The logic behind the placement of kihaps in Taegeuk forms

[Tez3]

...on the other hand, I mention to a lot of my fellow parents that they can watch the poomsae on YouTube to help their children with their homework, and the parents look at me like....What? YouTube has videos of this stuff???

I assume you tell them which ones to watch lol. In my style Wado Ryu we are lucky, we have the founder on video showing how to do the kata though no doubt someone will say he's not doing them correctly. Our stances are short ones, with a fair few being almost upright so I guess we wouldn't do well if the judges are expecting long stances.
I've often wondered how these open competitions go, I've only been in comps in my style, I can't see how the judges can tell whether someone is doing the pattern/kata/form correctly is they don't know it. I can tell some things from watching other styles but not whether that's the correct stance etc. I wouldn't like to judge a TKD pattern against a WC one against a Shotokan one.

 

[Gnarlie]

Good point. If that version of Koryo makes it to the final as the video says, that doesn't say a lot for the judges, regardless of which style they come from, it's just horrible.

 

[IcemanSK]

In my limited experience with open tournaments, the judges I've seen have tended to be Okinawan Karate or Kung Fu folks, to the exclusion of Korean stylists. Korean stances are looked down upon for being too high. The top competitors are Karate & Kung Fu. I was once told "Korean styles are just bad Shotokan." Hence the reason Korean styles aren't appreciated in open tournaments.

This girl in the video is wearing a white uniform (definitely not an ATA dobok) & using very uncharacteristicly low stances. Both, I'm thinking, in an attempt to hide her origin (and those of this form). She turned back stances into low horse stances in this form.

As to why she did well, who knows what the other compeitors looked like.

 

[Gnarlie]

She also changed 90% of the techniques to something that they are not.

Even the side kicks were ropey. End position correct and great for posing, but that's not how you get there or get back.

Even just looking within this form the performance of stances and techniques was highly inconsistent, lacked symmetry, and was more hot air than actual content.

 

[Gnarlie]

Further thought on topic. Some of the kihaps in the Taegeuk forms (and Koryo) used to be in different places. Does anyone else remember / still do this?

Example on of my early instructors used to kihap on the step forward punch in pal jang.

The kihap at the top of koryo also used to be done on the mureup keokki too.

Maybe it was just that one guy...I suspect so.

 

[Jaeimseu]

Further thought on topic. Some of the kihaps in the Taegeuk forms (and Koryo) used to be in different places. Does anyone else remember / still do this?

Example on of my early instructors used to kihap on the step forward punch in pal jang.

The kihap at the top of koryo also used to be done on the mureup keokki too.

Maybe it was just that one guy...I suspect so.

I'm pretty sure I originally learned them that way, too.

 

[Gnarlie]

I remember a kihap on the single backfist at the top of O Jang too - I know other people learned this too as I STILL see people do it accidentally from time to time.

If they were in different places, and it wasn't just that our instructors' understanding of the form was incorrect, then that would pose a question as to just how significant the location of the kihap really is...

 

[TrueJim]

An anonymous user on the wiki made the same comment: that the kihaps used to be in different places.

It should be easy to check, we just need to find an older instruction book. I'll look through my collection.

 

[Dirty Dog]

Further thought on topic. Some of the kihaps in the Taegeuk forms (and Koryo) used to be in different places. Does anyone else remember / still do this?

Example on of my early instructors used to kihap on the step forward punch in pal jang.

The kihap at the top of koryo also used to be done on the mureup keokki too.

Maybe it was just that one guy...I suspect so.

We still do Koryo that way. I do teach it both ways, though.



Sent from an old fashioned 300 baud acoustic modem by whistling into the handset. Not TapaTalk. Really.

 

[Gnarlie]

An anonymous user on the wiki made the same comment: that the kihaps used to be in different places.

It should be easy to check, we just need to find an older instruction book. I'll look through my collection.

Maybe someone with a pre 2006 KKW textbook can confirm. I lent out my older copy and never got it back

 

[IcemanSK]

An anonymous user on the wiki made the same comment: that the kihaps used to be in different places.

It should be easy to check, we just need to find an older instruction book. I'll look through my collection.

My first master referred to the 1975 KKW textbook and we did the kihaps in different places than they are currently in a few Poomsae. TG Oh Jang, for example, had a kihap at the backfist at #8. It's still hard for to not kihap there, as it seems a good placement for one. I don't know if the was stated in the 1975 textbook, or not.

 

[TrueJim]

Speaking of numbering the steps in books...

I get the impression that that's changed over time as well? The head of our school uses a different numbering for the steps than what I believe the Kukkiwon currently uses, and somebody once mentioned to me that the numbering can vary a lot from school to school, which lead me to think that it's probably something that's only recently been standardized. (Things that are standardized early tend to be used more consistently from school to school, I think.)

Also, I get the impression that the purpose of numbering is (to some extent) to describe the cadence of the steps. Multiple steps with the same number but different lettering (e.g., 8a,b,c) are intended to be done without a beat between movements...i.e., as actual combinations? The point is, if the numbering has changed over time, presumably that means the recommended cadence has changed over time as well (and which movements are viewed as combinations, rather than individual movements)...in addition to the changing of the kihaps.

 

[Gnarlie]

The number of steps in each form has changed over time, definitely.

I remember when I started it was 18, 18, 20, 20, 20, 23, 25, 24, and now it is 18, 18, 20, 20, 20, 19, 25, 27.

The combined movements have changed.

It bugs me a bit that quite a few people claim Il Jang's Arae Makki Momtong Jireugi is a combo, when doing so leaves you with 16 movements.

These changes have definitely had an effect on the flow of the performance of the Taegeuk series, most notably 6 and 8, where the number has decreased and increased respectively.

The decrease for Yuk Jang means there is more flow, which is good for a pattern representing water. The increase in Pal Jang has made the pattern slower and more ponderous, placing more emphasis on weight shift, which again suits its philosophical meaning.

It puzzles me that the final motions elbow, backfist, punch are now separate though, they made such a fluid combo. Perhaps the judges just couldn't see it to score it...

 

[TrueJim]

I remember when I started it was 18, 18, 20, 20, 20, 23, 25, 24, and now it is 18, 18, 20, 20, 20, 19, 25, 27

The former is what we use at our school, the latter is what I use on the wiki.

It bugs me a bit that quite a few people claim Il Jang's Arae Makki Momtong Jireugi is a combo, when doing so leaves you with 16 movements.

...and yet, when you perform Taegeuk Il Jang, do you pause a full beat after the Low Block, before you Punch? The numbering would seem to imply that one should, and yet I don't usually see it performed that way.

I've always assumed that the idea is, "This is your first form, it's too early to worry about combinations, so let's just number each step individually" even though it's performed more like a combination.

It puzzles me that the final motions elbow, backfist, punch are now separate though, they made such a fluid combo.

Agreed. It's oddities like this that make me think, "We'll probably see a new numbering scheme sometime in the future, when somebody at Kukkiwon decides this doesn't make sense after all."

 

[Gnarlie]

The former is what we use at our school, the latter is what I use on the wiki.



...and yet, when you perform Taegeuk Il Jang, do you pause a full beat after the Low Block, before you Punch? The numbering would seem to imply that one should, and yet I don't usually see it performed that way.

I've always assumed that the idea is, "This is your first form, it's too early to worry about combinations, so let's just number each step individually" even though it's performed more like a combination.



Agreed. It's oddities like this that make me think, "We'll probably see a new numbering scheme sometime in the future, when somebody at Kukkiwon decides this doesn't make sense after all."

The former is out of date. The latter is in the latest edition of the KKW Textbook.

I do pause there moderately, enough to move the area makki hand to a relaxed chamber before the punch. I think that might have been the reason - to make sure people are still using two hands on the punch.

I can argue against myself there though, because by that token there would need to be a rechamber and two handed motion for the backfists near the end of pal jang, and nobody does that. Hm.

I agree it will probably change again. Which is good. We evolve.

 

[Gwai Lo Dan]

I remember a kihap on the single backfist at the top of O Jang too - I know other people learned this too as I STILL see people do it accidentally from time to time.

My current school does it this way. When I said I didn't think there was a kihap there, I was told things change all the time. It made me think youtube and my prior school were out of date, but I guess not!

 

[andyjeffries]

Any thoughts on this @andyjeffries ?

On the placement of Kihap? Not really... I'm still polishing up my dan thesis (and it's on poomsae) but I don't really touch the reasoning behind kihapping in poomsae. My thesis is more about the mental and physical aspects of Kukkiwon poomsae and how they progress in difficulty/skill development.

I ought to think more about kihap placement, but to be honest, it seems to be fairly random to me. Also, I'm almost finished with my thesis but I still want to compare Kukki-Taekwondo poomsae with ITF hyung development and Karate's pinan series - so I have enough to keep me busy still.

Thanks for the ping though my friend.

 

[andyjeffries]

An anonymous user on the wiki made the same comment: that the kihaps used to be in different places.

It should be easy to check, we just need to find an older instruction book. I'll look through my collection.

I have the book "Poomse" from the WTF published in 1975, if no one has anything older... I can have a look tonight if it helps?

 

[andyjeffries]

My current school does it this way. When I said I didn't think there was a kihap there, I was told things change all the time. It made me think youtube and my prior school were out of date, but I guess not!

There are often minor changes all the time (that's a nice thing about Taekwondo for me, always tweaks/changes to learn to be "up to date"), but I have to say this is most often an excuse from instructors that learnt their way from their instructor, who learnt it from theirs on up the chain and no-one has wanted to stray outside their little area of the community to learn the more modern ways. In Korea things have been pretty standardised for many years, it's the rest of the world that does it their own quirky ways* - it's not Korea/Kukkiwon changing it all the time. It's also definitely not restricted to just lower dans!

Take it from someone who knows, my local instructor was like that (I managed to change his mind about 5 years ago, but he passed away 2 years afterwards).

* This was very obvious when I attended the Kukkiwon Instructor Course in 2013, and I'm sure @Jaeimseu would agree as he was there too...

 

[Gnarlie]

There are often minor changes all the time (that's a nice thing about Taekwondo for me, always tweaks/changes to learn to be "up to date"), but I have to say this is most often an excuse from instructors that learnt their way from their instructor, who learnt it from theirs on up the chain and no-one has wanted to stray outside their little area of the community to learn the more modern ways. In Korea things have been pretty standardised for many years, it's the rest of the world that does it their own quirky ways* - it's not Korea/Kukkiwon changing it all the time. It's also definitely not restricted to just lower dans!

Take it from someone who knows, my local instructor was like that (I managed to change his mind about 5 years ago, but he passed away 2 years afterwards).

* This was very obvious when I attended the Kukkiwon Instructor Course in 2013, and I'm sure @Jaeimseu would agree as he was there too...

Searching for 'Taeguek' (sic) on youtube finds a number of horrors.