The Kill Shot

Today was the first time I had done sparring for TKD in a very long time. In My absence from my fighting in my base art, I had gone on to pick up an extensive hand striking arsenal as well as grappling knowledge to a significant degree. But I had also developed an extremely nasty habit. Before, I was known as having the fighting style of a charger. I positioned myself at my opponent and walked. Through hits, and kicks....I would slowly make my way to him and fire back with whatever I had, hoping to cause as much damage as possible to see if he went down. Needless to say, I lost almost all my matches by points, even if my opponents grew to respect my power and fighting spirit. Putting it short, I didn't give up no matter how fucked I was for the fight. But since then, I've developed a mean streak. I know my power lies in 2 techniques. My push-kick and my punches. And While I don't necessarily want to hurt my opponents or friends with them, these techniques are fired almost entirely on instinct. Today I put 2 guys down, each using a single punch to the chest. Another I constantly put down with my push-kick and sent another flying. Results for the other fights were varied, though I mostly got away with dominating via aggression. Now, I don't normally regret hitting opponents...but these people were my friends after all and I was seriously worried that I might have had injured them. The coach says that it was my perspective to sparring that was affecting my fights. For the longest time I had been enthralled by the sport of MMA and am a huge fan of finishing fights. And that was the problem. Because of the way I always preferred to see fights finished, whether in grappling or striking, it eventually leaked into my style of fighting, resulting in me always fighting just well enough to look for the kill shot. Now, I have two masters for TKD. They come from different schools and backgrounds. One is more peace-loving and modern. The other is a very traditional man that advocated my way of entering a fight to finish it. The first true lesson I had in TKD was as such : He who attacks first must not stop till the opponent has been stopped or downed. Lest the opponent is given a chance to recover and Counter. I will need to look very carefully into my fighting style, see if I can temper my hunting of Kill Shots....lest I run out of willing sparring partners.