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First Strike
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Taekwondo is a defensive art. It teaches that we defend against the first strike but refrain from making the first strike. However, this is not always the best course of action. Sometimes, a preemptive strike is required.
Patrick McCarthy has coined the phrase "habitual acts of violence", acts that are played out time and time again in the arguments and ensuing physical confrontations that occur every day around the world. These acts are deeply ingrained in our physical and psychological makeup and change very little through the ages. Study of other primates, such as the chimpanzee show striking similarities in the escalating stages of conflict (The Naked Ape, by Desmond Morris, has a most interesting chapter about fighting). An evolutionary fact is that it is disadvantageous for any species to engage in intra-specific physical conflict and therefore strategies of show, intimidation, and posturing have evolved over the millennia to resolve the inevitable squabbles that arise without resorting to physical violence and the injuries that inevitably result. Physical conflict between humans has not changed appreciably in thousands of years.
Knowledge of this allows us to create strategies that exploit it to our advantage. The Fence, by Geoff Thompson, describes a methodology for dealing with the escalating conflict just prior and into physical violence.
Since this verbal and physical posturing occurs in many arguments before they escalate to physical conflict, one strategy is to strike first just before the opponent strikes. "First hand" is a highly effective strategy to ensure victory.
Most Taekwondo patterns begin with a block, not an attack, but not all, for instance, Hwa-rang begins with a strike. But for the most part, preemptive strikes are not used. First strike is contrary to our training.
Nearly all of our training focuses on defensive work. In pre-arranged (one or three-step) sparring, one person attacks and the defender's response is to block and counter-attack. From the beginning, we are taught to react to circumstances. When we are the attackers during practice, our mentality is often that of being there so that the defender can practice his or her defenses rather than of honing our attacking skills.
If you talk with people who must use their Taekwondo regularly, such as bouncers, bounty hunters, police officers, or just rowdy drunks, they will consistently tell you the person who hits first usually wins.
So we practice reaction, but experience says that action beat reaction. Therefore you could say that we are training to lose or at least give the advantage to our opponent.
There are a variety of types of assault that you may be subjected to and statistically some happen more often than others, the habitual acts of violence. Therefore, it should be possible to rank all assaults in order of the most likely to occur to the least likely to occur. For example, which is more likely to happen in a street scenario; someone attacks with a right hand swinging punch or with a side thrust kick. Of course the punch is much more likely. The top probability attacks are the ones to which we should focus our training since they are the ones we will likely have to defend against.
The most probable attacks are techniques such as grabs, pushes, pointing, gesturing, etc. Many of these attacks escalate from simple verbal attacks to physical assault. Once a physical attack is eminent, a preemptive strike is may be used most effectively, however, it may lead to legal problems later.
Depending on the situation, a preemptive strike may be necessary, even if there may be legal or civil consequences afterward. The decision is yours.
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