Searching out practical applications to Poomsae Part 2

Last time I presented the search and destroy  incorporate what fits into the Poomsae. I adviced that

you look into books, articles, seminars, videos etc from both your own style and others and take whatever you find that seems like Poomsae movements or sequences and see if they can really fit into the Poomsae as an application of the form. I used the first part of the sequence in Taebaek and demonstrated where I found them to underline that part of my method. Another aspect of this is researching history of Taekwondo and Poomsae to find both specific applications and more importantly identify application principles. This is where the application jurney can end even before it begins in Taekwondo, because doing it this way you have to acknowledge a lot of facts that have been supressed for decades by the leading organisations. One of the most important ones is Taekwondo`s "close" kinship with Karate.

Guest Post: The Secret to Winning All Your Fights...with Taegeuk Il Jang!

Intro by Traditional Taekwondo Ramblings:

Josh has a great blog at https://tkdfighter.wordpress.com/ which I full heartidly support and

recommend that you check out. Especially if you like my blog because me and Josh have many similar thoughts yet different enough that we also disagree on stuff. He has a bunch of interesting articles on his blog and is one of the few people on the world wide web that actually writes indepth articles on Kukki Taekwondo! Among all the blogs that pay lip service to Taekwondo being a martial art and not just a sport Josh`s blog is an oasis in the desert. That he now has written a guest post exclusively for Traditional Taekwondo Ramblings is a great honor for me and it is like all his usual blog articles a thought provocing read that I am sure many will apreciate. The post below is not going to be posted anywhere else so this is truly a special post to have here:-) Below is how Josh view his relationship with Taegeuk Il Jang :-)

Searching out practical applications to Poomsae? Part 1

Image Source: Karate Do Kyohan 1935
by Gichin Funakoshi

The last few weeks I have presented many practical applications to Poomsae. I have covered all of Taegeuk Il (1) Jang from start to finish, as well as a sequence in Taegeuk Oh (5) Jang and a sequence
containing similar techniques in Taebaek Poomsae. Some have asked me how I come up with these and I plan to share some of my methods of finding them in Totally TKD Magazine when I`m finished with rewriting the Taegeuk il Jang series there but as readers of this blog often the first rough draft of these articles for the magazine end up here. In truth I have some difficulty answering the question because despite what people believe I dont have a "fixed" process like others do. My process if I can call it that is very intuitive and sometimes messy. I hope that I can streamline it for better results in the future and putting my thoughts down on paper (digitally at least) will be a very helpfull first step in doing that for me.

So how do I find the applications? Sometimes I can read a book and see something that I recognize and then read another book that gives another piece of the puzzle and so on until I have a functional application. The start of the sequence I demonstrated in Taebaek is a very fine example of that so I will show you just where I found it :-)

Practical application from Taebaek Poomsae

I am hoping (but never sure) that I might try to get my 3rd Dan within the next 12 months or so.
Because of that I am turning some of my attention in privat training toward Taebaek as that is the Poomsae I need to demonstrate for that rank. One of its key sequences occurs in the middle of the Poomsae with a double block, (Keumgang momtong makki), reach, grab and pull in punch (dangkyo teok chigi), middle section punch (momtong jireugi), side kick and hammer fist strike into an elbow strike.

Many strugle to make combative sense of this sequence, and for those few who dont they divide it up so that only the first half of the sequence is one application and the second half (starting with the sidekick is an unrelated application to the first half). The reason why they believe that is that the first half occurs in many Karate Kata while the rest of the sequence is a Korean "add on" to that sequence. As many believe that the Koreans knew nothing about the art they were making they dont stop to consider that perhaps this add on is just fine as is? I will share one of my takes on this sequence in this post and hopefully if it does not sit well with you at least you can stop and think that perhaps while my take on it is not your cup of tea, you can consider the posibility that there might be an application out there that fits :-)

Taegeuk Oh Jang Application for Taekwondo fighter

In his post: "Taekwondo is a long range martial art. Right?" Josh or "Taekwondo fighter" makes an
interesting case on how he views kicks and their function in Taekwondo Poomsae. The blog post is well worth a read and the blog in general is great (I see it as a "sister blog" to my own as me and Josh share many similar thoughts while also disagreeing enough to keep the fun of reading ) so what I am trying to say is that I recommend the blog, the post and all its content :-) Anyway, in the comments to that post I said something along the lines that simply by lowering the height of the kicks most KTA Poomsae kicks will fit in with the medium to short range and I gave a well known sequence to Taegeuk Oh Jang as an example. Josh countered and told me that for it to work you needed to kick with the front leg to make it work, or to evade too much with the parry pass method. Now a form demonstrating what to do if you position yourself too far away is a good thing, but then he would be right and not me:-P So what did I do? I tweaked my original application so it still works as in the form :-P For my unaltered application and his comment that spurred this whole post read his post and then the comment section below it.