My own take on the issue of what Kacey calls application texts is that such texts can be excellent introductions to the general method of pattern analysis for realistic application. I don't know of one single such text (of which TKD has only a couple, so far as I can tell, but of which karate has many) which says, do this and this and this, period. Books such as Stuart's, or Simon O'Neil's, or the bunkai analyses in Iain Abernethy's books (and excellent DVDs) as well as those of Bill Burgar and others, give you applications as the equivalent of worked examples of a general method, or set of principles, for decoding bunkai application. There's a term in Japanese, kaisai no genri, specifically for this decoding process, the general method of interpreting kata for combat tactics, consisting of a set of 'keys', so to speak, that enable you to identify multiple sets of practical instructions for combat from what look like martial folkdances. No one says, you must memorize these applications; rather, they say, here are some (possibly surprising) sequences of controlling and striking moves that correspond to the movements of the kata or hyungs or hsings, but which are in effect disguised by the way these patterns are packaged, and you can rethink the standard pattern interpretations you've learned, for much greater practical effectiveness, by applying the guidelines that these particular reanalyses illustrate. The concrete, 'worked' examples are similar to what you see in a physics textbook, for example, where in each chapter, some general mathematical relationships are sketched that correspond to concepts, laws and principles, and then you are given certain physical situations and asked to find, on the basis of the data you're given, what the value is for certain dynamical variables. You're given three or four such 'worked examples', typically, showing you the kind of mathematical tricks and techniques that may come into play, and then, at the end of each chapter, you're given a number of problems which you have to solve on your own—often a large number of them. If you study the worked examples carefully, you will be far, far better prepared to strike out on your own and deal creatively with the increasing difficulty of the unsolved problems thrown at you at the end of each chapter, than if you were simply given the straight derivation of the mathematical relations among the physical parameters and then asked to solve the same set of chaper-final problems.
For example, the 'windup' interpretation of an arm/fist chamber is firmly drilled into most students of both the KMAs and Karate from the beginning. But once the hikite interpretation is pointed out to you—that that retraction isn't primarily an isolated set-up for the next strike, but actually involves a forcing/controlling manipulation of an attacker's limb, and often involves a wrist grab and twist to hyperextend the attacker's gripping or striking arm—a whole set of possibilities open up which might never have occurred to you. The fact that the motion of a down block, when analyzed in terms of kaisai no genri, can be seen as a sequence of two elbow strikes (one going up, followed by a spearing strike coming down) followed by the blocking motion that's actually a hammerfist strike to an attacker's throat(or temple, or collarbone, or...), can give the student a radically expanded sense of the possiblities latent in ordinary-looking kihon techniques—possibilities explored in the multiple applications derivable from kata/hyung sequences, and a wide-open set of them at that. Look at the title of Rick Clark's landmark book Seventy-five Down Blocks—and they're all there, every one, beautifully illustrated with clear photographs. That's not someone telling you, do it this way, and mayb this way, and that's it; that's someone who's saying, look at the vast realm of technical possibilities that are open to you once you start thinking of kihon techs, and more expansively, kata subsequences, along the lines illustrated. Or again, Simon O'Neil's Combat TKD shows some nice, clear examples of how to derive throws of various kinds from what are standardly presented as 90º, 180º and 270º pivots in TKD hyungs; in conjunction with the other 'unmasked' applications of blocking- and striking-type movements (as per the standard Itosu packaging), with the addition of muchimi-type moves (where the striking hand becomes a gripping, controlling hand as part of the followup tech), it becomes clear how one can parlay such pivoting motions into powerful unbalancing/throwing moves. I don't find such guides to be Simon-says recipe collections (add exactly this much pepper and tarragon and cook for precisely twenty-two minutes); I see them much more as radically mind-opening illustrations of the practical effectiveness stored in MA patterns, waiting for us to discover them... if we have the skill to read them; and that's what this kind of research tries to make available to us, giving us samples of the possibilities, and inviting us to extend them as we start thinking about them from this novel perspective.
I'm very much looking forward to the appearance of Simon O'Neil's forthcoming book on the combat applications of TKD hyungs, with primary emphasis on the Taegeuks (a lot more practical fighting methods there than they're generally given credit for; see his January 2006 Taekwondo Times article for a preview of what he's up to). Together with Stuart's book, it'll provide coverage of the possibilities of a very large domain of TKD patterns. And that will lead to more such work. I have, sitting on my desk, something like four full-length books on the combat applications of the Pinan kata set alone. All different, all very suggestive, raising further questions of how to evaluate competing interpretations, and so on. To my way of thinking, this whole direction in the karate-based arts, and the associated emphasis on non-compliant pressure-testing and realistic scenario drills with a partner—something that people like Abernethy, O'Neil and Burgar all explicitly identify as part of their own methodology in 'vetting' the applications they present—represents the real hope for progress, and the restoration of credibility, in the TMAs.
