Regarding time-in-grade, I think a lot of people are forgetting that a black belt in most TKD schools means that someone has a foundational understanding of the art. If someone gets a black belt in 3-4 years, that means they've got the foundations. It's not til 2nd or 3rd degree (probably 7-12 years for 3rd degree) before people have a real solid understanding.
I don't see it as a disconnect. I see it as a maturity thing. When you start, you're going to think in terms of techniques, and you're going to think of those techniques as being exactly as shown in the forms. That is normal and as it should be. As you mature in your understanding of the art, this changes. You'll realize that Palgwae I actually has 20 strikes. And 20 blocks. And some grappling.
I'm not sure how much of that can be taught, honestly. Yes, I advocate teaching application, but I'm not sure if you can really teach people to move beyond the specified applications. You can teach 3, or 4, or 5... but can they come up with others on their own?
If there is anything in the TKD world that hampers development of this maturity in the art, I think it's possibly the trend towards baby black belts, or black belts being awarded after only a few years of training. Maturity takes time. And if you're a black belt in a year, or two years or three, then I wouldn't expect real maturity in the system to appear until high Dan ranks.
That's not meant as a slam at any system. In most systems that have baby black belts or Dan ranks in 2-3 years, teaching ranks don't start until mid- to high- Dan levels. And that is how it should be, I think, if your system has rapid advancement.
In my experience, if I find a motion in a form can be used in another application, its usually by accident. It's usually that I'm using the other application already, and I realize it's similar to that in the form. In that case, I find that maybe the muscle memory from the form helps. In some cases it doesn't really help, because even though the motion looks similar - it's different enough or I'm looking for something a little bit different and it takes just as long to get it from there.
I have more thoughts, but I'll discuss these more after I address what
@Buka said.
I have a question. Does anybody know how many techniques are taught in TKD that are not in any of the forms? Just curious.
I am speaking for my school, which the curriculum is considerably different than a lot of other schools. As I've mentioned, our versions of the Palgwe forms are different, and we don't do the Taegeuks. However, most of the same techniques show up in our forms, if even in a different order. We also have our own set of self defense techniques, I'm not sure what my Master brought straight from Taekwondo, and what comes from his training in Hapkido, Judo, and Tuk Kong. So take what I say with that grain of salt.
With that said, outside of forms, the primary things we teach at my school are self defense and sparring. So I'll look at how the stuff from the forms is used in either of them, and how much from those is not in the forms.
- Blocks - We actually learn more blocks than we use in sparring or in self defense. There are several blocks that never pop up in our defense scenarios. There's a huge thread I have about the double-knife-hand block (we use the regular knife-hand, but not the double). We never use scissor block, the low diamond block in Keumgang kind of appears in one of our hand grabs (but is not done with the crane stance), we never really do the double outside blocks or double low blocks you see in Keumgang. The inside/outside block in Keumgang (where the kiyhap is) we actually do use, but much less stylized.
- Punches - We learn several punches that don't end up making it into our forms. In particular, the low underpunch, the vertical punch (some of our basic punches), and the spinning chop don't appear. There's also the jab without stepping, as well as the hook punch (uppercut kind of appears in Taebaek, but not in the way it would typically be used). What you find even less of is punch combinations. Jab-reverse, hook-uppercut, the normal 1-2-3-4 (jab-reverse-hook-uppercut) combo, reverse-backfist, etc. There's a few cases where you get multiple reverse punches back to back, or else an elbow and then a chop, but for the most part, punch combinations aren't there.
- Kicks - There are a TON of front kicks in our forms, a few side kicks, and then a few other kicks get sprinkled in here or there. (I have another thread about this, about developing kicking forms). There's very little in the way of roundhouse kicks and back kicks, and none of the jumping versions of those. Hook kicks are pretty much non-existent, except our alternate version of Keumgang has a 360 hook kick in it. We have a few crescent kicks, no ax kicks, and no tornado kicks. If I were to teach one person only our forms and another person only our kicks, they might both have a good front kick, but other than that have completely different skill sets. Now, if the purpose of the form is to document the list of techniques, then those meager appearances of back kicks and side kicks is okay. But if the purpose is to build muscle memory, then you won't learn much about the kicks doing the forms (again, except for front kick).
- Footwork - We do step-behind kicks in practice that don't show up in our forms (same with step-behind hook kicks). There's a lot of different slides and jumps that don't show up in our forms. The footwork in our forms is mostly steps, turns, and stance changes. These show up somewhat in our self defense, but the footwork for Taekwondo sparring is completely not there.
- Grappling - The forms do not teach leg sweeps or hip throws. They do not include techniques to get someone off-balance in a body grab. There is absolutely no ground-fighting, and no techniques that would work on a downed opponent. We have plenty of different hand grabs at my school, and having done 36 hand grabs and 5 body grabs by the time we get our black belt, I can comfortably say that there is very little overlap in the techniques between the forms and the self defense training. Part of this may be in the way the footwork is done, a big part is how they're stylized. But unless you consider the forms to be a Rorschach Ink Blot in terms of how vague each motion can be interpreted, the grappling isn't there.
Now, I think the forms apply more to our self defense than to our sparring. The style of our self defense is to stay more grounded, with deeper stances and a lot of the same blocks. However, a lot of the nuances (such as how to develop leverage) aren't there. If you do the motions as the form teaches them, it would not be very good.
If I compare this to some of the motions I've seen in Kung Fu forms, I definitely see how the Kung Fu forms teach the motions to properly generate leverage. Even if those are stylized a bit, I look at some of those and definitely see the types of movement in the hips and shoulders that I would use to get my opponent off balance and/or to make a throw.
So,
@Dirty Dog , this is why I don't see a grappling application. It's a combination of the hand motions being slightly off, and the details of the footwork and body control are all wrong for grappling. Plus, the forms don't have anything to follow up. Even if the forms aren't supposed to be scripted, there are 0 takedowns, and 0 techniques you would use on a downed person.
), I'd encourage students at a certain level to start exploring the forms by adjusting them to those kinds of indirect applications. I do that (probably too early) with the forms I teach.
