniques in the art (quite a few actually) which is where the locks come in. No time is spent in the horse stance practicing blocks or punches, we practice those in a regular fighting position.

What really clinched it for me though was when I saw a black belt in it give a demonstration, he performed everything so gracefully and looked so relaxed.

edit: One thing that struck me when I compare HanMooDo to a few other martial arts that I tried (by try I mean a max of 1-7 classes) was that everything is geared towards moving in a fluid and seemingly relaxed way to help move faster and hit hard. We didn't spend time in restricting positions or stances. Of course as I said I didn't train long in them so prehaps it was only the beginner classes that were like that, our beginners classes are not like that.

Unpossible

Sorry for bumping the thread, but apparently I cannot edit the OP because its too old.
Anyway, Kids classes are on thursdays at 6 (in the same place as the adults & Teens)