Mas Oyama and TKD video

foot2face

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Here is a short clip of Mas Oyama apparently giving a lesson to TKD practitioners in Korea, circa 1967. I wonder if this is around the time when General Choi tried to bring him into the TKD family. A cool bit of history for those interested in the arts.

There has also been some discussion about how far back the emphasis on high kicking goes. There is some very light sparring in this clip that may help shed some light on this topic. Keep in mind that this is way before the Olympics and during the Vietnam War, were TKD earned a fierce reputation.
 

terryl965

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This clip is a great find and very interesting at best. This may have been around the time Choi tried to bring him into TKD.
 

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Great stuff. Thanks for posting this link, f2f. It's interesting to compare the height (and contact success&#8212;but then again, he was a phenomenal fighter in his prime, and even past it) of MO's kicks compared with those of the students he's teaching.

I have a couple of TKD textbooks from just this era&#8212;both 1968&#8212;by very distinguished TKD masters, and both show kicks about the height of the Korean students here. But then, this video and those texts are getting on for two decades following the initiation of hostilities in the Korean War. To my mind, the really crucial question&#8212;in terms of understanding what Harry Cook would call the 'precise history' of TKD&#8212;is what was happening during the immediate postwar era and the five or so years that followed.

And unfortunately, that seems to be a very difficult era to get any kind of reliable, detailed information about. The interview with Gm. Kim in the current BB is just a kind of tantalizing peek at what went on during that formative period.
 
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foot2face

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I'm glad you enjoyed the clip. Here is another one that shows what may be Chung Do Kwan training/demo from around 1956. It shows breaking with a high roundhouse kicks and a flying side kick. Another point of note is a section that shows children training. In the earlier Kwan days it was very rare for anyone under 19 to train in MA, most began studying in their early 20's. As Korean culture began to influence the MAs they found inspiration in the Hwarang (flowering youth). The young were now encouraged to train, I believe this had a huge impact on the skill set that would become post-Kwan TKD. This also meshed nicely with TKDs militaristic purposes, by the time they were old enough to serve, soldiers were already capable MAists.
 

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That's a real gem&#8212;what hit me most about it was the very businesslike use of knifehand strikes to the head and neck, and there was one shot, about 38 seconds in, of the kid practicing a basic deflection from inside, with that hikite grab-and-hold on the attacker's striking arm while at the same time coming in close to deliver that knifehand to the throat... that's something you sure don't see in a lot of 'little Tiger' classes these days! :EG:
 

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I'm glad you enjoyed the clip. Here is another one that shows what may be Chung Do Kwan training/demo from around 1956. It shows breaking with a high roundhouse kicks and a flying side kick. Another point of note is a section that shows children training. In the earlier Kwan days it was very rare for anyone under 19 to train in MA, most began studying in their early 20's. As Korean culture began to influence the MAs they found inspiration in the Hwarang (flowering youth). The young were now encouraged to train, I believe this had a huge impact on the skill set that would become post-Kwan TKD. This also meshed nicely with TKDs militaristic purposes, by the time they were old enough to serve, soldiers were already capable MAists.

Yeah, fsf, I think you're right about it being Chung Do Kwan. Folks on Youtube pointed out GM Son in the video. Great find. Thanks!
 

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That's a real gem—what hit me most about it was the very businesslike use of knifehand strikes to the head and neck, and there was one shot, about 38 seconds in, of the kid practicing a basic deflection from inside, with that hikite grab-and-hold on the attacker's striking arm while at the same time coming in close to deliver that knifehand to the throat... that's something you sure don't see in a lot of 'little Tiger' classes these days! :EG:

you are right about that
 

terryl965

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I'm glad you enjoyed the clip. Here is another one that shows what may be Chung Do Kwan training/demo from around 1956. It shows breaking with a high roundhouse kicks and a flying side kick. Another point of note is a section that shows children training. In the earlier Kwan days it was very rare for anyone under 19 to train in MA, most began studying in their early 20's. As Korean culture began to influence the MAs they found inspiration in the Hwarang (flowering youth). The young were now encouraged to train, I believe this had a huge impact on the skill set that would become post-Kwan TKD. This also meshed nicely with TKDs militaristic purposes, by the time they were old enough to serve, soldiers were already capable MAists.

Differently CDK
 

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Here is a short clip of Mas Oyama apparently giving a lesson to TKD practitioners in Korea, circa 1967. I wonder if this is around the time when General Choi tried to bring him into the TKD family. A cool bit of history for those interested in the arts.

There has also been some discussion about how far back the emphasis on high kicking goes. There is some very light sparring in this clip that may help shed some light on this topic. Keep in mind that this is way before the Olympics and during the Vietnam War, were TKD earned a fierce reputation.

This video was great! Thanks f2f!
 

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That's a real gem—what hit me most about it was the very businesslike use of knifehand strikes to the head and neck, and there was one shot, about 38 seconds in, of the kid practicing a basic deflection from inside, with that hikite grab-and-hold on the attacker's striking arm while at the same time coming in close to deliver that knifehand to the throat... that's something you sure don't see in a lot of 'little Tiger' classes these days! :EG:

I noticed that too- but only because it is exactly one of our one step sparring techniques!
Very cool video!
 
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Its funny that you both mention that, because that was among one of the first techniques I learned when being taught 3-step when I was 11.
 

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Its funny that you both mention that, because that was among one of the first techniques I learned when being taught 3-step when I was 11.

That in itself is very telling. It would be extremely difficult to find a TKD school around here that would teach a 1/3-step drill to anyone involving that basic technique, but especially not an 11-or-so year old....
 
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Yeah, I learned a bunch of nasty stuff when I was a kid, sometime I wonder what my master was thinking.:D
 

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That in itself is very telling. It would be extremely difficult to find a TKD school around here that would teach a 1/3-step drill to anyone involving that basic technique, but especially not an 11-or-so year old....

Our #5 basic one step is a spearhand to the throat. I'm sure it's a throwback to when one didn't start training until 18 or 19 years old. I think it needs to be re-visted & shouldn't be taught to kids.
 

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Yeah, I learned a bunch of nasty stuff when I was a kid, sometime I wonder what my master was thinking.:D

But in a way... kids are the ones who really need to know this stuff because they're often the ones who get pushed around and physically bullied. I think of some of the really violent jerk bully types I went to school with. I kind of doubt that many of them were nearly as obnoxious when they got older, at least in their behavior—a couple of them probably wound up working for Tony Soprano, but mostly they got married and took out mortgages and worried about affordable health care and all the rest. It's when you're a kid, and an adolescent that you're most likely to be an aggressive thug—sure, some people stay that way, they're the guys we continue to train because of, but really, the likelihood of violence was much greater in the course of an average school day when I was in K-12 than it was when I was a university student in NY. Of course the level of danger in the street violence was much greater in the City than it was in school, but I was on the spot way more often in K-12. I really wish I had had some good, hard, no-nonsense, 'results-oriented' MA training back then—I could really have used it!
 
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foot2face

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Our #5 basic one step is a spearhand to the throat. I'm sure it's a throwback to when one didn't start training until 18 or 19 years old. I think it needs to be re-visted & shouldn't be taught to kids.
That's understandable, but my master was of the opinion that by the time you're already 18 you could be sent off to war and "it's too late to learn to swim when you start to drown", and I kind of agree with him.
 

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But in a way... kids are the ones who really need to know this stuff because they're often the ones who get pushed around and physically bullied. I think of some of the really violent jerk bully types I went to school with. I kind of doubt that many of them were nearly as obnoxious when they got older, at least in their behavior&#8212;a couple of them probably wound up working for Tony Soprano, but mostly they got married and took out mortgages and worried about affordable health care and all the rest. It's when you're a kid, and an adolescent that you're most likely to be an aggressive thug&#8212;sure, some people stay that way, they're the guys we continue to train because of, but really, the likelihood of violence was much greater in the course of an average school day when I was in K-12 than it was when I was a university student in NY. Of course the level of danger in the street violence was much greater in the City than it was in school, but I was on the spot way more often in K-12. I really wish I had had some good, hard, no-nonsense, 'results-oriented' MA training back then&#8212;I could really have used it!


I agree with what you are saying, however....
how do we decide what IS acceptable to teach children. For example, I worry that teaching a child to strike to the throat will cause serious injury to a class room bully. However, I fear not teaching a child to strike to the throat will give them less of a chance to escape from an abductor.
I think it is hard to figure out how to train kids to defend themselves as well as when and to what extent to defend themselves. Which is also why I think respect and courtesy and self-control (etc) are such important parts of a child's training in martial art. Not that "character development" should be taught instead of martial arts, but it has to go hand in hand or else we are just training kids that won't know what is acceptable when (and in extreme cases bullies!).
It is a fine line...


****This might be worth moving rather than continuing the highjack. Can someone move this to a new thread?****
 
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foot2face

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Not that "character development" should be taught instead of martial arts, but it has to go hand in hand or else we are just training kids that won't know what is acceptable when (and in extreme cases bullies!).
It is a fine line...
Exactly! I tried to make a similar point in another thread a while back and got smack around a bit for it but I agree with you a 100%.
 

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I agree with what you are saying, however....
how do we decide what IS acceptable to teach children. For example, I worry that teaching a child to strike to the throat will cause serious injury to a class room bully. However, I fear not teaching a child to strike to the throat will give them less of a chance to escape from an abductor.
I think it is hard to figure out how to train kids to defend themselves as well as when and to what extent to defend themselves. Which is also why I think respect and courtesy and self-control (etc) are such important parts of a child's training in martial art. Not that "character development" should be taught instead of martial arts, but it has to go hand in hand or else we are just training kids that won't know what is acceptable when (and in extreme cases bullies!).
It is a fine line...
(sorry to hijack the thread here! feel free to move it!)

I teach the spearhand to the throat to kids because it's in our curiculum. Because it is, I spend more time on it than many other things. I have them take their index finger & put it on their own throat. When they see how little pressure it takes to hurt that area, I make it a point to say, "because it doesn't take that much to hurt someone there, we don't mess around with our friends & throw techniques at the throat." They get the message.

#2 highjack:)
 

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