Uncovering The True Evolution Of Real Taekwondo Styles
First, the original kwans, the Song Moo Kwan, Moo Duk Kwan, Kwon Bop, and all the others, were predominately Karate. Most of the fellows who put these arts together studied with Gichin Funakoshi during the forties. The rest studied with his students or asssociates.
Thus, the first schools were karate, plain and simple and not negotiable. Korea gaining independence, however, and nationalism rising, taekwondo was invented by General Choi Hong Hi. Thus, much of Japanese Karate was tossed out, altered, and taekwondo began its various evolutions.
There are several taekwondo methods, and several evolutions of forms. Most of them are versions of simple karate basics, with concentration on kicking. One should not hold one art as better than another, and such statements as my Taekwondo is the Deadliest Martial Art, or my Taekwondo is the Best Martial Art should be withheld. The individual arts are pieces of the whole puzzle, and the serious student will study all the styles, do all the forms, and decide for himself which are best.
That said, one should branch into a study of Hapkido. Hapkido is a put together by a fellow who is supposed to have trained in Daito ryu Aiki jujitsu. There is some confusion on the exact experiences of the founder, but the art is proving valuable. It is lasting, and people are learning their lessons, but one does need to go into a study of it with awareness.
After Hapkido there are the original Korean Martial Arts. These would be such arts as Taekgyeon and Subak. Taekgyeon, and there is some variation on this spelling, eventually translated into Hwarangdo. While Hwarangdo borrowed the name, there does seem to be some meat to the art.
Subak is one of the ancient Korean arts taught before the Japanese outlawed martial arts study in Korea. It is an excellent style of drilling and training and throwing an attacker. Unfortunately, it may be difficult to find a sensei in this style, but it is still worth exploring.
So, the advice here is that one start off with the simple variations of Choi Hong Hi, and travel through the various groups and styles to find what is best for you. After that, one should explore original karate forms and techniques, to better explore the origins of TKD, and then begin a sojourn through Hapkido, and Hwarangdo, and, if one is lucky, Subak. While this suggestion of study may seem time consuming, it is the only way to get to the the original secrets of Real Taekwondo Styles.
Al Case studied the Kang Duk Won back in the seventies, and it was in its original form. Go to his website if you want to pick up an absolutely ree Karate Book.
I Used Martial Arts To Cut Open His Chest…And Found The Real Me.
One day, lunchtime, and this fellow asked me to show him some martial arts. We went into a back room. It was dim and noisy, and we had to really concentrate to hear each other.
I was showing him suburito, which are basic Aikido sword exercises. I was showing him how to stand a certain way and hold the sword straight up in a ready position. Suddenly, I felt a huge force grab a hold of me; it was like the hand of a 100 foot tall giant.
I couldn’t stop the motion of the sword, and it sliced down behind me. A guy named Eddie had been sneaking up on me, and the sword cut through his plaid shirt and into the flesh of his chest. It was a ragged wound, blood poured out, and he staggered back against a stack of pallets and clutched at his chest.
It was first aid time, and Eddie was going to have to take a trip to the hospital and get his chest sewn back together. While we were standing there, trying to staunch the flow of blood, I asked Eddie a question, “What were you doing?” He said, “I was going to get you, man.
I was going to grab a hold of you. It was just a gag, I thought it would be funny.” Sensing something beneath his simple explanation, I asked him, “What were you thinking, right when it happened?”
He muttered, “I thought I was going to get you. Right when I was starting to jump I thought, ‘Aha…got him!’ And then you cut me open!”
The flesh is a fence, and the eyes and ears are like searchlights watching what goes on outside the fence. With the martial arts you start moving energy around inside the fence, and you start to become more perceptive. Eventually you become aware outside the flesh. You learn how to see without the eyes and ears.
And, you become aware that you are more than just a body, you are a 100 foot giant spiritual being. The point here is that whether you study Kenpo or Karate, Kung Fu like Wing Chun, or something else, the answers are there, the martial arts can help you find the real you. You just need to work out hard enough, and in an art that is logical and efficient.
This really happened, and the method Al used is called Matrix Martial Arts. You can find out about it at Monster Martial Arts. Al has 4O years martial arts experience.
The Secret Of Power Kick Strategies In Karate
Interestingly, kicks were not always a big thing, they didn’t even impact on the American martial arts until the sixties. Watch the kicks in movies earlier than that and you don’t see much, not even in the old kung fu chop sockies. The reason for this lack of adequate kicking had to do with clothing and basic strategy.
Soldiers in older times often wore armor in combat. This meant that they were carrying more weight, and their balances were often at risk if they wanted to deliver some sort of leg attack. Ask a modern day solder to kick while wearing body armor, a back pack, a rifle, while wearing combat boots, and you will easily see my point.
Another reason was that soldiers carried weapons. Why on earth would you deliver a kick, which is slower than punching, and larger and easier to see, to a fellow who was holding a sword? Or, with today’s modern warfare, a rifle?
Thus, before the advent of such arts as Tae Kwon Do, with that art’s spinning kicks and head hunters and ax kicks, martial arts foot techniques were quite a bit different. Instead of lifting the foot high and poking it straight in, which could often be easily defended against, the leg was chambered with the foot cupping the standing knee, and then flicked out. Thus, the kick was actually more of a slap with the outside of the foot.
A lot of power could be delivered with this type of foot, and one didn’t have to risk falling, and it wasn’t out long enough to be chopped off. Actually, it was designed for close quarter combat, not the long ranges developed by some of today’s arts. And, speaking oftoday’s arts, we now come face to face with modern legwork.
Long, spinning, jumping kicks came into their own with the introduction of Tae Kwon Do arts of the 60s. Long kicks took a lot of work to develop, were great for conditioning, and were so different that, at least in the beginning, they were hard to defend against. Now, however, while they are good for a change up, most people see the long foot coming, and so they treat them as a part of their basic tools and not the end all that defines combat.
It is doubtful that we will ever go back to lower, short range, slapping kicks. And, there is good reason for practicing the long, high kicks, for they are pretty darn good for shifting strategies in combat. And, the good news, one can, through heaps of sweat and a bit of intelligence, develop powerful kicks in any art, be it Karate, Kung Fu, or whatever.
Al Case began kicking 4O++ years ago in the Kang Duk Won. You can pick up a free ebook describing his methods at Monster Martial Arts.
Finding The True Art in the Kang Duk Won
Kang Duk Won Korean Karate was born of a classmate of Gichin Funakoshi’s, Toyama Kanken, and therefore it is one of the purest representations of Karate in existence. It took root in Korea, and was tempered in that countries harsh winters and boiling summers, all of which made it an art for men to study. Eventually it came to the United States, and I studied it in San Jose under the guidance of Bob Babich.
Next to the Kang Duk Won was the Towne Theater, which immoral cinema had the everlasting honor of showing a movie starring a gal name of Linda Lovelace for over two years. Other businesses included sweat shops and bars and nothing yuppie at all. In front of the Kang Duk Won, like as not, you would see a score of Harley Davidsons, courtesy of the Hells Angels, Gypsy Jokers, and just about any other Outlaw Biker gang who wanted to put aside war to learn the real art.
The front window was cracked and the pieces held together with duc tape. Visitors sat on a picnic bench placed under the window to watch classes. Bob’s office was a telephone booth just big enough for a desk and two chairs, just don’t try to open the chairs.
The mat was made out of sailboat canvas, and a big seam ran up the left side of the mat. It was a dirty, filthy thing, and where forms turned you could see strips of duc tape. And it was small, maybe 15 by 25, but classes of 20 and more would work full bore in their pursuit of the art.
In the back hung the bag, and Bob filled it himself, made it extra heavy. He was always taking it down to get it sewn back together, the darned thing looked like Frankenstein’s manhood. We used to kick that thing till it bounced, and the whole building would throb and shake.
Now, you might wonder why such a place deserves my infinite admiration, and the answer is simple. No excuses, no whining, no bottles of designer water standing at the sides of the mat. Just men working, sweating, giving everything they had, and building an energy indescribable.
I look at modern schools today, with all their amenities, and I shudder, for I don’t feel the manic energy, I don’t feel the intensity and the comradeship. I don’t think I am being old, I am just terrified that when I die, when I come back in another body, I won’t find a group of people that are willing to suffer for the True Art. I won’t find something, dirty, ragged, gasping for breath, and yet willing to suffuse my soul with the true spirit of the martial arts, I won’t find something like the Kang Duk Won.
Al Case has studied martial arts for over over 4O plus+ years. His CD/DVD course, Evolution of an Art, has Kang Duk Won and two other arts. Or just pick up a free ebook at his site, Monster Martial Arts.
Intrinsic Power through Six Simple Steps!
The first step in this sequence can hardly be considered a step at all, it is a lack of knowledge. This is when a person doesn’t use his hips at all when doing the martial arts. Oddly, one can see the lack of knowledge because the student has a bad case of butt wiggle when he steps forward and executes a front punch.
When I found the traditional karate of Kwon Bop I found out how to slam the hips into a strike. We would stand in place and pivot front stances, slamming the hips, as a regular part of our training. This put the weight of the body into the technique, and built really usable power.
The third step came when I realized that I could just move the hips without slamming them. This was a small motion, sometimes nothing more than an in and out jerk of alignment, but it worked, was efficient, and was my first step into what we call internal power. This motion, developed in traditional karate such as shito ryu, is often called hip vibration.
The fourth step was when I came to understand that you could roll the whole body like a pipe half filled with sand. The purpose was to make all the sand on the inside of the pipe collide with the end or side of the pipe at the same moment one struck an opponent. I was heavily involved in generating internal power now, and one can see this type of movement in properly done forms such as hangetsu.
The fifth step I realized after I had played Tai Chi for a number of years. Instead of slamming the hips, or rolling the arm or body like a pipe, I simply moved the body or body part in a subtle motion so that the tan tien was like a cup of liquid, and the internal energy was sloshing on the inside of the cup. This caused energy to swell up inside the body, and this energy could be used in martial techniques.
The power of the fifth step is when one learns to release themselves. People always hold themselves back a little, obviously not wanting to hurt somebody, but, not so obviously, stopping their intrinsic power. The sixth step is to learn to relax enough that you don’t withhold yourself, and then the energy you have generated by the previous methods becomes real and can be used in martial technique.
The path I have outlined may sometimes appear lengthy, but once you understand the pieces, it can become quite short. The problem is that many martial arts don’t present all the pieces, and one must study a variety of martial arts to learn all the steps, and this sometimes leads to seeming contradictions. Still, it is possible to learn how to develop and manifest intrinsic power if one chooses the right technology.
Al Case has studied martial arts for 4O+ years. The correct technology is called Matrix Martial Arts, and you can get a free ebook describing this correct technology at Monster Martial Arts.
