Totally Tae Kwon Do Magazine - Issue 20 - Usadojo

equirements for martial art syllabi should
always get serious thought. Requirements
should reflect the likely violent scenarios
practitioners are to expect within their own
society. Focus should also be given to the
most likely victims of violent encounters;
statistically speaking that is probably young
men. Furthermore, pre-arranged sparring
(i.e. model sparring) should not be
confused with proper self-defence training.
It might seem that I am advocating against
the practise of pre-arranged sparring,
which is not the case. There was a time
that I did not teach model self-defence at
all. What I found was something quite
interesting: some of the students, even
though they understood the principles of
self-defence, when suddenly confronted
with the real life scenarios only, without the
model self-defence, i.e. pre-arranged
sparring, training as a prelude, did not
know how to react. This made me realise a
number of things: Merely understanding
the principles is not enough as many
students (especially beginners), do not
know how to manifest those principles in
practical, creative ways. Although they
have the head knowledge, this does not
naturally manifest in body knowledge; i.e.
reflexive bodily responses. They first have
to think about the principles. What model
self-defence and prearranged sparring
teach them are certain habits, certain stock
responses that they do not have to think
about – mere reflexive motions that occur
because of the good habits that were
engrained in them through model selfdefence
practise. Someone with years of
training, whose body acts reflexively, need
not be stifled by such stock responses.
They have the kinaesthetic ability to react
to different scenarios and situations in
creative ways. Other people, without the
years of training, do not have that
kinaesthetic sensibility, and for them model
self-defence training is crucial to instil
instinctive responses to certain situation. It
is here that the responsibility of the teacher
comes in to play. The teacher should
ensure that the types of situations are
44 - Totally Tae Kwon Do
reflective of realistic violent encounters. To
return to the illustration from earlier – the
scenarios should be realistic: Not merely
wrist grabs but a grab immediately followed
by a strike.
Finding out what such likely self-defence
scenarios are, is quite relative to where
you live. What is taught as self-defence in
a martial art gym should be relevant to the
society in which that gym is located, or to
the specific self-defence needs of the
students and their most probable violent
encounters.
This is not as easy as one would suppose.
I’m teaching in Korea a mixed group of
individuals, many of them, of course,
Korean. The self-defence needs of these
Korean students are radically removed
from the self-defence needs of my students
in South Africa (or even my American
students here). Here in Korea violent
crimes are so uncommon that practically
every time a violent crime occurs it makes
the news. In South Africa, on the other
hand, violent crimes are so common that
they are often not considered news worthy
anymore.
The students whom I teach here, and even
the chief instructor, considers my selfdefence
teaching somewhat violent. Now
anybody that knows me knows that I am
not a violent person. It’s different when I
teach self-defence, however. I’ve even
been told here once that some of my selfdefence
techniques are “dirty.” True, they
are dirty, but if we’re talking actual selfdefence
then you need every dirty trick in
the book. I’m merely teaching a level of
aggressive effectiveness which I believe
would be necessary in actual violent crime
scenarios – scenarios reflective of the
extreme crimes that occur in South Africa
where I hail from.
A typical person living in South Korea will
hardly ever be confronted with real
violence in the streets. In public, angry
people in Korea tend to resort mostly to