SD curriculum for TKD

[terryl965]

What type of curriculum does your school run for its TKD program?
In amother thread a member ask how does TKD teach Self Defense and thought this might be a way of getting a better understanding from all of us. I will chime in once the thread start going. Looking for some great converstation here and remember we may not all agree but we can still be civilized towards our fellow MA'ist.

 

[YoungMan]

My Instructor often demonstrated the SD applications of various strikes and kicks-where to apply them and attain maximum power. I know full well what Taekwondo self defense is capable of.

 

[Jai]

The TKD schools I have been involved in put very little focus on SD which is why I picked up other arts during my time in TKD.

 

[terryl965]

My Instructor often demonstrated the SD applications of various strikes and kicks-where to apply them and attain maximum power. I know full well what Taekwondo self defense is capable of.

Youngman I know you know, this thread is about expanding on what we do for the general public on this forum. You know want it is exactly you do to make SD work and how is that beneficial to the people when they are attacked.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

Let me start by saying that there are different levels of self defense.

First is the level of being able to 'handle one's self' when confronted by Joe average punk. This is what 90% of those seeking SD are looking for.

Secondly, there are those who feel that what they see in the UFC is more 'self defense' than what they see in the typical 'karate school'.

Thirdly, there is military self defense training, which I see advertised heavily in magazines, but which few people actually have in any degree of abundance. True military training is not always fully applicable on the street; true military self defense does not need to concern itself with civilian law enforcement after the defender has neutralized the attacker.

Lastly, there are those who understand that self defense encompasses potential encounters with the Joe-average punk, hardened ex-cons, and people who seriously intend to do you harm and even kill you, and that in spite of being the victim, one must defend in such a way as to also prevail against potential legal hassles.

A proficient WTF practitioner will neatly fit into category one. Which is fine for 90% of those seeking 'self defense', as most people seeking self defense really just mean that they want to be able to fight, having little clue as to all that true self defense encompasses.

We offer hapkido for those who want a more self defense oriented cirriculum, as hapkido provides a much broader range of defense techniques than WTF/KKW style TKD does. At one point, we were doing combination classes, and even further back, Tuesday nights were 'self defense' night, which worked in a nice mix of easily mastered techniques, breakfalls, and some blocks, kicks and punches.

But for true self defense, a whole set of skills are needed that have nothing to do with fighting. Things like awareness of your surroundings, how to carry yourself, reading the body language of someone who confronts you, assessing threat level and such.

I think that very few schools teach this on any real level, and yet these non-martial skills are more vital to self defense than the martial skills that enable a civilian to survive day in and day out. Ever notice how some people seem to be magnets for confrontation and others don't?

I do believe that local police departments and community centers offer seminars in self defense that focus on the awareness and not making yourself a target issues, but very few people who seek out 'self defense' avail themselves of these resources.

Daniel

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

My Instructor often demonstrated the SD applications of various strikes and kicks-where to apply them and attain maximum power. I know full well what Taekwondo self defense is capable of.

It amazes me how many people in the MA world dismiss the importance and the power of effective striking techniques, especially when couple with realtime sparring.

Daniel

 

[tellner]

To beat one of my favorite late horses, there's something you need to keep in mind.

Martial arts are not self defense.
Self defense is not martial arts.

I don't just mean your martial art, I mean mine and everyone elses from Koryu Bujutsu to XMA. The laws, principles, techniques, fitness and so on may be useful for self defense, but they are manifestly not the same thing.

For one thing, any martial art worth studying takes several years to come into its own. There are training methods which interlock and attributes that build on each other. Self defense training can be extremely effective, but it is by its very nature limited in time and scope. The good versions are almost always reactive in nature, rely on large body movements, and mostly involves changing the trainee's attitude to the first part of the "Fight, Flight, Freeze" reaction.

A martial arts program should not take short cuts. The point is to develop deep skill so that you can maintain and improve your own training without supervision at some point. A self defense course has to go for the quickest gains in the shortest time. That means that it is entirely made up of shortcuts. There is no time for anything else.

The goals of martial arts training and the changes it makes in the student may include all sorts of things like physical fitness, spiritual enlightenment, social bonding, the carrying on of a tradition or nationalistic fervor for someone else's nation - this is a TKD forum after all. Every one of these is complete and utter ******** in a self defense course and needs to be jettisoned immediately. The only goal of a self defense course is increasing the willingness and ability to stop an attacker as efficiently as possible. Anything which steals precious minutes of instruction from that goal is a possibly fatal disservice to the only matter at hand. By the same token, if something serves that goal you need to consider incorporating it even if it's completely alien to your martial art and how it does things.

Some of what you do may be useful for self defense. A lot of it will be worthless, crap, a total waste of your time and energy. If your goal is to hold up your martial art as the fulfillment of your (and its institutional) fantasies of power and potency you are already headed in the wrong direction. It isn't a matter of showing off how wonderful your tool is. It's identifying the job and finding the right tool to fit it. The world's best air conditioner makes a lousy screwdriver. But with a little work you can modify a chisel or drill to do the job.

 

[KELLYG]

I am fortunate that my instructors teach basic self defenses. Self defenses for women in sexual assault scenarios. Knife self defense. Elbow self defenses. Ground self defenses. Gun self defenses. Hapkido type self defenses. How to carry one's self in public as awareness of surroundings. As well as how to make sure that if you are attacked how to position you self to make sure that if anyone witnesses that it is obvious that you are defending instead of being the aggressor. Some of these defenses are harsh enough that they are only taught at black belt level and mostly taught to adults. This on top of regular TKD training makes for a more well rounded martial artist.

 

[Daniel Sullivan]

For one thing, any martial art worth studying takes several years to come into its own. There are training methods which interlock and attributes that build on each other. Self defense training can be extremely effective, but it is by its very nature limited in time and scope. The good versions are almost always reactive in nature, rely on large body movements, and mostly involves changing the trainee's attitude to the first part of the "Fight, Flight, Freeze" reaction.

A martial arts program should not take short cuts. The point is to develop deep skill so that you can maintain and improve your own training without supervision at some point. A self defense course has to go for the quickest gains in the shortest time. That means that it is entirely made up of shortcuts. There is no time for anything else.

These two paragraphs sum up the difference between self defense and a martial art very, very well. All hand to hand martial arts do, by nature and to varying degrees, contain much, if not all of the techniques that one would learn in a self defense class. But they also contain a lot that is not directly related to self defense. Some of the material may be tournament etiquette, some may be techniques that would be useless outside of a tournament, and some material may be there for the purpose of developing the fitness needed to effectively fight for prolonged periods of time and the flexibility to perform some of the more spectacular kicks.

A fighting style will contain the elements of self defense, but a self defense course is not a fighting style.

By the way, Tellner, I love the air conditioner/screwdriver analogy.

Daniel

 

[StuartA]

What type of curriculum does your school run for its TKD program?

We do two things:

1. That which is in the scope of TKD - 1 step, hosinsul, Traditional sparring, knife defence etc.

2. We have a seperate self protection syllabus/course - this include enviromental awareness, the law and self defence (UK), pre-emptive striking and any other modern developments (fear triangle for example)

TKD can teach self defence if trained properly, however self protection is the key aim.. to avoid trouble before it gets to you and still be able to survive it when it does.. both are inter-related.

The question should be... how do you know what your teaching works? Many will say, well it worked for me, and I am in that category as I have used how I have trained on a number of occassions... but the real proof is in those that you trained. Individual assaults/defences aside.. I have had two students who have successfully used what they learnt against multiple attackers, with weapons.. one a baseball bat, one a knife, in both cases the attackers numbered 3. Both students successfully turned the tables.. one ended up chasing the attackers down the road with their own weapon.. to me, this is 90% evidence that what I teach is on the right track.. I say 90% as nothing is ever certain... ever!

Stuart

 

[YoungMan]

I disagree with the presumption that Hapkido (or BJJ for that matter) is more effective for self defense than Taekwondo. This is untrue. Do they have beneficial techniques? Absolutely. Are they more effective than Taekwondo when it comes to allowing you to defend yourself? Nope. I know people who have used Taekwondo techniques for self defense to great effect.
My Instructor talked about the SD applications of Taekwondo at great length, and we are Kukkiwon school.

 

[SageGhost83]

Martial arts are not self defense.
Self defense is not martial arts.

I am so glad that you mentioned this. There are far too many people who equate self-defense with strictly hand-to-hand combat when hand-to-hand combat is only one single aspect of self defense. Just because one can fight doesn't mean that they are well-versed in self defense. There are so many things that go into self defense such as situational awareness, environmental awareness, body language, verbal judo, prevention, eye witnesses, self triage, dealing with the police, etc., etc. A martial art is only a single part of an overall self-defense system, but that martial art is not the entire self-defense system, itself.

 

[Windsinger]

At the school I learn from, our instructor teaches self-defence in addition to TKD and Arnis. And not only at the school. I know he teaches SD, knife defense, and other SD techniques to security companies and (iirc) the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, too.

And it's not just TKD-based SD. He teaches from a POV of "This is what I've learned works".

Looking at this, I'm not certain I've made myself very clear. I hope I have.

 

[Kacey]

I teach a continuum that starts with awareness and avoidance, and works up from there.

 

[SageGhost83]

I teach a continuum that starts with awareness and avoidance, and works up from there.

As a person who has been shot at many times in the desert and narrowly escaping many life and death situations, I must say that awareness is perhaps the single most important aspect of SD, IMHO.

 

[tellner]

I teach a continuum that starts with awareness and avoidance, and works up from there.

I've found that Debbie Leung's four-part view works very well:

• Prevention
• Avoidance
• Deterrence
• Resistance

 

[Tez3]

I think whatever techniques you learn for SD, practice is important. It's no good just knowing the techniques if you haven't drilled them into your subconcious and muscle memory. I watched a programme the other day on the training of something new we have here, civilian support officers in the police, they are uniformed but not police who go out on the streets etc. Anyway they do a 12 training programme and they do self defence techniques in the first week then they never do it again in their careers so what good is that? Many martial arts schools teach techniques in a session or two and thats it. I've seen womens courses teach SD for women over a number of weeks and thats the end of their training but to my mind you have to drill them until you can do them instinctively. Not just the techniques either but as others have seen you have to 'train' to be aware and alert.
Womes courses that last a few weeks are my pet hate I'm afraid, they give a false confidence and make me rant lol!