No one stands there after a fight with their hands down, nor is anyone advocating that esspecially in novice stages. Advanced fighting stratgies may indeed keep their hand down on purpose to bait or trick an attacker in some way. However one needs to be aware that in SD sometimes your hands are down and nothing you can do about it but you still must be able to defend yourself regardless. Lastly your school is NOT (aka Sinmoo) in anyway at all. Your school is from the Sung Moo Kwan linage per the website which is not the same as Sinmoo HKD. It has similar roots going back to Ji Han Jae. Sinmoo was established in 1984 in the US and is the lastest style and best style of GM Ji Han Jae that was not taught to earlier Korean Sung Moo Kwan students. With that said a lot of basic HKD tech are probably the same. :hat:
Hi Thomas Long time no speak, nice to hear from you. We did about 1/2 hour demo for some about 20 people at my new school's location last month and sort of just winged it cause we had no notice. I edited a few techniques that looked Ok and strung them together there you have it. I put a few more tech on utube as well in this clip. I was talking to the audiance explaining each which you may notice on the clips. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw2A-twnraw&feature=channel_page"]YouTube - Sinmoo Hapkido Clips 2[/ame]
Unless your Master (Mike Forster) has recently affiliated with Sin Moo and Ji Han Jae independently of his Master (Chul Kim), Kraen, you guys are not Sin Moo, unless it his through his affiliation with Song (which was a huge mistake).
"..He later changed the name to Sin Moo Hapkido; however, the style remained the same." At any rate, it is whatever it is. (Whatever that may be... Sung Moo Kwan apparently.) -Kraen
You guys never <masked profanity removed> learn, do you!?! Its always this same G-D bickering back-and-forth about who is and is not the "real article" in the Hapkido community. We could have some real investment in examining the nature of kicks, and maybe do some research to see what manner of training produces the optimal kicks (IE. fastest, generate most power, are most combat worthy) ...... but NOOOOO not for you guys. You would rather spend all of yer G-D time bickering back and forth about WHO is genuine and who is not. Would you mind telling me what is so G-D important about identifying WHO is the authentic and non-authentic Hapkido practice!?! I'd really love to know what it is that you are trying to prove. To my ear it sounds like a Hapkido version of "what I belong to is special so I am special...and what you are is less". Personally I wouldn't get so upset except that the whole time you guys are bickering back and forth about this superficial crap, the essence of the Hapkido arts never gets better, never improves. To my mind, what I see happening is people passing-on the proclivity of the Korean culture to identify existence in two parts. There's "our special clan" and there is the "outside world". How very Korean. Except that in 2000 years it has done nothing to preserve the best in Korean culture and only perpetuates the worst. FWIW. Best Wishes, Bruce
Don't fool yourself. Sinmoo is an art that has evolved many times over from what was taught back in Korea which is what you do and is great but is not Sinmoo.
I've come to the realization that people who don't even know what style they do or what they actually practice makes it nearly impossible to have higher discussions like you suggest. For example the clip of the HKD guy above clearly doing TKD kicks and claiming to teach HKD is a situation where he most likely believes in what he does is HKD because that's what he was taught. They Guy who thinks he does Sinmoo is another example. I'd bet his teacher or someone in his school told him his style and Sinmoo is the same thing so that's what he thinks. Did the fellow ever bother to consult GM Ji or a Sinmoo Master to actually see what they say about the matter or will he go on believing incorrect information. So how does one have higher conversations with people that one may consider white belts in the mind and clearly mis-taught? Believe and critical thinking doesn't mix.
so who's to blame for all this confusion? is it choi himself? clearly, he couldn't keep his students in line, like ueshiba and kano did. i mean really, there's no controversy regarding different styles of aikido or judo, definitely not like there is always this back and forth in hapkido. or is it teachers that aren't very experienced that go off, start schools, and perpetuate this hapkido-lite? or is it the term hapkido, that maybe now just means "any korean martial art, and even some japanese-influenced ones". stuart, i find it interesting that on your school's website, the founder of hapkido is ji han jae. huh?
I don't know who's to blame? As far as many people teaching HKD that have no business doing so is correct, but there's nothing anyone can do except stand-up for what is good HKD. Again too many people call what they do HKD but if you ask GM Ji about it he's not happy with the direct of much of HKD. Kicking is one easy point to see, are they teaching TKD kicks or HKD kicks? Pretty east to see the difference, but novices won't know and they'll believe what there teacher told them. Early Sung Moo Kwan lineage is not the same as current Sinmoo linage it's sort of like saying pre and post was AKD. By most accounts they're not the same systems but are still related cousins. Ji is the founder but this has been discussed too many times already.
For the record no one in my club has actually (verbally) said, "The style we do is ____________ Hapkido." At least not during my time there (1 year so far DX) The club doesn't advertise, 'we belong to this group, and this federation, and know these people.' All the information I know (minus a few things you hear from old stories) is on the site. "...There's a 10th dan over in (LA for example) and he does this (forms) for these reasons. We 'have' those, but it's not something we teach regularly for this, this and this reason.." "...One time a few of us went to Hawaii, and (Jimmy Jeneric).." -Kraen
I've heard of Mike Forster, and I trust he's a good honest guy...does good old-style HKD. I think where much of the problems arise are from the underlings under a particular master or teacher putting words or attributing beliefs to them, and these underlings can be gueps, or 7th dan rank holders. To create a false sense of closeness, they become a clarion call for their master and overstate many things. The key is just to relate what you personally have heard, rather than what you think. FWIW
Choi taught only what he learned in Japan which was Yawara or Jujutsu to his Korean students. HKD has many kicks, weapons, etc... that Choi didn't do, GM Ji is the main mover and shaker in the development of Hapkido & Sinmoo. I don't want to go into a long discussion about this it's been done to death.
Ok so why did you say Sung Moo Kwan and Sinmoo is the same thing. Why would you say that if you really don't know??? BTW I've met Master Forster and he's a very good HKD man definitely the real deal.
Before any other comment, I extend my apologies to any folks who found my earlier rant distasteful. Using the suggestion of profanity did not make my thoughts any more clear or accurate. If there were an Emoticon for washing my keyboard with soap I'd use it. Sorry about that. As far as the matter of Stuart's comment, what I hear most often is the matter of confusing a particular personality or organization or approach with defining the Hapkido arts as a whole. And, no, I don't believe one has to wait until everyone is in agreement before having a discourse on the subject. If, for instance, one wants to raise the level of energy imparted by a kick, I do not believe that everyone has to be in agreement regarding nomenclature and the origins of the kick or the primacy of JI Han Jae first. The kinds of telemetric events as have become popular on TV MA programs don't spend a lot of time defining the origins or affiliations before conducting an event. Let me also say that OTOH I have just completed an exchange with some traditional Japanese sword practitioners and found that the role of objective discourse and the collection of objective data has very little to do with most of the people who participated. Rather, they enjoy keeping things subjective and find the idea of using modern technology to assess their performance affrontive to their practice. Different strokes etc etc etc. The original, if impassioned, comment I made was focused on the matter that a disgusting large amount of time seems to be spent on folks defining or identifying their respective turf and very little on actually improving the Hapkido arts. FWIW. Best Wishes, Bruce
" Believe and critical thinking doesn't mix. " I´d liked that comment, from Master Rosenberg. But, everyone of us, has some degree of faith, and some degree of critical thinking, in regards what each one of our masters had taught us. It´s not like black or white. The very truth, is that between Hapkido (any kwan or style) and Taekwondo (even ITF, WTF, or the earlier Tangsoodo), has been a lot of cross polinization about kicking (and other issues) techniques. I had found, in general, that tkd emphasizes more the "positive" kicks, the "snap-like" kicks.... and less, the "negative" kicks (as Hapkido, indeed does). I´ve read that HwaRangDo, has 365 different kicking techniques (one for every day of the year!!), sounds nice indeed. I don´t know by sure, but I had told that many, many today´s tkd kicks were indeed copied from hkd masters. When I was a kid, tkd guys didn´t do those fancy 540 degrees spin kicks (as they do in capoeira). I am guessing, but I think they just copied them. Just some thoughts. Kicking is always a VERY interesting subject to discuss. Best regards. And thanks to all the masters for sharing their knowledge to us.
