New Soo Bahk Kichos

[JoelD]

Let me also make something clear as i dont want to insult any of the Karatekas on the board. I am not putting down the Pyung Ahn Form set in any way. They were created by another man who was equally influential in the martial arts as KJN Hwang Kee. KJN also obviously saw the importance of these forms and that is why they are in the Tang Soo Do/Soo Bahk Do curriculum in the first place.

 

[Makalakumu]

It really isn't that big of a deal because the federation doesn't teach application of either the chil sung or pyung ahn forms. Thus, both sets really are more of a martial dance then anything else. You can still learn things from both, but that is mostly going to be limited to intrinsic concepts.

 

[MBuzzy]

One of the 13 year old girls from my dojang took fist in forms with Pyung Ahn Sam Dan at the regionals a couple weeks ago. I will admit though, she is exceptional at her forms, no matter which one she is doing.

I can't say that i really subscribe to the Pyung ahn \ Chil sung theory mentioned a couple of posts ago (at least i hope it isnt that way)... BUT... i have only been to 2 tournaments so my view is somewhat limited at this point.

Heres something to consider as well with the pyung ahn/chil sung argument... at my level right now, i know the 3 basic forms, pyung ahn 1 & 3, and chil sung 1 & 2. It seems to me that the level of difficulty on the chil sungs (more Il Ro than Ee Ro) is higher than the 2 pyung ahns. There seems to be more nuances to be aware of with Il Ro in particular especially with the amount of neh gung involved and to a lesser degree with Ee Ro on the breathing between the kicks coming back southward. So, in my humble opinion the offset of points awarded for the higher difficulty is warranted. A good example of a similar concept is in Olympic skating... a program with a higher degree of diffuculty that has some minor mistakes will win over a perfect performance of a lesser program. Naturally, this depends on the amount of mistakes made but you all get the point.

That is true, you can definately still win with them - especially at the lower levels when you have fewer forms to choose from. It is easier to do say Pyahn Ahn Sam Dan than Chil Sung Il Lo for a lower gup, because Il Lo requires so much control and muscle awareness.

It is a very good point that the difficulty doesn't match up and I think that you're right. In general, the Chil Sungs and Yuk Ros have more moves of a higher difficulty than the Pyahng Ahns. My view is rather limited as well. I am going off of what I saw at the tournament, between observing and judging myself, and what I have been told by the people in my school who have OFTEN been sold short due to form selection. When it comes to matters of pure hyung performance....the precision with which you execute the forms should be the major consideration, difficulty should play some role, but I'm not sure that it should matter as much as it does. I won with Jinto, but tied with a guy doing Jung Jol.....in my opinion, Jinto is MUCH more difficult than Jung Jul (Yuk Ro Ee Dan)....so my view is that jung jul will win you more points just based on the fact that you selected that particular form.

That reminds me...UpNorth - I was recently very surprised. At Regionals, one of the Sa Boms went over some curriculum that he teaches in his school and it was all Hyung application. Not the basics that I'm used to seeing, but much more advanced stuff, similar to what we were working on with Master Penfil. SO, it is creeping its way into the Federation slowly through a few points - but it is essential that these higher level Masters continue to bring it into the curriculum - even if it is just in their school. Eventually it will proliferate across the federation.

 

[Makalakumu]

That reminds me...UpNorth - I was recently very surprised. At Regionals, one of the Sa Boms went over some curriculum that he teaches in his school and it was all Hyung application. Not the basics that I'm used to seeing, but much more advanced stuff, similar to what we were working on with Master Penfil. SO, it is creeping its way into the Federation slowly through a few points - but it is essential that these higher level Masters continue to bring it into the curriculum - even if it is just in their school. Eventually it will proliferate across the federation.

Do you remember this sabum's name? I'm curious because I've been contacted by a fellow on myspace who is very interested in the videos I've posted there. TSD people tell me all of the time that they've never seen application like that and they are very interested in them.

This is why I'm considering throwing my support behind Penfil-san and his organization. With his rank and his connections, I think he stands a good chance of really making in-roads for this material into other organizations.

As far as bunkai-jutsu ever making it way to becoming an official part of the federation, I'm skeptical. I can easily see it growing to become an underground movement, but I think that the TAC and the SAC would move to squelch it. I can see two rank tests coming out of this. One that is done "in-house" and one that is done by the federation. You can guess at the one that will "really" matter.

The federation's leadership is going to have to have a major change of heart...or change of leadership before anything like this makes any major headway.

 

[exile]

As far as bunkai-jutsu ever making it way to becoming an official part of the federation, I'm skeptical. I can easily see it growing to become an underground movement, but I think that the TAC and the SAC would move to squelch it.

This is something I don't understand at all—why would any MA federation that had formal patterns as part of its official curriculum discourage the analysis of those forms for combat application? I mean, most MAs like to stress the self-defense effectiveness of their technique set, whatever else they have to say about it. That goes for CMAs, FMAs and just about anything else you can think of, so even if you're trying to completely uproot the karate basis of your art, why would you want to eliminate the component which taught students to read forms as practical guidelines for use of the art's technique set in actual violent conflicts? Surely the decryption of forms into strategic concepts and their tactical realization is hardly karate-specific, even if the word bunkai is Japanese, eh?

 

[MBuzzy]

I'm really not sure how much of it is discouraged and how much is just left out. No one flat out says that you can't do the stuff, most people are just "non-believers" I think.

 

[Makalakumu]

The answer is unfortunately simple. Business. Exile, as soon as you begin to incorporate this thinking into you curriculum, you are compelled to change just about everything about the way you think about your art. In a way, people who have been awarded various ranks and degrees would have to admit that they weren't as "expert" as they thought. There is a large chance that students could be lost.

I know this seems superficial, but I have had several experiences and have heard several stories of other experiences that have convinced me of its "truthiness" at least.

For example, one master who I started showing this stuff too told me flat out that he could never do this because he was afraid it would lead to an outright dojang rebellion. This is the problem when you build entire organizations off of misconceptions and then codify them into dogma.

 

[JT_the_Ninja]

I was recruited to judge at the latest tournament. Most soobahkdoin performed a sbd hyung. Of the few who did, they were marked lower because of it. For example, one student performed bassai at a level that I thought was great. My judging peers marked her a full point lower then what I saw.

Well that's bad news for anyone from an ITF school, isn't it? We don't do the chil sung/yuk ro hyung.

Politics is a horrible thing to have invade a tournament; every time I go to the National All-Martial Arts Tournament that the ITF sponsors, there's every reminder not to be biased toward TSD. In fact, just the opposite is common. While sitting in the stands last year, I overheard a couple talking with their daughter, who does TKD, and they said, "I hear that if your uniform doesn't say C. S. Kim, you don't win anything." To which I promptly turned around and responded that it's usually the ones not doing TSD that win, especially in forms. Maybe the cause is that most of the judges and most of the contestants are TSD, so it gets boring seeing a million different iterations of the same forms.

Btw, someone mentioned "basics" that are actually combinations, specifically yuk jin. For us, that's hugul yup mahki followed by a short reverse punch in hugul jaseh. These types of moves are always a bit baffling, because their names are not analyzable directly as "______+block/kick/strike". For instance, we have a move called yuk soo (kong kyuk), for which I don't know the translation, except that it's usually described in English as "defense, punch." The move consists of a one-handed middle-knife hand block in sa go rip jaseh, followed by a reverse punch, twisting into chungul jaseh. It's considered as a single unit in combinations ("yuk soo kong kyuk, choong dan soo do mahko, sang dan mahkee," et al). Those two are really the only moves like that, and as such they stand out and usually come last when doing basic drills ("marching the floor").

This might warrant another thread, but has anyone, in TSD or SBD, ever heard of yuk soo (kong kyuk) as I've described it?

Anyway, really interesting to hear about the "de-Japanification" you suspect is going on; I can't tell if it's affecting my federation (like I said, the only forms that Hwang Kee actually created are the ones we don't do), but I can understand the sentiment.

 

[Makalakumu]

This might warrant another thread, but has anyone, in TSD or SBD, ever heard of yuk soo (kong kyuk) as I've described it?

This is how I learned Yuk Soo (do) Kun Kyuk.

I throw my hands up in the air when it comes to cross organization terminology. Everyone had their Korean so screwed up that I wish that people would just stop pretending and speak english. It would be a lot more honest.

Anyway, JT, I'm not really familiar with the ITF. How does it connect to the Moo Duk Kwan? Does it at all?

 

[JT_the_Ninja]

This is how I learned Yuk Soo (do) Kun Kyuk.

I throw my hands up in the air when it comes to cross organization terminology. Everyone had their Korean so screwed up that I wish that people would just stop pretending and speak english. It would be a lot more honest.

Anyway, JT, I'm not really familiar with the ITF. How does it connect to the Moo Duk Kwan? Does it at all?

We used to have "Moo Duk Kwan" on the backs of our doboks. I suspect we stopped that, and changed them to say "International Tang Soo Do Federation," because the SBD people got protective of the name. Don't know if we can really claim MDK lineage, but Choong Jae Nim C. S. Kim did train under GM Hwang Kee, in some way or another. The ITF was founded in Spring 1984, in an attempt to preserve the traditional teaching of TSD.

I'd agree that we should just use English, except that (1) that loses a bit of the heritage aspect and (2) different schools use different English names -- same logic for using Latin/Greek for scientific names.

Btw, in relation to the video, we just refer to that as a ridge hand attack. In the gup manual, that's written (via romanization) as "Yok Soo Do." The move I described is listed as "Yuk Soo," sometimes referred to as "Yuk Soo Kong Kyuk," especially if it's in a combination.

 

[JoelD]

Kyo Sa, As my instructor tells me, (she knows Grandmaster Kim) he used to be a part of the Soo Bahk Do/Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan Federation until he decided to take his own path and start the ITF. She speaks very highly of him as a person and instructor.

BTW. in SBD the Yuk Soo Do Kong Kyuk is reverse knife hand attack, commonly called a ridgehand strike.

almost forgot. Kyo Sa, the instructor Craig mentioned that was showing the form applications at our tourney was Sa Bom Nim Steve Lemner

 

[e ship yuk]

I throw my hands up in the air when it comes to cross organization terminology. Everyone had their Korean so screwed up that I wish that people would just stop pretending and speak english. It would be a lot more honest.

My school, belonging to a mostly Japanese tournament organization, used a few Japanese terms: kata, gi, bo, sensei... that's really it, I think. When we decided to try to get back to a more Korean art, we used to get teased a bit by some of the other instructors in our new organization. Once, at a seminar, the instructor called out a Korean term, demonstrated the technique, looked at my instructor and said, "I don't know the Japanese term for it. What do you call it?" My instructor shrugged and said, "Ridgehand." Got a good laugh.

We do all technique names in English. We give a few basic commands in Korean: attention, bow, ready, end, rest... everything else is in English.

 

[MBuzzy]

I used to train with ITF years ago and they are basically the same as the other TSD split offs. CS Kim did used to be a member of the SBD MDK, in fact, it doesn't take too much looking to find pictures of him with Hwang Kee and KJN HC Hwang. Though they took the MDK off of their names, it is still a direct descendent art. A lot of those organizations never really started using the Chil Sungs or Yuk Ros because of the copyright battles over the forms and name usage. I really doubt that the ITF will ever seek to get rid of any Japanese influence.

 

[JT_the_Ninja]

I used to train with ITF years ago and they are basically the same as the other TSD split offs. CS Kim did used to be a member of the SBD MDK, in fact, it doesn't take too much looking to find pictures of him with Hwang Kee and KJN HC Hwang. Though they took the MDK off of their names, it is still a direct descendent art. A lot of those organizations never really started using the Chil Sungs or Yuk Ros because of the copyright battles over the forms and name usage. I really doubt that the ITF will ever seek to get rid of any Japanese influence.

Or admit that it's there other than passingly. We don't really play up the origins of the hyung, we just teach them and their application. Nobody's going to deny anything, I don't think, but what's more important is what the forms mean and how you apply them. I won't get into a debate about the importance of looking up the roots, though, so don't start one.

According to my sa bom nim, he learned up through chil sung sam ro before they stopped teaching and doing them. That would have been quite a while before I even started.