I find the best bet is to blank out all the background, and picture do your pattern against an imaginary opponent. I find this gives me more meaning to my punches, kicks and blocks. It makes them faster and more powerful in sparing too.
You never stop doing the first form you learn. You’re a white belt and your doing tornado kicks? And Sparring? And learning more than one form? Well aside from how wrong that seems. The first from should be nothing more than a basic H pattern form. What an instructor (or I should say a good instructor) looks for here is a really good understanding of the basics. It’s generally all about the stances. Practice your front stance in front of a mirror turning on each side and from every angle. Here the instructor should be looking for proper position of the feet.. ie. Are they in line and pointed the same direction the back leg straight the front leg bent so that it forms a perfect right angle to the floor. The back straight, the head not tilted eyes are focus straight ahead. Imagine you are on a set of railroad rails.. When you punch don’t reach so that your shoulders are brought out of line punch straight ahead as if you were striking the person dead center in their chest. Don’t arch the wrist the arm should be on a straight line. The fist should not tilt up or down leaving the first two knuckles squared on the target. For a back stance I recommend setting your back leg against a wall until you get comfortable with the stance place the back leg so that it stays straight from the knee down while you front foot is in a perfect line to the back heal. For the horse stance.. How low can you go? Keep the back straight and again look in a mirror and adjust yourself so that your back is not tilted forward or backward. Above all relax concentrate on your breathing envision the opponent but focus on your stances and techniques rather then the pattern of the form. After you have a firm grasp of the basics and the pattern of the from do the form goofy style.. ie. The exact opposite of what you normally do… if your first move is a front stance to the left with a right punch it now becomes a front stance to the right with a left punch and so on. Also if you are always facing one way in the room you are practicing in then face the opposite way and try the form again. This will help you in learning the form inside and out. Normally as an instructor I only look for a good grasp of the basics for promotion to yellow belt. During the course of training for the next belt you should be continue to perfect the first form while learning your second and so on. If I had a dime for every time I did our first form I’d be a rich man!. Perfection is the goal we all strive to attain knowing full well it is unattainable.
Very Helpful thread. I think I can clear Lithanwif's question first. The Shotokan forms you speak of are referred to as Pyung Ahn in the Korean systems. They are very similar to the Shotokan method, but they are done with Korean techniques and emphasis on the hips in a different manner. They are the standard I pattern many people have mentioned and yes they have two Ki Haps in them as a rule. Now to our white belt friend, and his forms issue. My friend I have 27 years of experience in the martial arts, and I am in the process of learning my third complete forms system - WTF Tae Gyuk. I started with Tang Soo Do Moo Duk Kwan and attained a fourth Dan in that style, and learned all but 2 of the forms offered there. I then trained in a Tae Kwon Do school that taught Palgwe Forms and learned them and the black belt forms up to the last form required for 4th dan. Today I am in the process of learning Tae Gyuk. The first 3 Tae Gyuk forms are very challenging because of their lack of form. A walking stance is a hard stance to grasp or get your hands on. I am still like WTF? and I don't mean World Tae Kwon either. My advice, stick with it. I love Tae Kwon Do and think my instructor is a very wise man with a lot to offer, but I am not crazy about the first couple of forms either. That is the challenge though my friend!! Sometimes we must do things that we do not enjoy or understand. I have faith that there is a reason these silly forms were created. As for making them yours, well as people said, repetition and breathing. Also break them down to their most basic elements. Do you twist your wrist as you strike? Do you use your hips to generate power? Do you know exactly what part of your body you are striking with and what part of your opponents body you are striking? Forms are meant to be meditative, and repetition will make them just that. Oh and as you get older, if you stay with the martial arts you may well realize that the forms are your art. When you are 40 years old and do not compete anymore, you may do your form and love the feel of the form you have known and performed for decades. I still do Gi Cho Hyung Il Bu which I learned in 1977, and it does not bore me. In fact it frustrates me because it still isn't perfect. I could spend an entire week fixing the stupid little things I do wrong. That is the definition of an artist.
Yudanja I can see a long lasting friendship developing here I have wondered the very same thing and come to the very same conclusion. The first few Tae Gyuks anyways. Actually they are very applicable to a military cadence and I have seen them done in Korea and they do them as a drill, so my first thought is that they were created for a more military application. They also have no rhyme or reason to them in tersm of pattern. If you as a 5th dan were to try to learn these now I can guarantee you would get frustrated because they go against a lot of the conventions of basic forms. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd are very similar, but different that they can be confusing. I'm not talking just about the techniques either. The patterns actually are hte same, but the direction that you turn is different from 1 -> 2 -> 3. Combine that with all of the other forms I know, and I have had a terrible time learning them. The black belt forms of the WTF on the other hand are simple for me. Koyo I already knew. Tae Bak is vey short and the turns make sense to me. Kum Gan is actually a compilation of Pyung Ahn moves put to a form - lol. Overall though as I told Special - they are a challenge and martial arts is all about overcoming challenges. So we will learn them and probably learn to love them.
They seem to rely upon a lot of "Inner Forearm Blocks" from the walking stance.. which ITF or the older Pawlge's did not. I've noticed that about 60 percent of all of the Taeguek techniques happen to be the Inner Forearm Block. This is only used a few times in ITF forms. Anyone know why they rely upon these so heavily ??
I have noticed this too. I can venture a guess that they use those blocks a lot because of the way they turn. I also wonder if they were attempting to make their forms very different from anything a Korean stylist has seen before so they could set themselves apart? Not sure.
I don't think there are "that many" inner forearm blocks (not 60% anyways). There are a lot of low blocks and middle blocks though and some would say they are designed to represent blocking kicks (low or middle) and they usually follow up with a strike (block, strike). As for rationale in the design.... I don't know, I just study them As a TKDist, I have learned the ITF forms (through Po-Eun), all of the Taegeuks (1-8), The WTF black belt forms (Koryo-Taebaek) and the first 4 Pal-Gye forms. I persoanlly see a great deal of conceptual similarity between all of them and can see where each set has its built-in curriculum guides. Done together, they do compliment each opther very well and reinforce the basic concepts while adding variation in the application of those concepts.As a school that does Taegeuks (and the WTF black belt forms) and the ITF forms for promotion, I personally like the techniques and movements in all the sets of forms and really don't think the differences are that extreme. That being said, I personally find the ITF forms to be a bit more complex in general than the WTF ones but I like the additonal, and common, element of walking stances in the WTF ones (a valid stance for sparring). That's just my opinion...
True. It is not 60 percent but they do seem to be prevalent in the Taeguek forms. I have only learned the ITF forms up thru Moon-Mu. I have also learned the WTF Black Belt forms of Pyeon-won, Sip-jin and Ji-Tae. I see many similarities between the ITF Gup level patterns and the older WTF Pawlge's. As far as the walking stance, we do not have that stance in the ITF...at least not the same one. Our walking stance is 1 1/2 shoulders deep, whereas the WTF walking stance is very shallow,about a shoulder if that. I usually teach sparring from a fixed stance (which is an L-Stance but with the weight 50/50).. have students keep light on the balls of the feet and move around. I cant see sparring from that shallow walking stance with your body turned full facing into your opponent.
Actually we use the "walking stance" with both feet forward (or even facing 45 degrees away from an opponent) but with the arms up and the body turned slightly away. The walking stance in application is a more natural stance ("walking") designed for mobility and protection.This gives us nice and fast protection against strikes (mobile) and by being on the balls of our feet (about 50-50 weight distribution) we can move quickly, change facing quickly, and strike quickly. We usually don't spar with the body fully open to the opponent. I also use the back stance ("L" stance) in sparring as a more defensive stance (especially for tired students) with a 30-70 weight ratio... it has more stability and allows the lead leg to come up quicker for blocks (illegal in WTF tournies) and for lead leg kicks (and to allow the disipation of power from an attack on the lead leg). Also, the "L" stance is good for setting up back kicks and spinning heel kicks. I like both... although I will admit that I don't use deep front stances in sparring often, even though they are very predominant in the ITF forms...
Yeah that is what we called a fighting stance in Tang Soo Do - Hu Kul Jasei. As for walking stance, I just have to admit that I don't like it. I can't really legitimize why I don't like it other than I just don't. It doesn't feel right to me and goes against my martial arts instinct. I am starting to learn Pyun Won - what do you think of this form? I have only seen it done and will start working on it physically sometime this month as told to me by my instructor.
Pyeong-won is a very easy form to learn. The fact that its done in a single line means there isnt much turning or angle's in the form. The actual movement of the pattern reminds me of Po-Eun however the techniques are different.
