FieldDiscipline
2nd Black Belt
I think if people want to imagine they're doing an outer hip throw while blocking or whatever that's fine, it's their imagination. However, if it makes their body movement during the block in to a weird shape then I'll correct them/deduct marks in a grading.
I personally find it a waste of energy trying to find hidden applications to the patterns when I've heard that the founders/developers of the poomsae put no such thing in there and any attempt to find them is really just adding them in after the fact.
On the face of it the bold section is probably true. It however overlooks the fact that the KKW poomsae are in many places repackaged karate kata, and the guys who formulated the kata did put such things in there. Not trying to change your approach, it's down to objectives and the KKW certainly don't seem to be interested in this based on their materials.
As an aside, the idea isn't really that you imagine the technique whilst practicing the pattern, rather that you disect it and practise the technique outside of it, learn the principles and seek other uses of those principles.
Hironori Otsuka said:It is obvious that these kata must be trained and practised sufficiently, but one must not be 'stuck' in them. One must withdraw from the kata to produce forms with no limits or else it becomes useless. It is important to alter the form of the trained kata without hesitation to produce countless other forms of training.
Gichin Funakoshi said:knowledge of just the sequence of a kata in karate is useless.
Of course TKD is not karate, and with the predominant emphasis of a lot of people who do poomsae being sport or competition it's not relevant to them. But it's not imagination, the techniques are there.