One of the first movements you learn in Kuk Sool is “block, cover, punch” (others may call it something else, but that’s what we call it around our school). This isn’t some formalized technique, per se, but it is one of the first movements you learn. The white belt form, Ki Cho Hyung (translated: “Foundational/Fundamental Form”) makes this the first real movement you do with your hands. Watch the following video:
He starts in a right-facing “offensive” stance. Turns to a long stance, performs a front kick and sets his leg down. Then at about 0:06 into the video you’ll see him use his right arm to block, left arm to cover, then right hand to punch. That’s the movement I’m talking about. Let’s break it down.
The motion starts with a block. The block itself guards your centerline, from your head/face down as long as your forearm is (perhaps mid-chest). This provides reasonable protection to your front and center. The block is also a sweeping inward movement, able to deflect, meet, or redirect an incoming attack.
The motion continues with a cover. The left arm is coming up horizontal to have left fingertips meet right elbow. This provides further cover to the lower portion of your body, perhaps guarding from uppercuts, or the left hand is in position to swing down to block attacks to even lower portions of the body. The combination of the block and cover puts you in a position of reasonable defense to your vital center. I’ll come back to talk about the movement portion of the cover in a moment.
The motion then ends with a punch. This is your (counter)attack.
That’s the basics of the motion: block, cover, punch. Of course, what you see in the form is idealized/stylized, but the act of performing the movement over and over in forms practice helps to beat a well-worth neural pathway to create that so-called “muscle memory”. In fact, if you examine Kuk Sool’s forms, you’ll see this exact movement or slight variations are in every Kuk Sool form. I reckon there’s some merit to the movement if it’s worth doing so often. Let’s look at how this basic movement can be utilized.
One of the most common forms of attack is a haymaker, and for ease of discussion let’s assume you (the defender) are right handed and the attacker (throwing the haymaker) is throwing with the right hand. So visualize yourself standing, you and the attacker are facing each other, the attacker throws the haymaker. You can block. This receives the haymaker (to a point other than your head), intercepts the attack. You cover; while the initiation of the cover may not do anything, what it is doing is bringing your left hand/arm up from under the attacker’s arm. As you move the covering arm upwards (go back and watch the video and see how the covering arm moves upward ending with the left hand in front of the forehead), this works to move the attacker’s arm out of the way, opening him up and now giving the opening for your punch to hit home (e.g. his chin). That’s a very basic illustration, but it shows what this movement can do.
However, the movement doesn’t have to remain so stylized. For instance, as you cover, instead of the left arm just moving the attacker’s arm out of the way, the left arm could move up and left hand grab the attacker’s arm/hand. From there, you now have control over one of the attacker’s limbs and you could apply various joint locks or throws (I find Ki Bohn Soo #9 a nice follow-up). The punch could be a palm strike to the nose, or consider any of the Maek Chi Ki strikes. Instead of pulling the punch all the way back to the hip, just fire off the punch from where your right arm/hand came to rest after the block. As well, this doesn’t just work against the right-handed haymaker; try working it from a right jab or cross. Try working it with a left-handed attack; in this case the cover and perhaps grab will close the attacker off (even better to prevent their further attack now that their back will be towards you), you can punch over their shoulder, or move to a lock such as an arm bar (think Ki Bohn Soo #6). Of course, you as well should practice this “left-handed”.
This basic movement of “block, cover, punch” is nothing fancy; in fact, it’s rather simple. It is one of the first movements introduced to a student of Kuk Sool, and given the timing and where/how it’s introduced it’s evident how fundamental it is… a foundation upon which to build. We often practice our forms as movements detatched from everything else we do many times not extracting the movements for practice in combat situations, but here’s a perfect example of a movement to break out and practice. Try it next time you’ve got a partner to work with. Experiment and see just what you can do with this simple movement. Start with the basic haymaker vs. stylized movement. Progress to other attacks vs. stylized movement, then haymaker vs. expanded/experimental movement (variations on the theme). Then progress to any sort of attack vs. any sort of defense (i.e. get dynamic, spontaneous), tho of course keeping within the basics of the block, cover, punch theme.
We all like doing really advanced and fancy things, but when it gets down to it, there’s nothing like the fundamentals. Block, cover, punch is about as fundamental as you can get, but can be an effective dynamic response.
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