Styles

[battousai16]

i'd say it's more or less likely, considering that it's fairly well documented. nobody ever said the practicioners were gods or anything. whether what i do is what the hwarang did is up for debate, but quite frankly i really don't care, considering i have a great deal of fun doing it.

[fragbot]

"If I may interject.

 

TKD is based off of Shotokan Karate. Earliest Kata or whatever Korean term they use were identical to Shotokan. "

 

that's interesting, i've never heard that. most of what i've read is that tae kwon do was based off of hwa rang do, a much more complex and expansive korean martial art that's 2,000 years old. i could be wrong, especially since i really don't know much about shotokan, but i'm a practicioner of hwa rang do and can say that we have all of tae kwon do's techniques, so i'd believe it. it might just leave me biased, though

 

This is gonna sound harsh, but I'd suggest your choice of reading material is rather limited. Last time I was interested in this topic, the best information I could find put Hwa Rang Do at a little over 40 years old.

 

Whether you do Hwa Rang Do, TKD, Vovinam, or box, I could care less and hope you have good fun doing it. However, remaining cheerfully and willfully ignorant about the origins of what you train, well, I'd hesitate to call that a healthy attitude for a student.

 

As an aside, I have two general questions for discussion:

 

1) why is there often an impetus to associate a system as being N years old (where the larger N is, the better)?

 

2) why do people often respond so poorly to historical criticisms? There are numerous interesting and effective styles (in my experience, people with, hopefully, extensive training one place who can't/won't attribute it for whatever reason) with questionable histories. If a style is effective, what drives the hesitation of moving towards accuracy over time?

[battousai16]

"This is gonna sound harsh, but I'd suggest your choice of reading material is rather limited. Last time I was interested in this topic, the best information I could find put Hwa Rang Do at a little over 40 years old. "

 

not at all, though i'd love to see your sources my grandmaster states that it was passed down person to person before he started opening schools, so schools have only been around since about the 60's, but the art has presumably been around for 2,000 years. there's a martial arts encyclopedia (2 actually, but i forget the titles. i'll look tommorow at work ) that hold this to be true. however, as it is essentially just his word, and there has been quite a few political scandals in my art. but i trust my grandmaster to be an honorable man, and i believe that how i feel about my training matters quite a bit more than how i feel about the styles history. it's not that i'm willfully ignorant, i look for new sources whenever i can, i just haven't found much in the ways of reliable sources that say otherwise.

[WapCaplet]

I'm sure I'll be corrected here, but this is just one man's opinion and observation. I think there are as many styles of martial arts (and even as many styles of TKD or HKD or Shotokan) as there are instructors. Each instructor will interpret what they have learned slightly differently and pass that knowledge on to students, who will in turn interpret that information differently. Fundamentally the art remains the same, but eventually you have an incredible number of variations.

 

Obviously one can say there are a significant number of different karate styles, but there are probably just as many, or more, styles of a specific style (stay with me here), like shotokan. The katas vary slightly, the stances have tiny differences from club to club. We had several new students join our club recently. Although they come from a Shotokan karate club, and our club also teaches Shotokan, there were significant differences in some of the blocks and kata.

 

Just like there are numerous interpretations of the Bible, I think there are numerous interpretations of each "style" of martial art. I think this makes it very difficult to say for sure where each style originated and exactly "how old" each style is. My martial art history is pretty fuzzy, so please correct me if I am way off base. Just my 2 cents.

 

I would go so far as to say there are as many "styles" of martial art as there are people. Each person takes what they learn and applies it slightly differently than the next.

 

Wap

[fragbot]

not at all, though i'd love to see your sources my grandmaster states that it was passed down person to person before he started opening schools, so schools have only been around since about the 60's, but the art has presumably been around for 2,000 years. there's a martial arts encyclopedia (2 actually, but i forget the titles. i'll look tommorow at work ) that hold this to be true. however, as it is essentially just his word, and there has been quite a few political scandals in my art.

 

but i trust my grandmaster to be an honorable man, and i believe that how i feel about my training matters quite a bit more than how i feel about the styles history. it's not that i'm willfully ignorant, i look for new sources whenever i can, i just haven't found much in the ways of reliable sources that say otherwise.

 

What is your response would be to the material on Bob Duggan's site (NOTE: I don't do HWD, KSW, or hapkido at all; so I don't have a dog in this fight)? Having seen this sort of thing happen before in other than Korean styles (though the Koreans seem to have made a science of it; they're definite masters of marketing), what he describes seems quite likely. Likewise, I have heard similar information from another fella in those pictures who no longer practices Korean systems having moved on to a Chinese system.

 

As an aside, I think he goes a tad hyperbolic when he uses the term martial arts cult.

[Sasori_Te]

Ultimately it doesn't matter how old an art is or how much history it has. Do you like it and can you make it work for you when it counts? I like debating martial history but I don't get caught up in it from a training stand point.

[battousai16]

hmm, i don't believe i've seen mr. duggans site, i'll check it out when i'm done on the forums here my main "dog" in this "fight" is that A&E did a quick thing on hwa rang do in a martial arts special, and i know that they're required to do massive amounts of research before they put things out. i'll check his site out, though

[battousai16]

all i found when i put his name into google were a whole bunch of bob duggan home pages and http://www.hwarangdo.com/judicial/judicial1%20revised%206-5-01.htm, which is the judicial actions taken against him for his slander and a number of other stuff he did. could you give me the site address?

[fragbot]

all i found when i put his name into google were a whole bunch of bob duggan home pages and http://www.hwarangdo.com/judicial/judicial1%20revised%206-5-01.htm, which is the judicial actions taken against him for his slander and a number of other stuff he did. could you give me the site address?

 

Done from memory, if it's incorrect. Tell me.

 

The page you listed was quite helpful in understanding some of Mr. Duggan's comments. When I wrote earlier that I thought he was being hyperbolic, I didn't have the whole picture. I'd say it's likely I was mistaken and he wasn't over-stating his case.

[battousai16]

well, when it comes down to it, to each his own. i'm with sasori_te on this one anyway