Agreed. I actually enjoy Exile's and others' input...it just seemed odd that they would spend so much time in a karate forum when there are perfectly good forums for their own arts. Sometimes they are re-discovering the wheel that many of us in traditional arts have been rolling for decades.
But that's the very point, from my point of view—rediscovering that wheel! It's true that there are fora for TKD and other KMAs, but what you may not realize is that there is a kind of split in the view that TKDists have on their own art. This is, I think, important to understand if you're trying to figure out why a KMAist would hang around a karate forum. It has to do with a kind of world view:
- do you see TKD as being, more than anything else, a fighting system for CQ self-defense, and if so,
- do you see the technical content of TKD as being embedded in the hyungs—basically the Korean analogues of karate kata, and made up of the same subsequences of movements as those in karate kata (especially Shotokan), such that the logic of these sequences—why these particular movements are put together—is derived from the original logic of the bunkai for the source kata which gave rise to the Korean forms; and
- do you see the optimal way of thinking about bunkai—the one that gives you the greatest practical advantage—to be that which the founding masters of Okinawan karate had in mind in designing the kata that then went to Japan, then Korean (where they were subsequently dismantled and reassembled in many cases)?
If you answer 'yes' to all three of these (and many, if not most TKDists do not, I'd guess), then it's very likely you're going to be interested in the karate threads because, in a way, you're going to closer to the original source meanings of those hyung sequences. Imagine that you're an academic, specializing in the French language. You are certainly going to want to keep up with the work of scholars of Latin, because a lot of what you see in the grammar of French is going to reflect patterns and idiosyncracies present in the grammar of Latin. For those of us who, to a greater or lesser extent, adopt the three-part package I just sketched, reinventing the wheel is exactly what we want to do because, if we succeed, then we'll have the wheel—and with the pressure to teach TKD from a sport-sparring/form performance (as vs. analysis) perspective, we're pretty sure that at the moment we don't actually have the wheel, or at least, all of it.
You said something in an earlier post about people like Abernethy in effect rediscovering what at least people in Okinawa have been doing all along. But those of us in the TKD camp who I'm talking about don't have access to the Okinawan perspectives, any more than the Korean MAists who founded the original Kwans had access to the deepest bunkai when they were learning their MA in Tokyo in the 1930s, under Funakoshi or Kanken (apart from Hwang Kee). Someone like Abernethy or Rick Clark provides concepts and tools of analysis that we can use to get a much deeper insight into the combat meaning of the forms we've learned than is normally provided (given that, as one of our most experienced TKD practitioners on MT, Kwan Jang, has pointed out, the Kwan founders really didn't have a very deep understanding of the combat applications of the kata they brought home from Tokyo were, and that pretty much determined what their students and students' students knew). In a sense, what at least some of us in the KMAs are interested in doing—including, I think the OPer in this thread—is rethinking the KMAs so that they regain the depth of combat content inherent in their descent from a system with both strikes, tuite and kyosho components, but in addition the very well-developed kicking weapons that have developed over the past half-century. I'm not talking about the complex 540s and high-glitz tournament point-scorers, but the basic power kicks, the hard roundhouse, back- and side-kicks using the open-hip biomechanics that so many of practice devotedly.
Let me quote a passage from one of Kwan Jang's posts, part of a reply to a query of mine, where the issue had to do with effectiveness at various fighting ranges:
Kwan Jang said:My point on the topic of patterns/forms is that there is a significant and growing percentage of practioners of the martial arts in general and TKD in particular that feel that forms are a time buster and just a filler. And that they could be using their training time to better use. A popular point that is brought up is that you would never fight for real in a static front or horse stance with your hand at your hip when you block or punch. Practitioners will often question why spend time practicing "basics" that do not resemble the striking that you would use in a real fight. The way you train is the way you react.
To me, this is a VERY valid point...if you are going by the karate-do bunkai or the Korean-ized variation of it. Neither is anywhere close to being realistic and I would hope that no one around here would actually try to fight or defend themselves in such a manner. I have actually seen people who tried to do this and thought that they were being "true to their art" by trying to fight that way. I had one guy at the gym I worked out at who spent months trying to sell me the virtues of this type of fighting everytime he saw me there.
Contrast this with the applications/bunkai when you include the kyusho and tuite including the close quarter joint locks, grab and strikes, ect. This system is very similar to many schools of JJ and has a very strong proven track record both in combat and in self defense. If you break this down, then build it up through the scales of force and resistance with a partner, then the movements in your form become a syllabus for giving much greater depth to your TKD practice. IMO, if you use the forms the way they were originally intended, they are a valid and important part of your training and if you master the material in this syllabus, then TKD (and karate-do) become far more complete combative systems rather than just kick/punch systems.
I am not trying to "bash" TKD, but I do see some wrong turns that it has taken IMO. There are things that are already part of the system that most students have already had training in, but few practioners are putting it to effective use. Low kicks, sweeps, takedowns, elbow and knee strikes, joint locks, trapping and infighting,... these are all a part of TKD. However, I see so many instructors only giving a token effort or ignoring all these altogether. Many TKD students even know much of this even exists in their art, all some of them know how to do is slap a hogu with a cut kick.
(The whole post is here.) This passage expresses nicely my personal 'take' on the kind of TKD I want to do (I am not for a moment saying that I think anyone else must, or needs to, think of things in the same way; it's just my own personal interpretation of TKD that I'm talking about here). In view of that, you can see perhaps just why it is that I, and a few other of us KMA types, hang around karate discussions. We don't feel that we have anything to tell you about your own art, I don't think; on the contrary, we're trying to apply what karateka know (at least, the ones who themselves are similarly minded about their own art) to the understanding and practice of our own....