There’s a discussion going on in the Kuk Sool forum at Martial Arts Planet about “Hypocritical aspects of WKSA” and one of the larger themes coming out of the discussion is about cross-training.

The notion of cross-training is an attempt to overall improve something towards meeting your goals. That one avenue may get you part of the way there, so you want to also add another avenue to get you all the way there. In martial arts, the classic situation is handled in today’s mixed-martial arts (MMA) environment. If you just study striking, you may be a great striker but what happens if someone takes you down to the ground? If you just study wrestling, do you know how to deal with someone that wants to stand up and throw punches? If you know how to fight on the ground, can you handle avoiding going to the ground in the first place? There’s a desire to be well-rounded because you cannot predict where a fight will go. Sure in a sport competition environment you can have rules and that dictates what will and won’t happen, e.g. in a boxing match you can be sure people will only be throwing punches. But in combat, you don’t know what you’ll be up against so the trend with MMA today is to be well-rounded and study all aspects so you can handle whatever situation may come your way.

One appeal of Kuk Sool as an art is that it is fairly comprehensive, even at higher levels supposedly teaching healing arts. Nevertheless, as you get into Kuk Sool study you start to discover that it does have some holes. One notable point is the ground game. The Wah Ki set of techniques are “defense from a recumbent position”, and while they may be sufficient to help one defend themselves from an untrained attacker, they barely scratch the surface of what can be accomplished on the ground. Other parts of the Kuk Sool curriculum come across in a similar way: it’s there, it’s something, but it’s not much. Kuk Sool’s “cane curriculum” is a whopping 10 techniques. If one examines more typical Hapkido cane curriculum, there is far more involved and available in terms of the study of a cane as a weapon. Dan bong curriculum is 3 meditations and 2 forms, no formal technique work (tho you can do things such as apply it to Maek Chi Ki or Ki Bohn Soo and see where it takes you); no real application of the weapon.

One could assert that the formal curriculum is but a start. I would agree with that. Many times packed within those few techniques is a great deal of information. One shouldn’t limit their focus to just the performance of the rote technique, but one should break the technique down to see what’s being discussed and demonstrated by the technique. From there, one should explore and see where you can go and how to find yourself in the art. For instance, as I explored dan bong on my own I went through all of my empty hand techniques seeing where or how or if a dan bong could be used in such a situation. What helps is having a good teacher that works to encourage this exploration, but I fear that Kuk Sool Won (WKSA) far too often emphasizes memorization and regurgitation of “textbook curriculum” and just adhering to the formal book techniques. You watch demonstrations and far too often every move you see is a rote move; that’s fine to some degree, but why can’t people branch out beyond that to make their art alive?

Consequently, a lot of people that study Kuk Sool want to cross-train. They feel there’s something that Kuk Sool isn’t providing them. They don’t want to leave because they feel there’s something Kuk Sool is providing, but it’s just not taking them 100% of the way to their goals. The unfortunate thing is, WKSA frowns upon cross-training. I’ve heard numerous reasons as to why. Some say it’s a quest to keep the art pure. This is understandable because if people start to add more and more of their own outside knowledge and flair, eventually that will change the art (like playing the telephone game). Part of Kuk Sool’s “charter” is a study and preservation of traditional Korean Martial Arts heritage, and if they wish to preserve history then they must work to preserve how things are. Fair enough. The trouble then becomes that the art can never change, it can never evolve. Of course, anyone that really knows WKSA history from the past 50+ years knows things have in fact changed, but whatever… we’ll take SUH In Hyuk at his word. Another reason for no cross-training is that Kuk Sool is a complete art and there’s no need nor reason to cross-train; the system is perfect as it is. I’m not sure about that, because it depends upon who defines it as perfect. To SUH In Hyuk, it’s perfect. To me, it wasn’t perfect. I see nothing in Kuk Sool’s curriculum about the study of firearms, despite the assertion that Kuk Sool preserves Korea’s martial history and KJN Barry Harmon’s book, 5000 Years of Korean Martial Arts, saying Koreans did use gunpowder. In the MAP thread, one school owner even said:

YES! Here’s why, I had a student (yellow belt) been with me for six months he started training combat firearms. His firearms instructor told him that his MA training was limiting his performance in his target shooting. He told him his stance was all wrong and it was effecting his ability to hit the target. So he insisted in changing his stance in Kuk Sool to fit his firearms training because he wanted to be consistant. I of course insisted that he do the stances correctly. It came down to him having to make a choice. He did and left on good terms. Thats why I don’t allow any cross training at my dojang. It’s a simple business decision it saves alot of hassle and things like that spread like wildfire throughout an organization as you can see in WKSA right now.

I think it’s a shame that WKSA/KSW demands such rigid adherence to how things must be. It assumes we’re all the same, with the same goals, same abilities. That this small elderly woman can do things just the same as this large young man. Now, I do know they aren’t that rigid about things, but the above and my own experiences do show that depending who you are working with, the organization really wants things done their way. That’s certainly fair of them to require. I’m just not sure how good it is for the longevity of the art and the organization.

In order to survive, all living things must evolve. If you don’t evolve and change and adapt, you will die. Kuk Sool is a great art in and of itself, but it needs to determine what it finds more important: what is the goal of Kuk Sool? If it is to unwaveringly preserve the martial history of Korea, then to remain static is mostly acceptable as history doesn’t change. However, every day Korea adds to its martial history; why shouldn’t modern evolutions of Korea’s martial history also be preserved? If the modern Korean military is studying X, shouldn’t Kuk Sool Won consider incorporating X to also maintain that history?  But if Kuk Sool’s goal is to allow people to find themselves, to provide them with an effective martial art, wouldn’t it too want to evolve? That as new discoveries are made, as things are found to work and not work, wouldn’t the art want to grow and evolve to keep meeting those needs? Or perhaps WKSA’s goal is making money, but I don’t want to digress into that discussion.

Perhaps we can see why people that study Kuk Sool often want to cross-train: the art refuses to evolve, but these students wish to evolve. The art and those in control of it are free to do as they wish, just as those that study ought to be free to do as they wish. If WKSA wants to prohibit people from freely exploring and learning, I suppose they can try to do that… but it can’t stop us from leaving when we get tired of being held back for no good reason.

In the end, it’s all about satisfying goals. So long as you are being true to yourself, you being the martial arts student or you being the head of a martial arts organization, so long as you’re satisfying the goals you have and are being honest about them, that’s all you can do.