I was watching the Fight quest episode and the moves and reversals look cool. I've checked out some Hapkido demos on youtube and they look great. But, there's one thing, Hapkido looks more suitable if you're planning on being the next jacky chan. The demos looks stylish but some moves are just greatly exaggerated. Is this style effective? The way they throw people around looks too easy and ever since I've been doing judo I know throws are hard to pull off. Thoughts anyone?

Don't judge an entire art by a couple of flashy demos, good or bad. Most every art I know of with a sizable following has its share of flakes and fakes. The Fight Quest hapkido segment would have had me wondering, too, if that's all I'd ever seen.

I think the basic notion is very sound - Hapkido is modern eclectic, brings in kicks, punches, joint locks, throws, small weapons, you name it. That's the good part. I had a lot of fun practicing in Korea years ago, before it was very well known overseas, but moved and never found adequate instruction again.

Looking back I'm sure there's more to it than I saw, but the dojang was really small, only the instructor was any good, the rest were raw beginners. I certainly learned a lot about pressure points and joint locks, and left with calluses on the tops of my toes from the kicking.

Hapkido is one of those martial arts that varies considerably from school to school. Some look like modern MMA while some are a really poor Tae Kwon Do/Aikido hybrid.

My experience as well. I've worked out with people from Hapkido who were quite good, and with some who were very bad. The difference seemed to be the club rather than how long they'd been doing it. Good clubs produced good fighters, bad clubs bad fighters. Strange that

Mixed feelings. It's history is checkered and some schools are total scams. Could be effective on the street, but I have yet to see that. I took a few courses and it seemed ok. Nothing special. I'd rather mix Judo with Muai Thai and BJJ. Far more effective IMO.

I think this statement is good for all arts.just a question, why do you take bjj and judo? judo is derived from japanese jujitsu, as is bjj. what do you get out of the bjj classes that you cannot get in judo?

Judo has a whole range of throws, leg locks, spine locks, neck cranks, and an asphyxiation that are rarely taught because they are no longer allowed in competition. If you find a more traditional sensei then you'll probably learn these, but slim chances with a club that focuses a lot on competition. BJJ allows these things (but many competitions are starting to crack down on some of them) so you'll definitely train them and BJJ has a whole category of reversals and sweeps that Judo doesn't even have terms for. While the waza is exactly the same in both BJJ has evolved names and teaching methods for some things that really won't be taught in Judo because they aren't done.

On Hapkido:
I picked up a book on ground fighting at a used book store a few weeks ago without knowing it was written by a Hapkido master. They seem to have a whole other perspective on ground fighting from what I've seen and include most of the Judo & BJJ basic waza. Some pretty neat stuff for self defense situations like a heel hooking type leg twist when an opponent kicks while you're on your back to bring him to the ground. Maybe its not rocket science, but their waza includes defending against situations sport Judo and BJJ don't consider. How often (and well) they train this stuff may be open to question, but what they have looks neat on paper.

Yes, I do both.

I get a lot out of BJJ and cant get from Judo and vice versa. From Judo I get Tachiwaza and solid throws that BJJ doesnt have. I mastered Haraigoshi and Osotogari. I will easily throw a BJJ guy with these, BUT the BJJ guy doesnt care about getting thrown since there is no IPPON in BJJ, they will just cling on to your back like a monkey and will try to choke you out once you hit the ground. From BJJ I learned pure ne-waza techniques that almost ALL can be applied in Judo except neck cranks and leg locks. I learned the most beautiful sankaku or triangle chokes from BJJ i get judokas with all the time. The most beautiful arm bar transitions. Etc...Without BJJ my ne-waza would be weak. But now my newaza is very strong against other judokas, and they would rather do tachi waza with me! haha!

Have you ever taken a BJJ class?

I saw an hapkido exibition this past saturday in an demo organized by the judo club where we ocasionally pratice aikido, i must say i was very much disapointed with what i saw... a lot of flashy moves with very little substance to them, the borad breaking routine got me in a near state of shock, but i do know that demos usually dont represent what an art is more what masters want you to think it his, even so.. it was an awfull demo, even the little todlers doing judo randori looked more convincing.. and i would like to say our demo was also good but i havent watched yet a martial art is what you make of it, no more no less.

Nice style to watch but most of it seems quite ineffective to me .

I've practiced Hapkido for 6 years and Judo for six months. For me, the two styles mix together very well. Both arts can be be traced back to Japanese Jujutsu as the founder of Hapkido was a Korean who originally studied Daito-Ryu Aikijutsu.

You can find some similarities between Hapkido and Judo because of this, particularly in throwing techniques. Hapkido also includes a full range of strikes and locks. Wrist locks are widely used in HKD.

Like any martial art, it's a good art if trained well. Unfortunately, Hapkido does not enjoy the same reputation for live training as Judo does.

I believe that HKD was originally intended to be the Korean answer to aikido, but with TKD added.
As a former TKD (decades) and aikido (briefly) practitioner, with some HKD experience too, I feel qualified to say that. ;)

As for the story of founder Choi having learned Daito-ryu as a houseboy for the Takedas, that tale is suspect, though there is no way of proving it either true or false. One strike against it, though, is the lack of any hint of internal power and body skills which is the hallmark of Takeda Sokaku's Daito-ryu.

I like the green gis they wear at the UC Bekeley Martial Arts Program version of hapkido. Years ago they just wore white gis. That is another art I said I would practie when I got finished with judo.

Ueshiba and Choi were both students of Daito-Ryu so it's not like Choi was trying to compete with Aikido. (Yes, I know the extent of Choi's experience with Takeda is questionable, but it's fairly clear he did have some kind of experience with DRAJJ.)

Also, TKD was not added to HKD. It's quite the opposite. TKD incorporated HKD self-defense techniques into its curriculum later on. Nowadays you find a lot of TKD schools also giving rank in HKD. (This is a personal pet peeve of mine as I view HKD as a stand-alone art not some tack-on program.) Ji Han Jae is credited with adding most of the kicking techniques to Hapkido, and he never practiced TKD.




Not sure what you mean by this, but "body skills" or movement is a big part of Hapkido. The emphasis of 'ki' varies depending on the school. I can personally do without too much emphasis on ki energy.

fantasy art

No.

This is a fantasy art.

Hex,
Back in my TKD days, my teacher (who was a direct student and "bodyguard" of Gen. Choi Hong Hi) was also trained in HKD, so I know about the cross-introduction of techniques. However, HKD utilizes kicking, punching and striking skills obtained from TKD (which in turn "borrowed" from Japanese karate just as HKD did so for its jujutsu waza). Both arts borrowed liberally from each other.

By "internal" body skills, I'm referring to the extra ingredient beyond jujutsu that Sokaku Takeda used in Daito-ryu, to make the martial application more powerful. It's the same set of skills found in intenal Chinese arts, and may have in fact originated in China and was adapted by Japanese centuries ago. It's the stuff people tend to disbelieve as being "ki magic" and all that, but it's basically a set of skills that combine manipulation of one's own skeletal frame, muscles, fascia and even mental intent, to both receive and absorb energy/force from an opponent and to generate and deliver power back to the opponent. Guys with those sklls can be shoved or pulled and won't budge, but their smallest movement can sent the opponent flying, drive him downward to the ground or pop him up on his toes, his frame locked in place.

If HKD had that, it would have a far greater potential than just a typical externa waza-based system (as it and TKD are). HKD is kind of a Korean jujutsu, sans "aiki." Just sayin'.

Ueshiba learned and exploited those skills. Choi Yong Sul -- whether he trained with Takeda or not -- apparently didn't have those skills (I haven't read anywhere that he demonstrated them the way Ueshiba famously did) or didn't transmit them to his students.

Fantasy or not he looked very good with that thing. I doubt mere ki would stop Worf and his Bat'leth. As to handle it properly, one must make it a part of one's self. More than ki?

Nowadays, yes, you can find HKD that has been heavily influenced by TKD due to the large number of people who train in both.

However, I maintain that HKD did NOT originally acquire its striking from TKD. Both arts were being developed right around the same time post-Japanese occupation, so they likely had shared influences (Shotokan, etc.), but to suggest that HKD simply co-opted TKD striking techniques is false.



Hmm, well, I guess you and I will just have to agree to disagree on this point as I don't really want to start a debate on ki energy or Ueshiba's supposed abilities.

Personally, I don't have much use for "internal martial arts."

You don't think they can help you battle all the bacteria within?

I think it tastes really good, especially with a bit of basilicum.

Studied it for a bit in college while I was doing Judo. Our group also had the story that the founder travelled to Japan to learn Jujutsu which he combined with native Korean kicking and punching. Didn't get very far (green belt) so I really can't pass judgement on it. The kicking and jujutsu type skills did not seem well integrated though. Hapkido also has a lot more low kicks than are typically taught in TKD (at least at the lower levels). We also occasionally trained with other schools which did not have people that also practiced Judo. Their throwing techniques were pretty much worthless. For lots of internal stuff in a Korean art you need to look at Kook Sool , which also makes all sorts of interesting historical claims. There is also at least one modern American jujitsu school that has attempted to dissect out the original jujutsu techniques and "recreate" the original jujutsu cirriculum it was derived from.

I dunno about pure Hapkido, but when you add a little BJJ to the mix, it looks cool.

Please look at both to have the big picture :


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ms7acUKSiM...feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BryqS55_0PM...feature=related

Taigyu and Hex,
Both HKD and TKD got their low kicks from Shotokan. Both are 20th-century MAs, borne out of the Japanese occupation of Korea and the induced cultural "exchange" from that. Regardless of the Korean historic revisions.,;^) the alleged influence of Tae-kyon is apocryphal at best.

Later in the 20th century, TKD started making kicks higher in order to move away from the Japanese influence and to make TKD a "purely Korean" art. HKD did likewise, and even its jujutsu moves look less Japanese now than they used to.

Hey, it's all good.

As for internal stuff, yeah, let's not start a debate. I see there are already a few guys on this board who train in them, and I guess that small group will have to provide mutual support. When I was in TKD, my teacher used to roll his eyes whenever someone mentioned taiji. By association, so did I. But after I actually started learning internal skills from an unconventional source (outside Chinese internal martial arts), I started singing a different tune. It's not la-la stuff, but actual pragmatic body mechanics. It's just a system of using the body, its skeleton and reactive soft tisses, as well as mental intent, in ways that wouldn't naturally occur to us. We're using them to consciously re-direct force, like being an animate lightning rod of sorts, or an organic sentient suspension bridge. Hard to describe!

Yeah, Gongkwon Yusul looks very interesting. Unfortunately, I believe Korea and Australia are the only two places where it's taught right now.

My understanding is that it's founder was originally a Hapkido black belt who was discouraged with the lack of live training in HKD, so he started his own style.

I trained at the Choi Song Wook's Muye Academy in Yangsan south korea.
i can tell you the school i went to was pretty good.
from what i understand the ground game of Gong Kwon Yu Sul does not come from BJJ but Hakko Ryu Jiu Jitsu and Judo(Though some instructors train BJJ)
The art incorperates Judo/Kyokushin like striking with western boxing.
the school i trained at had a lot of ground sparring and had nogi classes.
this style had alot of alive drilling and decent conditioning along with pain tolerance training i.e trading blows and kicks with one another to get used to getting hit.

Took HKd for 4 years before I moved. gave me a lot of basic submissions and throws. HKD is very well rounded.

Hello all.

I was actually looking for a Dojang in Tokyo and this page googled up.
Being that I've been practicing Hapkido for the last 5 years or so, I just couldn't resist to chime in!

I think right off the bat if you go into "x" forum and ask "is y any good?" the conditions are such that
anyone who occupies the "x" forum is enthusiastic and knowledgeable of "x", and the general consensus
on "y" will almost always be that sure "y" is cool, but we're "x" people; "x" has impressed us and we
understand and support it. "x" people have already been converted and "y" is just an afterthought.
At least, this is what I feel is the case here more or less.

Nevertheless, being a "y" fan myself I endeavor to do what I can to try and support it, because I feel the
same way about Hapkido as I imagine you do about Judo.

When it comes to something like Hapkido there is a very significant difference in approach between the various schools.
I've seen schools that almost completely eschew self-defense techniques and focus on strikes and kicks, some that are heavily into weapons, and some that seem to be Aikido. There is HUGE discrepancy here, and I think this can be attributed to the chaos in Korea and the Korean and Japanese martial arts scenes in the 50's or thereabouts. You had a lot of styles, not just Hapkido, with a lot of cross influencing from all over the spectrum. It's a really exhausting topic I don't think I could do justice to.

I can tell you a little bit about our school though. The place has been in Calgary, Alberta, Canada for well over two decades now, and is run by Grandmaster Ki C. Yoon, or Master Ki as we call him. Master Ki has been practicing Hapkido since he was a kid, and he had a career in the South Korean military training bodyguards for the president and related things before he decided to move to Canada. Master Ki teaches what he calls 合氣武道 (Hap Ki Mu Do) and he stresses the importance of this extended name (the extra character being "武 (Mu)".) Its the same as "Bu" in "Bujutsu" and the "Wu" in "Wushu", which roughly translates into "the art of war" or "military arts". Together, it all means "coordinating power the martial art way".

The reason for this name is not because this is some kind of derivation from Hapkido, but to establish that this school is about seriously martial approach to martial arts, unlike some of the sport oriented venues that have occurred in recent history. We practice a lot of different techniques, including lots of different kicking, strikes, shoulder rolls, Judo throwing, and Daito Ryu techniques, although to some extent these have changed since Grandmaster Choi's return to Korea. Apparently certain committees headed by people like Master Ki threw a lot of stuff out or changed it - I'm not sure off the top of my head this was done for the purpose of military applications or if these were just revisions for the entire Hapkido community, but I thought it worth mentioning anyhow.

We actually have a webpage in progress; it's not done yet but there's a few places you can check out here: http://masterki.com/staging/

I'm a big fan of our school because we're a well rounded take on things and our teachers are all very dedicated and experienced. I've seen many people come and go, but I can confidently say that they rarely ever didn't take something good out of their time there. Unfortunately, there is little that can be done about some of the shadier institutions, even in our city, that might not adhere to some important standards. I think this is an issue universal to all styles of martial arts though, and you just have to find a good school, period.

Another Hapkido Grandmaster who headed off to Canada is Hwang In Sik, who actually was in some pretty sweet movies back in the day. You see, Golden Harvest, a Hong Kong Film studio, was looking for something new to get on the screen in the early 70s, and they ended up flying Angela Mao, Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, and I think maybe Carter Wong to Seoul where they trained with Ji Han Jae and his protege Hwang In Sik for 4 months before they all were cast into various films. A select filmography includes: Hapkido/Lady Kung Fu, When Taekwondo Strikes, The Tournament, The Young Master, and The Dragon Lord.

It was actually a horrible copy of The Young Master I found in Wal Mart one day that convinced me I just HAD to get into martial arts! Small world eh?