The Origin of "Fancy" Kicks

[Flying Crane]

If a person needs to believe there is similarities between two things to justifiy their belief in either then so be it. Fighting arts are Fighting arts and Musical art is Musical Arts. The two have diffrent mean to their ends. It is unfortunate that we spend to much time dance in the grey areas, when so much of the world function in balck and white. This is not a value judgement.

FLying Crane, read more closely, I stated that techinque that are not part of the systems basic technique is ego. Using the exception to prove you point is poor quality debating. Learning to play traditional African musical intruments is a basic skill for Capoeira, does that mean all other fighting arts are lacking. No, it is a basic skill required for this particular fighting art.

The true measure of a master of a particular art is not how well he does the extreme techniques, yet how he perfects the simplist technique.

Mike Wood
Mountainsage

You have some good points, esp. your last point. However, different arts develop under different circumstances and influences. The arts are constantly changing and there really is no such thing as a "pure" art. They are always being influenced by other arts and by innovators (sometimes for better, sometimes for worse). Given this, it can be very difficult to determine what techniques are part of the system's basic techniques, which would be considered advanced, and which are considered outlandish. This is a judgement that has been made by people, and in these cases, few people can agree on anything. Where is the line drawn, and how can we get the rest of the world to agree to our own definitions? We cannot, so make your own decisions on this and be content with it.

While I do believe it is extremely important to recognize that most, if not all, of the fancy and outlandish techniques, including the fancy kicks, have little or no real combat value, I think it is overly simplistic to equate their practice to little more than ego-building. Sometimes there can be a good reason to practice some of these techniques, even if direct combat application is not that reason. I only used Capoeira as an example, and did not mean to imply that other arts that do not incorporate the various aspects of Capoeira are somehow deficient. My meaning was simply to show that under the right circumstances, these techniques can be appropriate.

 

[Marginal]

If a person needs to believe there is similarities between two things to justifiy their belief in either then so be it. Fighting arts are Fighting arts and Musical art is Musical Arts. The two have diffrent mean to their ends.

Not if you're shooting evil sword waving demons out of your stringed instrument like in Kung Fu Hustle. :jedi1:

 

[Jonathan Randall]

I have been lurking on this thread for some time and feel it is now time to comment. Any technique beyond just enough to get the job done is about ego. Fancy kicking and other techniques that are not part of basic techniques is pure and simple ego building.

Mike Wood
Mountainsage

I think you're making a flawed assumption that Martial Arts are simply about being able to "kick butt". True, you must have self-defence (the Martial), but the art (Art) is important, also. Let's face it, we'd all be a bunch of paranoids if all we did was go to class to prepare for "that confrontation". Also, as other posters have mentioned, if you can do something difficult, then when you do the "easy" stuff, you'll do it with greater competence.

I think there are many benefits to be derived from kicking styles such as TKD and TSD. They are great conditioners and teachers of balance and control and, let's face it, would you want to be kicked with a low kick by someone who has the proficiency of a TKD or TSD master at high kicking? I bet both their low kicks and physical conditioning are better than of those who simply practice low kicks. I think you are doing them a disservice by projecting "ego building" onto their study of impressive martial art's systems.

 

[MountainSage]

J. Randell, you use the term art in western terms. The definition of a word from a symbolic language to a alpha-numeric language is tricky at best. Example being that the Chinese used the term "boxing" for most fighting arts that involved striking and kicking, so the term art is highly subjective.
If you need high kick to work on balance, then maybe there is a bigger problem the fighter needs to work on. You also misunderstand Classic TKD and TSD and are fixed on the showy modern forms of these arts. Most military application, the only true practical application we have at this time, do not favor the use of kick above the ribcage area, contrary to what is in the movies. I would enjoy taking on any Master of TKD or TSD for the learning experiance alone, plus any high kicker because they are an easy target for a grappler/striker especally if they are tournament fighters.
IF high and /or fancy kicks were the only and best way to train balance and conditioning there would be a lot more atheletes doing fancy high kick training. This arguement for fancy kicks is poor at best. As a result of lacking in practical application and minimal training application, my origninal statement still stands, "High and/ or fancy kicks are about ego".(IMO)


Mountainsage
Mike Wood

 

[Flying Crane]

my origninal statement still stands, "High and/ or fancy kicks are about ego".(IMO)

Mountainsage
Mike Wood

I don't think too many people here would argue with you about whether high/fancy or low kicks are useful or practical, or dangerous to use in a real fight. I think most everyone would agree, in a real fight the simple, low kicks are much safer and effective to use, and the high/fancy kicks are very risky and not to be trusted or attempted.

But I still disagree with your position that practicing high/fancy kicks is about nothing more that ego building. I think you have taken a rather short-sighted position regarding this. If you believe it is all about ego building, then it looks to me like you have attempted to psychoanalyze a whole group of people through a very brief contact in a martial arts discussion forum.

That's very presumptive of you.

 

[FearlessFreep]

I'm going to agree with Mr Crane here. I practice high kicks for what I feel to be valid reasons for training, conditioning and potential combat. You can say I'm wasting time and have a valid argument. You could say I'm an idiot for doing so, and possibly be right, but my reasons for doing so have nothing to do with ego and I think it's off base to characterize all those who do them or practice them in such a manner as begin motivated by ego.

 

[Shaolinwind]

I suspect that the "fancy" kicks were designed to teach balance, timing, accuracy, etc.

I'm with you there.

I say, why not practice something that tests us to the limit? And besides.. Fancy kicks are fun. That's enough for me to get started on something!

I try to do tornado kicks every time I practice on my own. I haven't done one right yet, and if my master saw me trying to fu this far out of my league he'd kill me. But I keep trying, not because I'm afraid they'll be a Manchu on a horse behind me, but because they are cool, and I like them. Simple as that.

 

[Jonathan Randall]

J. Randell, you use the term art in western terms. The definition of a word from a symbolic language to a alpha-numeric language is tricky at best. Example being that the Chinese used the term "boxing" for most fighting arts that involved striking and kicking, so the term art is highly subjective.

I use it in BOTH senses - Eastern and Western. The Martial Arts as a discipline that teaches, first of all, self-mastery. We live in the age of firearms and unarmed techniques, at best, are limited against many modern assaults.

If you need high kick to work on balance, then maybe there is a bigger problem the fighter needs to work on. You also misunderstand Classic TKD and TSD and are fixed on the showy modern forms of these arts. Most military application, the only true practical application we have at this time, do not favor the use of kick above the ribcage area, contrary to what is in the movies. I would enjoy taking on any Master of TKD or TSD for the learning experiance alone, plus any high kicker because they are an easy target for a grappler/striker especally if they are tournament fighters.

Sir, I do not misunderstand "modern" TKD and TSD. My first TKD instructor's study pre-dated the formation of the ITF and, by implication, the WTF. The first forms that I learned contained no kicks whatsoever. Of course we LEARNED and PRACTICED them.

IF high and /or fancy kicks were the only and best way to train balance and conditioning there would be a lot more atheletes doing fancy high kick training. This arguement for fancy kicks is poor at best. As a result of lacking in practical application and minimal training application, my origninal statement still stands, "High and/ or fancy kicks are about ego".(IMO)
Mountainsage
Mike Wood

Nobody ever said they were "the best" - only one method. Speak for yourself, sir. The idea that our fellow martial artists in TSD and TKD are "egotists" or "about ego" is patronizing at best. Why are you so concerned with what others do? In my experience, so many martial artists are involved in bickering over what's the "most bestest style" or "who could beat who" and forget that their greatest self-defence threat isn't from a BJJ UFC champion, rather it is from a 15-16 year old with a handgun and no sense of consequences or from some form of domestic violence. The solution to this is a master of Situational Awarenes, not low kicks.

Different strokes for different folks. If you don't like high kicks DON'T PRACTICE THEM, it is not necessary to insult those who do by telling them that their art is all about "ego".

 

[Hand Sword]

I think the "practical origin" came from Billy Jack!!! The way he could kick you in the head and there's nothing you can do about it!

Once that flew to audiences--there you go!

 

[Andy Moynihan]

"Watch his feet.....he can kill you with his feet...."

 

[zDom]

What is fancy to YOU may be basic to ME.

And, what I find to be fancy may be easy for someone else.

It seems some people assume that because a kick is difficult and risky for THEM that it must be so for everybody.

What makes you think that low kicks are ALWAYS better and safer?

For example, I see people in UFC throw low kicks and get thrown to the ground (which, on a hard surface, is a fight ENDER) while I see high kicks ENDING fights after a SINGLE kick.

I have no doubt that jump kicks and spin kicks and high kicks are "fancy" to some people and only have worth to them as training tools. But there ARE OTHERS out there for whom these are useful, practical tools that are as easy to use as ringing a bell.

Who is to say these kicks weren't developed by THOSE sort of people?

I don't know why I bother to post in yet another rehash of this tired, old subject.

By the reasoning I've read here, I could say that swinging a bat at a baseball is a worthless technique as I can never seem to make contact. The only DEPENDABLE technique is using a catcher's mit.

Ah well, the more people that believe these kicks don't work, the better it is for me while I am still able to do them. Go tell it on a mountain: fancy kicks don't work!!

 

[Twin Fist]

wow, talk about dredging up old threads....

BUT

Tell Chung Le those kicks dont work.........

 

[Makalakumu]

wow, talk about dredging up old threads....

BUT

Tell Chung Le those kicks dont work.........

I don't see Cung Le doing 720 jump spin hook kicks in the octogon...

Also, not everyone is Cung Le...

 

[Twin Fist]

the 720 was only invented about 10 years ago. it isnt a technique taught in any style I know of. thats just XMA crap.

but i was referring to high kicks and spinning kicks

 

[Makalakumu]

Oh, well then, sometimes high kicks work really good. I think we can agree on that. I'm talking about the crazier ones...

 

[YoungMan]

Where did they come from (as far as Korean arts are concerned)?

Well, I've watched videos produced by the Korean Taekkyon Association, as well as TK videos made in Korea and narrated in Korean. You could hardly say they were made by Americans or for American audiences. The Korean TK Association was founded by a student of Sung Duk Ki, considered a national treasure by the Korean government.
The Taekkyon students I watched did jumping front kicks, jumping side kicks, jumping back sidekicks, jumping back roundhouse kicks, and jumping wheel kicks. In short, every jumping and jump spinning kick we associate with Taekwondo. I don't know if that is a definitive answer, but maybe it helps.
Why? A number of reasons. Difficulty, aesthetics, trying to be bird-like, showing grace etc. Historically, Koreans have always valued mastering difficult activities. Jumping and jump spinning kicks certainly qualified.
And the Korean arts have always been about evolution and change. If you practice strictly for confrontation and self defense, you reach a certain level and never get higher because there is no need to.

 

[Twin Fist]

Oh, well then, sometimes high kicks work really good. I think we can agree on that. I'm talking about the crazier ones...

yeah, i totally get what your saying and i agree.

 

[exile]

Where did they come from (as far as Korean arts are concerned)?

Well, I've watched videos produced by the Korean Taekkyon Association, as well as TK videos made in Korea and narrated in Korean. You could hardly say they were made by Americans or for American audiences. The Korean TK Association was founded by a student of Sung Duk Ki, considered a national treasure by the Korean government.
The Taekkyon students I watched did jumping front kicks, jumping side kicks, jumping back sidekicks, jumping back roundhouse kicks, and jumping wheel kicks. In short, every jumping and jump spinning kick we associate with Taekwondo. I don't know if that is a definitive answer, but maybe it helps.

Well, it certainly shows that modern TK, which grew from a base of three or four practitioners in the mid-20th century at a time when there were thousands of TKD practitioners and hundreds of TKD dojangs in the country, to its current rather modest numbers at the present time, has certainly mimicked the complex kicks that developed in TKD from the Kwan days—not one of whose founders, as Mark Pederson in his current state of the art overview of Taekkyon in the 2002 Encyclopædia of Martial Arts of the World can be securely linked to any of the know taekkyon teachers alive at the time. And the Taekkyon Research Association, the TK body pursuing the history of Taekkyon, agrees with this assessment, as Robert Young reports in his 1993 Journal of Asian Martial Arts assessment. And the head of this very selfsame Taekkyon Reseach Association, Song Duk Ki's surviving senior student, Lee Yong-bok, emphasized that real taekkyon's kicks were aimed at the opponent lower body and feet, and consisted of mostly stoming and unbalancing moves. Surviving photographs of Song Duk-ki himself from the early 1960s make the same point: they show leg-blocks of low kicks, mid/high body pushing kicks used at close range as part of a combination with arm grabs, in order to push the defender over, and a range of other kicking techs that look nothing at all like TKD. As the World Taekkyon Headquarters site puts it here,

The kicks are so legendary that, for hundreds of years the name of the art was synonymous with foot-fighting. However, the kicks bear little resemblance to the typical spinning and jumping maneuvers glorified in tournaments and film. Instead, Taekkyon leg techniques are simple and direct, focusing on linear moves but including limited usage of circular and spinning kicks. Taekkyon has traditionally emphasized stepping and stamping techniques directed at the opponent's lower legs and feet.​

There is absolutely no need to posit the origins of TKD's high or `fancy' kicks in a skill set that was all but extinct at the time that the Kwan founders were learning their MAs via years of training in Shotokan and Shudokan karate dojos. The one thing, the only thing we need to make sense of this is the assumption that Koreans like kicking, and the more spectacular, the better. Much more to the point is the question of TKD's influence on Taekkyon. Taekkyon was originally a village competition game, with heavy gambling, probably mostly of interest to the participants. In fact, Taekkyon has come to be a tournament sport (e.g., here), and one thing we've seen with karate as well: the more tournament-based a MA has become, with tournaments televized and increasingly enacted as a ring spectator sport, with emphasis on spectacle, the more likely it is to develop flashy athletic kicks. David Mitchell, in the Overlook Handbook of Martial Arts, argues that many of TKDs more spectacular kicking techniques have begun to appear in karate tournaments, precisely because they are highly visible to the judges and represent athletically demanding, quasi-gymnastic skills which play well with audiences. It's no surprise that the kinds of traditional kicks that Lee Yong Bok and the World Taekkyon site talk about, and that Song Duk-ki demo'd in the early 1960s, have been supplemented by more acrobatic spinning/flying kicks as the tournament effect starts applying to taekkyon as well...

 

[YoungMan]

Ah exile, I was waiting for your "valued" input.

In an interview, Won Kuk Lee told of three different schools of Korean martial arts, each claiming to be Taekkyon. Who is to say that what we saw Sung Duk Ki doing was but one variation of that? Korean temples were well known as repositories of Korean culture.
Anyway, I've seen too much with my own eyes (albeit on video since I don't have the money for a trip to Korea) to really put much stock in what you say. I know you mean well, but you really should stop giving credence to these American and British writers, many of whom are karate-based, for your Taekkyon and Taekwondo information.
Anyway, Taekkyon must have gotten those kicks from somewhere-they didn't just magically appear. I truly believe the answer is not nearly so cut and dried as you make it out. You make it sound like Taekkyon was simply the Korean version of karate. Based on who you cite as references, I suppose it would be easy to believe that. I don't. Not for a minute. I've seen too much otherwise to believe that.
Watching those Taekkyon students move and execute those jumping and jump spinning kicks, it just looked so natural and part of what they do-like it just fit the art. I don't believe for a second that those kicks were imported recently from other styles. It just looked too natural for them to be doing them.

 

[Sukerkin]

Would you like your knife back, mate?

I know that you were good enough to stay away from obviously hectoring word choices but subtle sniping is still sniping.

Given that your profile claims a 5th Dan, I'd expect rather better of you and I'm sure that you can structure an argument without seeking to belittle those with whom you disagree. Indeed, the meat of your post above did just that :tup:.

You're not new here and have a couple of hundred posts to your name, so I'm sure you're aware of the general policies that govern interactions on MT's fora.

I'm not trying to be the 'heavy' here, just waving a "Careful, thin ice" flag before things get heated and require firmer reaction.