Do San

Ask most ITF practitioners what their least favorite pattern is and they will probably screw up their face and mutter under their breath ‘Do San’. Certainly when I was a junior grade performing Do San felt so uncomfortable. Compared to the nice angles and symmetry of Dan Gun and Won Hyo, Do San just felt like a bunch of moves thrown together.
However, my study of the application of Do San has really made me rethink my ranking of the pattern. Contained within it there are some very simple but vicious techniques. In this article I am going to take some of the techniques and look at their standard applications and comparing them to some alternatives. To keep things as simple as possible I am going to stick to the English names for the movements

High outer forearm block, reverse punch.

So the opening of the pattern is often seen as a block to a straight punch to the face followed by a counter punch. I have also seen it demoed as a block to a hook then a punch. Either way there are some issues with using the first movement as a block. The main ones for me are:

• It ‘s a fairly weak position for your arm to take impact
• Why is your other arm down on your hip, not protecting your head?
• Why when you see an attack coming from your left do you first cross your hands to the right?

These questions are some sometimes answered by the catch all phrase of “it’s art” or “ you need to train more” which I don’t really like as I see it more as side stepping the issues rather than looking more closely at the movement.

My own interpretation of this movement doesn’t have it as a block at all. Instead the ‘block’ is the crossed hands position that most people take as a preparatory movement.

I believe this crossing of the arms is to show the natural reaction of bringing your hands up to protect your head when you are attacked. From there you can use one hand to grab the opponents arm and bring it down. The other hand (the block) now goes out to grab the opponent’s hair. This secures him and then you can pull his head on to the follow up punch. In this day and age with shaved heads and crew cuts sometimes you need to grab other things but the idea remains the same.

The next movement I would like to look at is :

Outer forearm wedging block, front kick double punch

the standard application for this movement is defense against someone grabbing your lapels with both hands. We again run in to a number of issues relating to structure of the block and positioning of the body. I think my main issues for this are the 45 degree step is explained once again as art, and the wedging block itself doesn’t have such a high success rate. Sliding your hands between a grab then trying to snap them out is not likely to create space. Also you don’t actually need that space to deliver the front kick.

For me the application of the ‘block’ is closely linked to the opening movement, as your hands are in the same place. The 45 degree step puts you outside of the opponent’s direct line of attack and you can then use both hands to secure them. This can be done by grabbing their hair and arm for example. The kick therefore would be best aimed at the legs in order to break his structure and maybe bring him down to his knees. This puts them in a very vulnerable position for the double punch. These is another application for the double punch at this stage but I don’t feel it would be responsible for me to detail it here.

The last movement I would like to look at is very simple:

Rising block

Whereas rising block itself is not a bad application I feel that in Do San it has a different application. Again the reasoning for this is based on some of the principles of the first movement. When any attack comes towards you it is a natural reaction to out one or both hands in the way. So for a high attack we put our hands round our head and for a low attack our hands would naturally drop to meet it. If we look at the movement of rising block we can again ask the question ‘why do we first drop our hands in order to block something high?’. My answer to this is that you are dropping your hands to block a low attack and then grabbing the attacking hand clearing the way to drive your outer forearm or hammer fist into the opponents jaw. This is a simple and effective technique based on our natural reactions.

As an aside hammer fist is one very effective technique that seems to be almost nonexistent in modern TKD teaching.

I hope you have found this look at some alternative applications of Do San interesting and useful. As always it is difficult to fully describe a technique in writing. In the future I am hoping to be able to put some videos on the blog to better show what I mean.

Until next time happy training.