There are a great deal of people researching the above in the fields of Karate. I can mention Iain Abernethy, Bill Burgar, Patric McCarthy, Lawrence Kane, Victor Smith and several others to name a few but where are the Taekwondo researchers? It is the same on the book front. Tons and tons of books have been written and are being written on Karate, but only a few on Taekwondo. I have yet to find more than 4 books on the subject that covers the Taekwondo patterns and they are (in random order):
- Chang Hon Taekwondo Hae Sul (ITF Patterns Stuart Anslow)
- Taegeuk Cipher (WTF/Kukkiwon Simon John O`Neil)
- Practical Taekwondo (WTF/ Kukkiwon and ITF Mathew Sylvester)
What is the reason for all of this? I think we can safely say that the focus on sport has shifted the focus from self defense towards sparring competition style. One result of this is that most practisioners are very young people who practise mainly to compete. They might start out with self defense in mind (and or competition) but with the focus on sport they either change their mindset and practise the sport or they think that the sport will prepare them for self defense. Either way, finding out the deeper application for their poomsae (if they even practise poomsae) are not prioritised by many schools today. If they practise poomsae the most schools I have seen only pratise them as performance sport or as basic techniques, but strung together in a coordinated "dance".
I have many books that I have collected over the last few years, and all the newer ones (1990s up to present day) are all how to do the correct motions of the form, but no function. Even the book entitled "The official explanation of Taekwondo" did not explain any application of the poom (movements) in the poomsae.It did however explain just how you should perform the poomsae in competition to win, and it did this in great detail. The older books on Taekwondo show applications to allmost all the movements but they are in the good old "block, punch, kick" variant. This comes as no suprise given that the "hard style Taekwondo" of old is a very simplistic and (if applied correctly) very effective striking system with a lot of effective anti grappling techniques to boot. But today even these basic striking applications are viewed in great awe as many people today just never learned them.
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| This is the motion in Taegeuk 4 Jang That I am writing about. |
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| Gichin Funakoshi demonstrating a technique we find repeated in Poomsae Koryo |
So we have many young people who practise (some would say to many young people and to little adults) who study Taekwondo for sport and they quit when the sport gets boring, or when they have had enough practise. What if we were to introduce the students to applications of the poomsae they practise sooner? Starting of with the hard style applications and when they have learned them and understand when to apply them start them of again with more sophisticated applications? I think this will help a lot when it comes to retain students and to attract more adults to start Taekwondo.
What is your Taekwondo experience? Is Poomsae practise merely performance art practise or do you learn how to apply the motions in combat?
i think that for the most part the teaching of applications is absent because most instructors don't know any aside from the rudimentary ones. Many old time Korean instructors were never shown any or given any explanations, and questions were actively discouraged. that was before the sport!
SvarSlettrichard conceicao
Hi Richard and thanks for making the time for posting your comment. I do agree for the most part but they did learn the "rudimentary" ones. Today the rudimentary applications are not known to the main stream students... This has been my experience at least.
SvarSlettThe Japanese instructors faced the same problem too, but the post was about the lack of interest in the mainstream Taekwondo comunity.
If you compare the interest in patterns applications in OMA/JMA/CMA styles you will see that the level of interest is a lot higher than in the KMA circles. Eventhough the JMA instructors had the same problems as the KMA instructors, the JMA students still have an interest in patterns applications mostly absent in KMA circles.
If you look at older Taekwondo publications you will se almost every move explained one way or another. Compare this to today publications and you will see that applications are removed (or in Kukkiwon Textbooks case greatly downplayed). I think this complete lack of applications rob the KMA students a starting point for finding better ones and develop their own Taekwondo understanding.
So allthough sophisticated applications has never been openly taught as such they did have "hard style" applications (kick, block punch) that was taught to the students. This kick block punch hard style Taekwondo was more sophisticated than the ones taught now.
The book "Secrets of Korean Karate" by Henry Cho is all about applied hard style Taekwondo (no link back to the patterns are given but you will recognise many taken from forms if you read the book).
Personally I think that the race for Olympic acceptance killed the more "traditional" applications as they did not fit in with the sport that was being developed.
I could not agree more with your post. Just about every week I find myself Googling for martial applications of Taekwondo. I am specifically discouraged by the lack of video content on the Net.
SvarSlettAbout a year ago I purchased Chang Hon Taekwondo Hae Sul which was indirectly applicable to me as I study WTF. Taegeuk Cipher, on the other hand, was a perfect match as the book's poomsae matched exactly the poomsae we learn in our dojag. Unfortunately, once you get past the poor, greyscale pictures, it is still difficult to understand what happened between the snapshots. I will say that when I emailed Mr. O'neill, he kindly replied in person with much detail. But even then, I could not quite see in my mind what these applications should look like in, say, a demonstration to other students.
Don't misunderstand me, these books are awesome and I recommend them to anyone, but they really need some kind of video presentation to be clear. I Googled every search phrase I could imagine, and scoured YouTube looking for someone who demonstrated these applications, but no joy. I could not find any applications for any poomsae by anyone. Even a low-quality, basic demonstration I am sure would fill in the spaces left in the book.
I continue to practice Taekwondo, but have since started to learn Okinawan Karate. It sharply contrasts my Taekwondo training in that for every form we learn, there are exercises that practice the application (or several applications) for each move. There are many blocks and punches which are the same as Taekwondo. I am often excited when in Karate I learn an application of a move I have repeated for 8-years in TKD. It reminds me of the scene in the original Karate Kid when, having grown fed-up with waxing cars, painting fences, and sanding floors, Miagi throws kicks and punches at Danielson who sees the power of all his efforts! Unfortunately - for reasons that I do understand - my TKD master does not approve of these applications because they are not part of his curriculum.
At the very least, I am pleased to have found your post and will continue to follow your thread. I have put so much time into Taekwondo, and become discouraged by its lack of martial applications.
Steve B.
Unfortunatly you are not alone, but now that you are cross-training in Taekwondo`s roots I think you could help remedy the situation? Share your knowledge. Martial applications are there in Taekwondo also, but very few are researching them in detail, and even fewer teach them as part of their syllabus.
SlettIts sad that your Taekwondo instructor do not recognize the applications as Taekwondo just because they are not in his curriculum. I teach alongside two other instructors at this time, and I am the only one teaching applications to the forms. None of the other instructors has approached me with anything but positive feedback on this as they feel it enrichens the Taekwondo that we teach. The kick block punch system is great for beginners to give them simple applications while figuring out wich hand goes here and were to put their body weight, but sooner or later people wishes more depth in their study and the ones who are not willing to give them that are the ones who will eventually find themselves without students one day...
I hope you will contribute with your knowledge both here in the blog through comments and through other venues Steve and I am happy that you took your time to comment:-)