From: mary@Cayman.COM (Mary Malmros)
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: Re: Thai kickboxing
Date: 2 Jan 93 16:38:15 GMT
	<1993Jan01.075416.1570@wisdom.bubble.org>
	<MARY.93Jan1145951@martinique.Cayman.COM>
	<1993Jan02.062954.11574@wisdom.bubble.org>
Organization: Cayman Systems Inc., Cambridge, MA
In-reply-to: bleys@wisdom.bubble.org's message of 2 Jan 93 06:29:54 GMT


In article <1993Jan02.062954.11574@wisdom.bubble.org> bleys@wisdom.bubble.org (Bill Cavanaugh) writes:

  >In article <MARY.93Jan1145951@martinique.Cayman.COM> mary@Cayman.COM (Mary Malmros) writes:

  >>Going out and getting drunk, especially in a rowdy bar or nasty part of
  >>town, is a little like bungee jumping.  You're engaging in a risky 
  >>behavior that's completely optional.  Nobody is making you do it.  Some
  >>people decide they want to do it anyway, for the rush or the thrill or
  >>the exquisite experience of puking against the side of someone's Camaro
  >>afterwards.  So you use some kind of failsafe...but you want to make
  >>sure that your failsafe was designed with that sort of risky behavior
  >>in mind.  You don't take the nifty bungee-cord-chain that your older
  >>brother showed you how to build as an improvised cargo net and jump off
  >>a bridge with it, and you don't take the jumping wheel kick that your
  >>sabumnim taught you and try to take out an assailant in a parking lot
  >>when you're three sheets to the wind.  That's not the use they were
  >>intended for, and it's not why they were taught to you.  If you insist
  >>in trying to use them in an inappropriate situation, you shouldn't 
  >>blame them for not working.
  >>
  >
  >That was his point.  That the the places and situations he felt he'd need
  >to use the art were, by definition, inappropriate for it.

The art?  Excuse me, the art?  The entire art has in it nothing appropriate
for such situations?  

Don't think so.  Read on.

  >>Personally, I don't have a lot of respect for people who expect a 
  >>martial art to save them from the consequences of their own stupidity
  >
  >(neither does anybody else here.  I'm not sure how it applies to this
  >discussion, though...) 

Let me put it another way.  Use the example of a simple rising block, 
something that many martial arts contain.  It's intended to protect you
from an overhead attack.  Someone attacks you with a kick that's aimed
at your knee...and you "counter" with a rising block.  Then, as you lie
on the ground holding your shattered knee, you scream, "Oh, this stuff
doesn't work AT ALL!!!"

Doing a wheel kick on a gravel parking lot when you've had a couple of 
beers is exactly the same sort of thing.  You go and get yourself 
stupid with alcohol to begin with, and then you use a completely 
inappropriate technique for the situation.  Hmm, I wonder if there's
a pattern here...

  >>(and I am not saying that Bob falls into that category, at all).  I
  >>have respect for people who are forced to live or travel in risky 
  >>areas, who do their best to avoid problems rather than court them 
  >>or create them, and who defend themselves to the best of their ability
  >>when they must.  I think that any martial art can offer a lot to someone
  >>like that.  The techniques are tools: they have no intrinsic value, 
  >>and are useful only when chosen with care and used appropriately.  
  >
  >Right.  Exactly.  TKD is a wrench.  Bob needs a hammer.  He could learn,
  >with practice, to drive nails with the wrench, but it wouldn't make any
  >sense to do that when there are perfectly good hammers available.

Your argument does not follow from mine.  I was talking about techniques; 
you are talking about an entire art.  It is most certainly not the case 
that "TKD is a wrench."  TKD is a toolbox, and you picked up the wrench
when you should have chosen the hammer.
--
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