Month: October 2009

Oon Hak Hyung

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Oon Hak Hyung or “Crane Over Cloud” form is learned at the 5th degree black belt level in Kuk Sool.

Previously I linked to a video of Master Sung Jin Suh that had some snippets of his performance of Oon Hak Hyung along with other things.

Well, the World Kuk Sool Association 2009 World Tournament was just held last weekend and someone has posted video of the Masters demo. What I was thrilled about was seeing a complete performance by Master Sung Jin Suh of Oon Hak Hyung:

Unfortunately I can’t get wordpress.com to preroll the video to the performance, but you can flip ahead to 1:11 in the video to see it.

I have never seen this form interpreted as well as Master Sung Jin does it. His performance is amazing. The power, grace, fluidity. It’s simply awesome.

The video has some other cool things too. I really enjoyed Master Jack Harvey’s demo at the end of the video. Fun. 🙂

Kuk Sool Animal Techniques

/ hsoi

The curriculum of the martial art of Kuk Sool does contain animal techniques. Unlike Chinese arts which may form a style around the characteristics of a single animal, Kuk Sool looks to view animals as a whole. There are things we can learn from animal fighting styles and techniques, but we are humans, not animals. Thus when Kuk Sool views animal techniques, they take principles from the animals and adapt them to human means.

Some years ago I found a reprint of an article that discussed animal techniques in Kuk Sool. The website is long gone, but I saved the article in PDF’s.

Here’s an old video of Master Barry Harmon demonstrating various animal techniques.

Return of the Dragon

/ hsoi

I would love to know what the backstory is for the production of this video. Looks like it was done in a quasi “kung fu action theater” style, but as some sort of a promotional vehicle. I know In Hyuk Suh has a good sense of humor, and back in the 70’s when he first came to the US he was looking to do all he could to promote and publicize his art.

It’s good fun, and demonstrates Kuk Sool curriculum.

It reminds me of The Curse of Chubbs (starring my former instructor, Dewain Perry)

More Kuk Sool Videos

/ hsoi

Kuk Sool Won Master Gene Gause of Valencia, California has quite a collection of old and new Kuk Sool Won videos.

I personally love seeing the old stuff. There’s obviously a huge video library in people’s private collections of old Kuk Sool Won videos, from demos to training tapes to promotional materials. It’d be great if it could all be put online for people to experience.

That said, you can see a lot of Master Gause’s efforts on two YouTube channels:

TheDragonClips channel (I suspect this is Master Gause himself)

richhewton channel (I believe a student of Master Gause)

I’m going to make some separate postings of some of these videos as I think they deserve their own discussion.

Thank you Master Gause for putting these online. Looking forward to more!

Kuk Sool-related blogs

/ hsoi

Came across two blogs.

The first is Fighting Fit at Fifty, the blog of 6th degree black belt, Master Martin Ducker.

The second is Duckeys Health Corner, a personal health blog of SBN Rachel Ducker (daughter of Master Martin Ducker). Some fantastic looking recipes there. Have to try some.

The Three C’s

/ hsoi

The following was written by Tom Givens. I merely reformatted it.

I recently saw an interview with Bill Murphy, a senior instructor at Gunsite. He said the purpose of professional firearms training was the Three C’s: Competence, Confidence, and Control. According to Murphy, Competence begets Confidence. Confidence allows you to stay in control of yourself, and the situation. Sage advice.

Competence: It’s really hard to imagine how anyone could argue for less competence in a life saving skill. The defensive use of a firearm has vast, far reaching implications. You may not need a defensive firearm more than once or twice in your entire lifetime, but the need will be extremely severe. Your life, the lives of loved ones, and the lives of innocent third parties may literally hinge upon your competence. Your actions will be reviewed long after the fact by both civil and criminal authorities, and poor performance on your part may ruin the rest of your life, assuming you survived the encounter. There is simply no excuse for being incompetent with a firearm, if you’re going to carry one for self defense.

Murphy touched on the other, often overlooked aspect of competence. As you train and practice you build skill. As you build skill, you also build confidence. Confidence: This is an essential characteristic of successful warriors. If your team gets on the bus thinking, “We’re going to get our butts kicked tonight”, guess what. You sure are! You lost that game before you ever set foot on the playing field. Confidence in one’s skills allows the mind to remain calm and assess tactical options. This avoids panic and translates into efficient motion and good hits. You must be able to keep your wits about you in a crisis, and this is far easier if your own mind knows you have the physical skills to deal with the situation. Note that this is NOT bravado, but a calm assurance that you have the skills needed to win.

Control: Ninety percent of gunfighting is mental. If you can control yourself, you can control the situation. This is made infinitely easier if your physical skills (gunhandling/marksmanship) have been ingrained through hard work to a reflexive level. This frees the mind to work on the other issues, like keeping watch on their hands, being aware of nearby cover or escape routes, where are bystanders/family members, etc. You cannot keep up with these variables and think about how to run your gear at the same time. Confidence in your gear and your skills give you control.

Competence/Confidence/Control

Working homeschooled kids

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Oldest expressed interest in getting a job.

Hallelujah! 🙂

Since he is a minor, all sorts of child labor laws come into play. I found this summary of Texas and Federal law at the Texas Workforce Commission’s website.

Here’s one part that I’m not sure about:

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) a child 14 or 15 years of age may not work during school hours…

We homeschool. In Texas, the legal status of homeschool is a private school. So, what does “school hours” mean? My guess is the normal hours of operation for the public school system in the district in which we reside (I sent an email to HSLDA). But why must it be this way? One of the benefits of homeschooling is flexible scheduling. It allows us to better organize our family life. It can give an employer a work resource at a time when they might need the help (e.g. lunch rush), instead of only getting a glut of teenager help from 3-7 PM every day. Furthermore, that glut limits the number of teenage employees that can be had as there’s only so much work and wages to go around at that time of day.

I understand the intent of child labor laws, including the history of how they came about. The intentions are good. It is evident the laws are constructed around traditional notions of institutionalized schooling. Given the dramatic rise of homeschooling in the past some years, it makes sense to revise and modernize our laws to improve how homeschooling is legally regarded (e.g. HoNDA).

Updated: Well, maybe this will work out, at least here in Texas.

HSLDA sent me a summary of Texas child labor laws.

Q: Can a child work during public school hours?

A: Texas has no prohibition against a child working during public school hours.

I requested clarification regarding how Federal law would work in here. Since the Federal law does not specify what “during school hours” means, Texas law trumps in this case.

So it seems if Oldest was to be hired, he could work the lunch rush. So long as of course things didn’t conflict with his schooling, which we wouldn’t allow anyway.

Nevertheless, I could see employers not wanting to hire in such a situation. First, they may be unaware of the laws. In that case, best I can say is for Oldest to walk into the job application process prepared with paperwork showing the laws and legal take on things, because I’m sure an employer would contact the TWC but they may also be unaware. Second, an employer may just want to avoid the potential appearance of the situation. To see a child working mid-day will be strange to a lot of people, which could prompt phone calls to CPS or TWC, and an employer may just not want to deal with the hassle…. or it could count against Oldest in some way.

We’ll see how it all plays out.

A savage hypocracy

/ hsoi

(Yes I know it’s “hypocrisy”).

From Breda:

Now, I’m in favor of gay marriage* and I’m proud of those who participated in what has been called the “Big Gay March” in our Capitol this past weekend. I believe everyone should be free to marry the person who they love, regardless of gender. But by clinging to identity politics and asking for the passage of hate crime legislation in the same breath as “equal rights” the gay community is only separating itself further from the mainstream they are asking to be welcomed into. It causes people who are anti-gay marriage to believe (and perhaps rightly so) that “equal” won’t be equal at all, that special groups will get special treatment or privileges under the law.

South Park did a great take on this. Unfortunately I can’t embed it here, please go click and watch (and you’ll see where I got “hypocracy”). Or if you want to read:

If somebody kills somebody, it’s a crime, but if someone kills somebody of a different color, it’s a hate crime. And we think that that is a savage hypocrisy, because all crimes are hate crimes. If a man beats another man because that man was sleeping with his wife, is that not a hate crime? If a person vandalizes a government building, is it not because of his hate for the government? The motivation for a crime shouldn’t affect the sentencing. It is time to stop splitting people into groups. All hate crime laws do is support the ideas that blacks are different from whites, that homosexuals need to be treated differently from non-homos. That we aren’t the same. But instead we should all be treated the same, with the same laws and the same punishments for the same crimes.

In many regards as well, this is working against simplification. This just builds up a lot and creates more problems than it’s good-intentions ever solve.

Harley Davidson kills Buell

/ hsoi

Wow. Harley-Davidson kills the Buell line.

From Erik Buell (if the YouTube video is pulled, you should be able to also view it on the Buell website).

Watching that hurts. You can hear the sadness in the man’s voice. 😦

Hopefully there will be a way for things to carry on. Maybe in a different form, maybe under a different name, but the same people and passion driving the development.

Ride on, brother.