Huff's Korean MMA

**subatai** · Posted On: 9/22/2009 1:03pm

Our school just started in February of this year (2009). I was one of the first 15 adults to sign up. We have two classes a week -- one for sparring, and one for instruction. Those individuals taking the classes with 20 or more hours of training are free to join in the fun with sparring day. It is no additional cost to the student and does not count toward your number of hours of training (the monthly payments are counted in 4 instructional classes, we pay every 4th instructional class.) I gave our aliveness a 7 versus a 6 because it is not "medium" contact, it is full/hard contact, yet it DOES fall under the "excessive" safety gear (i am thankful of that, lol). We are all in the class still beginners and we only spar for "points" now, once we advance in rank we will start sparring not for points but for "pins" or "taps" in 3 minute rounds, I suppose then we will remove some of the restrictive safety gear. Our style/art is comprised of a few different Korean arts our basics are mainly Hapkido, where our instructor has a 4th dan, the actual name of our art is Dae Han Mu Sool, it is hard to find any information for this on the internet but it is translated as : "Big Korean Martial Art". In addition to his 4th dan in Hapkido, our instructor has been trained in other Korean arts but has not earned and "master" title from them but the training he has earned black belts in are Hwarangdo,Kumdo,and Taekwondo. Along with the Korean arts, he has training in Japanese and Brazilian arts -- neither of which a master, or claim mastery of any.

The only thing other than instruction we pay for is our uniforms. All the equipment belongs to the school/master huff. Because the fact that we are a new school, all of our equipment IS brand new (kick pads, body shields, targets, etc...) save for some sparring gear that we can provide ourself or purchase through the school, in which case we all have the newest styles and top of the line brands (unless sum1 buys sumthin' off of ebay). I do give us a lower than the "8-9: Excellent, new condition, latest gear." just because I am assuming that it is things like olympic style mats and maybe even some training dummies that is reserved for this catagory. For the time being, we are set up in the city auditorium (oversized basketball court, lol with stadium seating ;] ).

I give us an 8 for Gym size, but that can be changed if you see fit. I say that because number 6 says "actual dedicated commercial space", while we normally take our class to the basement of the auditorium, we have the entire basketball court to use as we see fit for our classes. Because each of our classes have a max student size of about 15, the full size basketball court offers us PLENTY of room and I'd say comparatively to categories, 1-7 don't apply to us, while #9 would, i believe that #9 has an implied #6 somewhere in there, we don't really USE the entire gym -- even though it is there for us to use when we need it (i.e. sparring day includes all students who have 20 or more hours).

As for Instructor/Student ratio, I don't know the numbers here to decide a "small" or "large" class, we have only one instructor, he's the 4th dan I mentioned earlier. Our largest class I believe is the "beginner kids/juniors" that has around 15 students. The "beginner kids" class only had three students in it so he added them to the "beginner juniors" class. With the size of MY class though i give us a 10, each one of us train with master Huff individually for a few minutes on each and every technique (that is the benefit of living in such a small community I guess). I should've probably stated earlier that I feel we are lucky in many ways that we live in the middle of nowhere litterally, the nearest big chain of anything is over an hour away, and by that i'm talking just wal-mart and mcdonalds, any other big chain is 3 hours away in a different state, lol. My class is the second largest class with 8 students, so I feel the 10 in this category is deserved.

For Atmosphere I would give us a 10, but I think that 2 "10's" is almost inviting someone to come out and verify what i'm saying is the truth... ah, whatever... I give us a 10 for atmosphere as well.

For striking instruction, for now I give us a 6, but that may change once we advance in ranks. After reading the criteria for 8-9, and 10 in this category I don't think that I can rate this one just yet, we are still a new school.

We have not competed in anything and the only sparring we get in is with fellow students of the same school. With that said though, every technique we learn, we go into counters to that technique and they usually end up being some sort of grappling technique, and then we discuss (lol, get sidetracked) for a little bit what we will be learning in later ranks e.g.... grappling. So this may go up or down and I'm being a little apprehensive and giving us a 5.

Weapons instruction!!!, i'm still a beginner, lol. I do know that my first "weapon" will be a rope. We've touched on firearms defense and knife defense, but i think that is largely because he is a police officer, we will also be studying "kumdo" as that is part of the "Dae Han Mu Sool" curriculum. I've researched a lot of things about "Hapkido" and there are various weapons in this art, but mostly i believe that the "weapons" training will most likely be spawned from the "Hwarangdo" portion of the "Dae Han Mu Sool". All in All i'll give us a 6 for this category based on just what our instructor has told us we'll be learning and the way our class is conducted, i can only assume that we will be learning our weapons much in the same way that we are learning our striking.

Before writing this review, I had assumed that I was recieving an average level of training, but after reviewing everything here, I guess I now see myself as "lucky". I am anxious to see how our class will do after reaching an advanced level and competing in different events on a state or regional level. If you would like, I will ask master Huff if i can record a class on video, but i will probably wait until we are learning a weapon, and going over grappling, so that i can show all the areas of this review on one video. Please, after you review, let me know what you think.

**kenikim** · Posted On: 1/11/2010 12:26pm

Dae Han Mu Sool is probably better translated to 'Great Korean martial art' or just simply 'Korean Martial art'. 'Dae Han Min Guk' is the official name for south korea in korean, so someone simply took the first portion of the country's name and slapped it on to whatever you are doing. it's a very non-descriptive generic name.