My personal assessment of anything to do with a kata/hyung has to do with the given movement that's being done. Lets take the 1st taeguek form. Opening move(s) 1) turn to the left, execute a left hand down block, 2) step forward with right leg and execute a right hand punch. Now those are the given structured movements of the form and I see nothing hidden. They are what they are, a simple down block and a step punch.
Those are also the first movements of Kicho Il Jang and Palgwe Sam Jang. And the down block is accompanied by a retraction chamber. So here is a non-obvious application that does not involve a single change in the actual
movements that have been carried out, but is quite different from the simple down block/lunge punch that's standard interpretation for this sequence.
The literal movements are
(i) ready position, preparatory to a 90º turn into a left front stance/down block;
(ii) 90º turn into a left front stance/down block with chambering retraction of the right fist;
(iii) movement into right front stance/middle lunge punch with chambering retraction of the left fist...
In one SD situation in which this sequence of movements is usefully
applied, the attacker has grabbed the defender's arm or shirt. The corresponding
moves are
(i)' the defender covers the attacker's wrist with his own right fist, or reverses the wrist grab—this is one of the very earliest SD techs we teach them—and in either case, simultaneously (a) twists the captured wrist counterclockwise, and (b) turns quickly counterclockwise pulling on the wrist—this is the concealed meaning of the apparent presentation of the defenders left side to the the attacker at the outside of the form (something that would be suicidal to do in a street confrontation, obviously)...
(ii)' followed by simultaneously (c) driving the left forearm against the attacker's now forcibly extended right arm just above the elbow (the lower part of the `chambering' phase of the `down block'), (d) hikite of the trapped fist by the defender's `chamberinging retraction' of the right fist (pulling the attackers right fist into a maximally extended positon to give the defender's arm pin on the attacker maximum leverage and trapping the attacker in position) and projection of the defender's full body weight forward into the pin via the front-stance movement, forcibly driving the attacker's upper body down and exposing their lowered head to the defender's upcoming counterattack.
Having driven the attacker into a lowered position via the arm pin described, the defender (e) quickly moves the left arm from its pinning position to near the defender's right ear into an arcing upward elbow strike to the side of the attacker's lowered head, continuing up to a position above the defender's right ear, and then lowers it in hammerfist strike or knifehand to major targets on the attacker's head: the carotid sinus or larynx. This downcoming strike can be subdivided at the defender's discretion into (e1) a spearhand elbow strike to the attacker's face (eyes are a good target) and (e2) the payoff hand strike to the selected target. The main lesson of the whole subsequence is contained here: if you can trap the attacker's arm while going outside, you own him and the fight is effectively over, assuming a correct continuation.
(iii)' A smooth muchimi shift of the striking left hand to a grab on the attacker's ear/hair/collar is immediately followed by a simultaneous (f)hikite retraction of the left fist to pull the injured attacker in and around and (g) a right-hand strike (maybe a fist, but I think a palm-heel strike is sounder) to the attacker's face with the full weight of the defender's body moving into a right front stance.
(iii)" An alternative analysis has (f)' the retraction translating to a grip on the attacker's ear or hair, pulling it back while at the same time (g)' the 'punch' supplies torque on the other side of the attacker's head so that a neck break results. Picture a good firm grip on the attacker's head with both hands and an extremely sharp twist (left hand pull while right hand pushes around) and you have the picture...
If you carry out the
moves as described in (i)'-(iii)' or (i)'-(iii)", with no actual uke involved, you'll get a sequence of
movements indistinguishable from (i)–(iii). What's hidden is not the movements, but the application of those movments: the retraction as a hikite trapping of the attacker's gripping hand, the down block as one or more elbow techs followed by a downward hammerfist, etc. It was Itosu himself who told us that the block/punch labels he gave to these techs, which were carried into Shotokan and its Korean development and finally into TKD, were not intended for adult practitioners, but were the children's version he was trying to get into the Okinawan schools.
This is a fast, hard application that works well even with a completely noncompliant attacker. And things like wrist locks and arm pins would have been familiar to the Okinawans, who used techs like that in their tuite, and to Japanese MAists of Funakoshi's generation, many of whom had very likely been exposed to judo and jujitsu, which were taught in Japanese schools at the time that GF and other expats brought karate to Japan.
