karate vs taekwondo

hello everyone, this is noah, and today i'dlike to talk a little bit about technique demonstrations and explanations, especiallywhen looking at the more esoteric methods of karate, such as "tuidi" and "chibudi."recently, this video was shared on social media, and it got my attention because ofthe way the technique was demonstrated and explained. now, this isn't something that'sunusual in the world of karate, and it's not

something that's new, but you can see theinstructor demonstrate the technique very quickly and forcefully on a partner that isjust standing there waiting for the technique to be demonstrated. he's not offering anysort of resistance. he's not even really trying to protect his arm from the attack that'sgoing to be demonstrated. he's simply holding

it out there to be used, and when the techniqueis applied, he drops to the ground in a lot of pain. this is something that isn't necessarywhen teaching, in my opinion. you can demonstrate the effectiveness of a technique without puttingyour partner at so much risk for injury. this technique can fairly easily cause a lot ofdamage to the connective tissue in the wrist, or even break the bones of the wrist, andyou shouldn't be applying it so quickly, at all, unless you actually need to. especiallyif you're just teaching it. now, in addition to the way he applied the technique, the instructorin this case explained that the technique worked by using his "breath" and "puttingenergy into the arm." now, breath is an important component to martial arts, and energy--atleast as far as movement and strength go--is

also important, but you can't use these toexplain away the biomechanics of a technique. when we're looking at a technique, such asa joint lock, it's very important for students to understand how the technique actually workson a mechanical level. if we just say, "oh, i apply my breath at this moment, then i putenergy into the arm," we aren't actually explaining how the technique works. we aren't explainingthe directions of movement that need to be incorporated into the technique. we don'texplain the points of contact necessary. we don't explain how this is related to whatthe opponent is trying to do. if you look at a technique from another system that doesjoint locks, such as brazilian jiu-jitsu, you aren't going to see such vague explanationsof how a technique functions. you're going

to get a very simplistic, and fundamentalexplanation of why a technique works the way it does. so, if we're looking at ourselves,and how we teach techniques, it's important to understand that teaching in this way, andtrying to keep things mystical, and trying to, sort of, make it seem more effective thanit is, we're not going to be able to be taken seriously from martial artists outside ofthese circles. they're going to look at what's being taught and say, "well, clearly you don'tunderstand the technique, because you can't explain it." additionally, if you're tryingto explain something to a group of people in a seminar, it's important that you teachit effectively, and you explain how the technique works. you could be an extremely skilled andknowledgeable instructor, but if you don't

actually pass on the knowledge of how somethingfunctions on a mechanical level, on a physical level, then the people who are learning itfrom you--even if they are able to do it correctly--they won't be able to effectively teach it whenthey take it back and work on it in their school, because they won't have the underlyingknowledge of how it works. this is something that really hampers karate's effectiveness,and it hampers your own effectiveness as an instructor. if you can't teach how a techniqueworks, then it's not something you should be teaching.