Poekoelan

**Mox_Mox** · Posted On: 10/24/2004 7:54pm

One With Heart

A couple of days back I was working for the local fight promotion doing street team work and I stopped by this school to try my luck at getting a poster up and pass out flyers. I talked to the cute girl at the desk about the show and if I could get some support for the local fighters and have them put up some posters, the girl said that she was only permitted to put up posters from her school but would take a flyer and post it on their tournament board in case any of them wanted to participate in a later show. As I was heading out she asked if I wanted to get a tour of the school, taking in the situation it made perfect sense to get a tour of a gym I had no interest in cause the girl was hot.

So a quick review of One With Heart Poekoelan school:

First she took me to the weight room which was really good, it had about ten cardio machines mostly treadmills, and a full set of hammer strength machines, probably around twenty five covering all the muscle groups. The free weights were a little lacking but coming from a MA school pretty good ****.
As we left the weight room I asked what kind of ground work/grappling they did. She said that the tiger form is the most ground work oriented and went on to explain that Poekoelan is a four form system with that uses the Tiger, the Monkey, the Crane, and the Snake. At this point my bullshido detector was activated while still low it was on. I got a feeling that a double leg would shatter their system.
Next we went into a big studio with hard wood floors and a big old shrine at the front of it. She told me about how the practiced falls in there, more advanced techniques, and focused manly on forms. When I asked about how many forms they had her eyes lit up. According to her they have a limitless amount of forms and that at higher belts they are encouraged to "invent" new forms. Gawd I hate forms. Also there were a ton of soccer balls in the corner I didn't ask about them but I hope it wasn't to help them with forms.
We took a quick jaunt over to another medium sized room to look at a yoga class in session the room is also used for general practice, and is the qui-gong room. At this time I took a second to ask the golden question, do you guys spar. She said that the mainly do point sparring so they can compete in tournaments around the north west. I then had the philosophy of their combat explained to me, their game is to use quick whipping attacks to vital areas to end the fight as fast as possible. Wow cause when I fight I use slow weak strikes to areas clearly protected so the fight goes on as long as possible.
Lastly we went in to another cavernous room that had mats and banana bags, as well as a nice mirrored wall. She invited me to kick one of the custom bags that they had, so I threw a nice low kick just to get a feel. What a joke, it was like kicking a pillow, the single softest thing I have ever kick. When I brought up that fact she was proud of it and mentioned again that it was a custom bag.
With that the tour ended I left said thank you and went on my way plastering the city of Portland with flyers and posters.

Final review:

Fucking awesome facilities bar none the biggest MA school I have ever seen the yoga room was bigger then my old Kajukembo school. Good weights but the most pussified bags I have ever seen, wavemasters look hardcore in comparison.

The art it self looks a little on the Bullshido side, lots of forms, point sparring, and tiger form grappling. Can't say anything for sure. A family friend is a BB there, when my shoulder is healed I'm going to throwdown with him and see what he has.

Oh yeah, didn't get her number cause I am teh sUck.

**SunTzu** · Posted On: 10/24/2004 8:54pm

It's on Hawthorne, that tells you all you need to know really.

**Freddy** · Posted On: 10/25/2004 3:04pm

Which Poekulan instructor???? Theres alot of controversy with Al Colangelo though.

**IndoChinese** · Posted On: 10/26/2004 2:54pm

Cimande.

from Goeroe Wetzel, i think.

external line knife technique.

lotta limb destruction techniques.

**lokirising** · Posted On: 1/10/2005 10:41pm

Yup, it's Bullshido. I trained there for 6 months. No, I'm not proud of it.

**Nitecrawler** · Posted On: 1/10/2005 10:50pm

Hmmmmm.....Bullshido??? You make the call :)

LOL, looks like their doing the chicken dance :)

**celticdragon03** · Posted On: 1/11/2005 10:32am

Originally Posted by lokirising

Yup, it's Bullshido. I trained there for 6 months. No, I'm not proud of it.

I guess people made it pretty clear why it could be bullshido. But I'm curious to hear more details of the system, and the bullshidoniss etc.????? Especially because their facility is so big.

**AFS** · Posted On: 1/11/2005 10:37am

I'm curious to hear more about the girl.

**PO9** · Posted On: 1/11/2005 11:32am

Back in ohio I was taking a philosophy class and noticed this guy always wearing some Kung Fu jacket to class. I struck up a conversation and he said he was a BB in pookalan chimindie (or however the **** its spelled). By this time I had completed about 6 months of tkd instruction from my friend who was a 3rd degree BB. Now my training consisted of mostly kick boxing style instruction ( my friend abhored kata even though he still taught them to me for 'completeness').

So anyway I asked this guy if he wanted to spar, he agreed, so we met the next day in the gym. Needless to say this guy fought worse than me, before the match he even showed me the ppokulan form he had to invent for his BB test. My personal opinion was that I fought slightly better, until a few days later a random dude asked me how long I'd been doing karate because he had watched the sparring match and i had (apparently to him) mopped the floor with the guy.

Moral of the story, I'm not impressed by their system.

**Freddy** · Posted On: 1/11/2005 4:30pm

Maybe the school just suck badly.
Its just like many karate schools to be frank most suck but then there are some hard core schools who can apply their techniques and fight with it.