It took me a while to post this because Ive been searching thru out this form to see if this was already asked before I post this.
So if Ive missed it.....my bad.
Cool.
The person that I had trained under was GM Ki Whang Kim and he taught Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan Tae Kwon Do. GM Kim knew some of the Korean master from back in the day when TKD got started. In fact he use to teach Palgwes & Taegueks back in the day but decided that they werent a good idea and stuck to the Okinawan forms that he had learned in Japan. GM Ki Whang Kim once said "Its the quality of the froms not the quantity."Cool. But that depends on why You do Forms.
So my question is this.....Whats the reason for yall doing yall forms?
Mostly just for the sake of it. Im not going to break out into Dan-Gun if Im accosted, and You wont break out into Jion.
I picked Jion, Ge-Beak and Koryo because they are the 1st dan BB forms (under GM Kim Jion was a 3rd dan form but I learned it as a 1st dan) that we can compare. Ive worked at WTF and ITF schools and as I was learning their forms to teach them it was hard for me to figure out why they were doing them and the head instructors couldnt explain to me what were the reason for them to do the forms (which I found funny and sad).
Thats mostly because Theyve forgotten Why They Exist. Theyre a moving Record. Like a Picture Book, only with Human Movements. If You want a Workout and whatnot, do the relative exercises. I wont do Chun Ji to get better at Punching. Ill Punch.
So like I said Ive been looking on here for the meaning behind Koryo and Ge-Beak. And I dont mean the made up crap about it dating back to ancient Korea.
Ge-Beak and Koryo, like all the others, can be broken down into moving records. The same goes for Kata, incidentally. Karate and Taekwondo Forms are not Representations, so much as Depictions of Ideas. I could pretty much take something effective and base a Form around it.
For us, those of us that do the traditional TKD & TSD forms....(this is why I argue that ITF and WTF and ATA is not traditional TKD. Tradition is what you do for generations.
Most Martial Arts arent even remotely Traditional then. But Ill play along, and if need be, say Old School instead of Traditional.
It is what has been passed down from person to person from generation to generation. It hasnt or it JUST had been one generation for ITF, WTF and ATA!!!)....ok back to what I was saying...LOL...our lower forms, Pians, were created out of the higher froms but in the ITF and WTF it seems to be to other way around.
It seems Your Forms are approached differently. This is somewhat interesting. Youre basically saying Your Lower Forms are a buildup to the higher ones. The other Standard is that every Form is different. They are not related to each other. I like the not-Your-method way, but Im not going to criticize it. It interests Me.
So I ask...what does Ge-Beak and Koryo teach you? For us, Jion is a conditioning, power and strengthening form. They say its 400 to 500 yrs old. I never liked doing forms until I was told why. GM Kim pointed out that the techniques in Jion have been tried and tested in battle and have been proven to work. GM Cheeks use to make me do Jion all the time before I competed and he told me that him and Mike Warren use to always do Jion before they competed in tournaments. Why? Because it was for conditioning.
This is also Interesting. But is it really much different to doing strenuous Training and Drilling?
Maybe the schools that Ive worked at the instructors didnt think it was improtant to know why or were never taught the meaning and reasons for doing Koryo, Ge-Beak, Eui Am, Kumgang and the rest of them. For us we were all ways taught why we were doing our forms. When we were doin the Pians we were constantly told that these forms come from the higher forms and we have to master them to be able to master the higher forms.
Again, interesting. I cant help but think this makes Forms out to be way more useful than They are though.
Now a 2nd question comes to mind. As GM Kim once said "Its the quality of the froms not the quantity." So which forms are of a better quality: Koryo, Jion or Ge-Beak?
By that logic, You should pick one of Your Choice, from a bigger pool of choices.
