Exactly why I was asking. Many of my students, both young and old, are showing little interest in bunkai. Many view the kata they learn from the exterior and not in what lies within. After reading the post in the other thread, I had a serious conflict build up in my mind. I wondered if I was fighting a losing battle.
No. It needn't be. What you have to do, I think, is take one of the techniques, a really severely effective one, and show it to them as a stand-alone technique. Say, a grab to your shirt or arm. You cover the grabbing hand with your right hand, pull it towards you with a twist at the wrist while slamming your left forearm into their extended grabbing arm above the elbow, pivoting 90º towards the pin you've established, forcing the attacker's whole upper body down... down... down. When it's low enough and the attacker's balance is seriously compromised, slam the elbow of the pinning left arm into uke's head (using appropriate restraint, lol), continue the forward motion of the striking elbow so that the left fist is near your right ear, do a spearing elbow strike to the attacker's face, and bring the left fist down toward the attacker's still lowered head in a hammer strike to... oh, say, the nose, the jaw,... just about anywhere. Then step forward onto your right leg and punch uke in the jaw/throat region, for good luck.
Then show them the
first two moves of Taikyoku Shodan, which this sequence I just sketched is a realistic bunkai application for, and let them know that devastating attacking tactics like this are legion in the katas. My approach to teaching this stuff in TKD is, don't let them begin to learn the Kichos, which are the Korean cognate forms for the Taikyoku kata set, until they've seen some of the unbelievably harsh combat moves that are right there below the surface. When they see the combat application with uke, and then you demonstrate
in isolation tori's moves in the successful street combat scenario just exhibited, and they can see that this is
exactly the sequence of movements that's supposedly nothing but a 90º turn, a down block and a front stance middle punch... it's going to give them a whole new level of respect for the kata. The key, I think, is in (i) demonstrating the kata by itself; (ii) doing the CQ combat contact with uki and tori along the lines I was sketching, and (iii) repeating the relevant part of the kata, so that they see the connection. If the light is ever gonna come on,
that, I think, is the way to get it to happen.
The other thing that's crucial is to work the techs in one-on-one SD scenarios, relating them to the angles and movements shown in the kata. No one-steps, just realistic assault-and-counter movements instead: grabs, shoves, haymakers, the whole lot. Realistic, non-compliant training against an untrained, dangerous attacker, rather than competition dueling. Always remind them that the katas are full of hardcore, brutally effective SD treasures, and it's really worth studying them in detail to learn the best down-and-dirty methods for walking away from an unsought conflict in one piece.
I mean... history is on your side here, eh?