In your opinion what are the characteristics of a Shorin-ryu style? What are the parts of Chung Do Kwan TKD and Shotokan that one could blend together to get a 'shorin-ryu style'? How would you go about doing it?
Shorin Ryu, from what I understand, has raised stances, emphasizes chambering of leg, and quick strikes to nullify the attack. Rather than overwhelm, they seek to deconstruct. Unlike my preferred style of Bagua, but like Chung Do Kwan, it is linear, and emphasizes use of one's hands. This kinda makes sense since it's handwork was incorporated from Chinese Kempo and shotokan respectively, while Chung Do Kwan's were essentially wing chun punches converted to the korean horizontal strike which has existed since even before subak as a style did. Jhoon Rhee created Chung Do Kwan, as a style heavily influenced by his time training with Bruce Lee, to whom he taught how to execute TKD's powerful kicks. I can only imagine what would have happened if Bruce Lee did Muai Thai. Maybe the sun would explode with awesomeness?
You must understand that the word 'traditional' for TKD is a misnomer, as the art itself has only existed for at most 75 years. Chung Do Kwan is among the oldest of the schools, but even then it has been radically modified in its relatively short time. For example, Chung Do Kwan originally followed a curriculum of the forms of Tang Soo Do because Won Kuk Lee who founded it, was both a master of Taekyyon (the kicking art which would become what we know of as WTF style, or moo duk kwan affiliated technique) and a 4th dan in shotokan. Hence, chung do kwan. However, at some point my teacher or his, Master Khan, ditched the Tang Soo Do forms, while retaining their name, and incorporated other elements. There is a form practiced in Shotokan, which is far older than TKD, known as Heian Shodan. In this video.
. between 40 seconds and 48, the practitioner executes 4 knife-hand techniques, which is identical to techniques found in the form we learned as ki cho hyung, the second form of our system of chung do kwan in NOVA. Essentially he kept the names, and took forms from other systems, changing their moves from the original to one's which would do the same thing, with movements based off chung do kwan. The fact no one has really caught onto that is really something to marvel about. I have always wanted to ask how many of the 'traditional' forms we learned were just made up, which might explain why we were still doing warrior shield so late as the 2000s, but I digress.
TKD which is not affiliated with WTF style is basically karate with deeper stances, and somewhat alternate methods of chambering. Even in Tae Kwon Do, you can find across the styles people who chamber their hands at their chest, their solar plexus level, or hips, and some from raised hands in fighting stance, like boxers and chinese kempo, while others dont use their hands at all. None of it is wrong, but good luck figuring out not only what your teacher taught you, but where on earth it came from. I would say 100% of what is known as TKD contains elements of both Subak, Yusil and TaeKyon, with elements from karate heavily influencing the earliest styles. But it really makes sense, if you look at chung Do Kwan, and consider that all won kuk lee did was deepen shotokan stances, and raise the kicks, while keeping the handwork. This would later be altered again and chambering the hands would be removed when Jhoon Rhee befriended Bruce Lee and they taught each other. Some Chung Do Kwan schools still chamber when advancing in stances, not unlike Isshin-ryu at the chest, while out here in NOVA we learned to not chamber our arms- they already are if they're raised.
When you understand the history of TKD, and that it's just a made up martial art drawing from other unique styles, and mashing them together (which explains why half of the people who practice TKD look one way, while the other half look like karate) it should become clear to how the transformations were made. Korean arts were slammed together with Shotokan, with how one generates torque shifted away from full body momentum, and back to the earlier practice in Subak of using torque from pivoting, twisting from one's waise, and using torque with strikes. If anything... it's kinda like saying SHOTOKAN THANK YOU FOR TKD.
Alex, Shotokan is a Japanese style of karate developed in Japan by Gichin Funakoshi. Funakoshi came from Okinawa where he had learned Shorin Ryu and Shorei Ryu. I don't believe Funakoshi actually called his karate 'Shotokan' but I think it was the name of his dojo. So to take his karate and blend with other systems to come back to Shorin Ryu is a bit far fetched.
If I might ask. You claim to be knowledgeable in Shotokan and not so knowledgeable in Shorin Ryu. For how long have you studied these styles of karate?
Shorin-ryu and shotokan are independant styles. I apologize if I came off saying you can take one unique style and morph it into another. What I am saying, however, is that certain movements in one art, when tweaked, sometimes begin to look like movements from another. At times, they even stop being the movement they originally were, and have become one found in a completely different style. You cross inside when you block below the waist in chung do kwan, yet in tang soo do the block originates from the shoulder if the block is below the waist. Chung Do Kwan very briefly utilized the full body momentum of Isshin Ryu but later abandoned it, and for good reason. I stopped practicing Isshin ryu for the same reasons. You need to have bulk to really get the effect you want from that art, and it can completely jam Taekyons style of high kicks. In fact it's next to impossible to perform the Taekyon kicks without awkwardness (imbalance and instability) from a deep- (somtimes called long-) stance when combined with the forward momentum of Isshin-ryu-like arts which strike through the target. The art has changed and evolved a lot, which can be a problem. Elements have been ditched on both sides of the TKD tree. WTF and Moo duk Kwan practically abandoned the use of hands at all in fighting, ignoring their own tang soo do roots, and therefore shotokan and the plethora of hand techniques they offered.
Won Kuk Lee, the founder of Chung Do Kwan, and therefore ultimately what would become TKD, received his 4th dan from the founder of shotokan you mentioned, and combined that training in shotokan with his previous training of Taekyon he received back in Korea. He apparently learned Shotokan while he was studying abroad in Japan, at the chuo university he met Funakoshi. The rest is history and wikipedia.
Im loving how people who do not practice TKD, but do these very styles of karate, are considering this article a trainwreck, when Im actually talking about the kind of history which honors your own arts. Hence why I posted about it. It's relevance is to clarify my earlier use of 'Okinawan karate' as being elements of shorin-ryu, through someone who had learned shotokan, shorin-ryu, and shorein-ryu, among jiujitsu, aikido and other styles, while I myself learned chung do kwan. In essence, without meaning to, I made a full circle migrating from Moo Duk to Chung Do Kwan, and later practicing Shotokan.
TKD would not exist without Karate... so I do not understand how it is a trainwreck. Surely many have noticed the similarity between the movements and techniques of Mantis style, Bagua, and Aikido. The similarities between Shotokan and Chung do Kwan are so stark when next to each other, that Shotokan, a system so different it hailed from across a sea and country, looks more like the first TKD than what is now, today, considered the traditional view of TKD, which is Moo Duk Kwan, and kick kick kick. Think about that. The oldest style of TKD doesn't look like what is performed in the olympics, for the world theatre, it looks like karate.
A lot of TKD forget that TKD is essentially karate augmented with longer, deeper stances, while retaining hand use and a stable base. The only way this was made possible was by mixing the styles, and altering how one chambers, and executes their techniques in relation to their position in a stance. For chung do kwan, the solution of shotokan not having high kicks, while desiring to do high kicks (because of Lee's background) mitigated this by realizing if he both lowered and deepened his stance, it would provide the leverage to execute very powerful, high, and chambered techniques. I.E., Lee figured out how to fuse the kicks from Taekyon with the chambering movement in Shotokan, to produce a new kind of kick, which you see really only with Chung Do Kwan, and it is quite noticable, even though it also retains noticeable similarities from the techniques of Taekyon and shotokan (the leg chamber is unmistakable to me). Im not saying you should do this with martial arts, but it's what I have in inadvertantly learning the styles in the inverse order of their origin. And you really notice this kind of thing, when you do it *** backwards, come into a chung do kwan school from moo duk kwan and tang soo do, realize the form names are the same, but totally different. It wasn't hard to put the pieces together once I began practicing with, and learning from shotokan practitioners.
I'd major in history for martial arts, but GMU doesn't offer it. Luckily martial artists, at least when it comes to the interwebz, takes a lot of the stuff on here very personally, and thus seriously. Wikipedia is a great resource for the history, and basic information about any of the arts, just make sure you back up your info with second-hand to ensure accuracy.
I come from the entangled web theory of martial arts; there is no one single progenitor of it all. combat is something innate toward humanity, and as such, it can be in every human. It is within any of us to act in a fashion which is combative. Martial arts forms when you take that fighting, and give it a philosophy and focus, such as say clubbing strikes, or grabbing, or to get high kicks. There is a reason, and it is relative to the people, their culture, and what they had to deal with day to day. Hence how we supposedly got nunchuka and sais, which are among the most noticeable icons now of martial arts. Laws ban weapons, peasants learn to use everyday items as weapons. When you consider a weapon to really just be anything utilized to harm others, you begin to see how any item can become a part of a martial art.
A lot of what is considered 'traditional' today was overhyped nonsense fed to Americans to get their kids in the early 90s to take up the style. to a lot of asians America=easy money. Proof of point? The Red Power Ranger when the series first took off at the beginning of the decade, features a martial artist using Chung Do Kwan. Who happened to be taught by the same person who taught me. This hype is how I began with WTF TKD... like a lot of other people did back then. Just how a lot of people in early 2000 migrated to Krav Maga, and now, to MMA. Back in the 70s it was karate, for Americans, while asians hit their fad in the 30-40s... when coincidentally Japan kinda occupied everything, with their military. I cant imagine the military might, at times, teach some parts of the population the art of their homeland, when they thought their culture superior, and had also outlawed all the native Korean martial arts.
If not only a person came up to you, but the army of an entire country, and told you that if you kept praciting your style you would be shot, or if you were even suspected of it, wouldnt you get smart and learn their art just as a decoy so you can practice yours in private?
I apologize if I am coming off rude, but TKD is something both under appreciated, and overhyped respectively. Its history is misunderstood and convuted, because people don't know their origins, and haven't seen how their worship of founders and previous masters has effectively neutered WTF from being an art, and is why even though WTF=Moo Duk Kwan, WTF has become a sport, always will stay a sport, while Moo Duk Kwan (which despite abandoning hand techniques in fighting, still taught them as a rote part of the forms they had hijacked from either shotokan, or the native Tang Soo Do). When you consider they just morphed their forms to look like Karate, if they were particularly brave, than they could pretty much get to practice their style, in addition to practicing the Japanese, so long as they could consciously differentiate between the two. But that takes a lot of determination and love of your art. It's how I can practice multiple styles at once. I have done, in all my styles, all the techniques I have learned at least a thousand times each. Perhaps two or three times that, and that is a small amount compared to how many I will have done decades from now. When I punch with a horizontal fist, I never forget about the other knuckles I could have used, how I could have re-oriented my hand, and so on. The reason we drill is to attain muscle memory, once you have that, it becomes an intellectual game in regards to how you play with what has been memorized. You could do it how you memorized it, but what if you were to say change one particular part. If you were aware you had changed it, you would see how it was different. You can do this with differing styles.
Please excuse the bolded text which was contained earlier. It was just fail. Let's leave it at that
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opcorn: Anybody want some?
