Question 138: Scooping blocks

Modern ITF circular block method. At some point, with Choi’s blessing, the ITF came up with the knee spring/sine wave concept. Choi’s Encyclopedia of Taekwondo, shows the Toi-gye movement being used with knee spring. In the knee spring, each movement is preceded by an exaggerated bending of the knees and then springing upward into the technique, which, when the user is moving along a line, causes the body to move up and down in a sine wave movement. They also exaggerate the circular movement of the block. The two movements make the block impractical against a middle section punch and make it more of a block against a low section kick.

My opinion is that that the knee spring/sine wave concept is useless. In the old days, we specifically trained students that, when moving across the floor in stances, the belt knot should move along a straight line and not up and down as it does in the sine wave. It’s wasted movement and slows response time. It an attacker attacks at the start of you downward movement, you will be slower in responding to the attack. When you see modern ITF fighters in the ring, they do not use it, so why teach it

Keep kicking. As long as you are kicking the bag you are not kicking the bucket.