The first pose of Taekwondo training is Juchumseogi and Momtong Jirugi. Here Juchumseogi is the most important standing pose, which is neglected in almost cases by all the people.

However, you should remember, Taekwondo is one skillart. Taekwondo begins at one skillart and gets complete in the one skillart. Its beginning and its end are same(Ch.57). If you understand the deep inside of Taekwondo you will have to practice this basic again although you skip this hard and boring step.

The correct pose of Juchumseo-montong jirugi should be like the picture of the right. Let me explain the basic pose in detail.

The first thing to be emphasized is that you should drop your waist to the hight of your knee like the pose in the picture. Usually most people do not drop so low, but rather stand high like the samll picture of the left part.According to my experience most people stand higher than the pose of the white belt man in the picture actually. But this pose is dangerous to defend your opponent's attack especially when you cannot predict what his attack will be. You shall understand why in detail in the "Inquiry to the Fighting Skills".
(Refer to Chapter 30 about the theoretical significance of the low center.)

The reason why people don't stand low like the picture of the right part is simple :

It is very hard to keep such a low standing. Amost beginners hate to keep this pose until they fully understand why it is worth standing so hard pose. They say the Taekwondo man in the far past should train only this pose(+ montong jirugi) at least 3 years. There is few people who train themselves so hard these days. But you should remember that only hard training of basics makes you strong(What you have to remember...).

The second important thing of this basic pose is that you should open your both knees with your feet closed. Look at the first picture. The black belt man opened his both knees but tried to turn both feet to inside. And compare the third gray picture under the first. It shows the opened feet in the pose. For beginers it is natural and comfortable.(Usually Karate uses this pose.) But it is not good. Why? When you have your knees opened with your feet closed you will feel whole muscles of legs twisted at once. The twistedness means that those muscles are in tension so that they can stand any strike unpredicted from outside. If our feet were opened the muscles around your feetneck would be loose. In case you were to attacked on that part, it is dangerous. In training, you cannot train whole body at once from the correct pose.

The third important thing in this pose is that you should straighten your back spine when you make this pose. Compare the following two pictures on the left. The gray picture shows bad pose but the color picture the good one. The white belt man's back spine is bent a little while the black belt man's waist is straightened. The difference is trivial, so if you can recognize the difference with ease, you may be a black belt.

Let me explain why you should have your back spine straightened. With your bent back spine, you cannot make use of the power from the shaking waist, which is the most important source of Taekwondo's power. The efficient power of Taekwondo comes from the sudden movement of your whole body even when you strike your target only with your finger. When you cannot walk forward in attack, you can get the power of whole movement with shaking your waist. Juchumseo-momtong jirugi is the best and most important training method for that power. In case your back spine were bent when you shake your waist, it would be injured or it would be imposible.

Therefore, the following poses are incorrect an useless in itself. But I know that they prevail in almost Dojang. If you have a sound reason, not insisting whatever you've learned at first are always right, you shall understand why those poses are not correct in the following pages. Any way, if you don't know why you should train Juchumseo-momtong-jirugi or you cannot use them in actual Kyorugi, you may be practicing the wrong poses.

<The wrong patterns of the Juchumseogi>

The pictures show us the closed knees and high standing. In the side view picture, you can see the back spine is slightly bent even in such high standing.

The closed knees will be the target point of your opponent at first and you cannot resist a slight strike on it, as you shall see later.

Any way the more you practice this pose of the given pictures the clearer it will be that you can obtain nothing useful in that pose. To the contrary, the correct pose will impose you really hard traing at first, but later, it wiil give you comfortable power and high-level fighting skills.