Knife hand blocks? Not what you think. 

The first time I saw this application something awakened in me. Suddenly all the techniques in karate katas turned out to be a 70% more effective in delf defense and combat situations, but it also improved my sport karate too. It feels like becoming a white belt again and studying the martial art becomes 200% interesting. Great video!

That's so genius. Like Jesse Enkamp says a lot of things got lost, when Karate got modernized in Japan. The Takedowns where almost removed, because there was Judo. The weaposn because there was Kendo, etc. And left was only the striking and the forms/kata that have all the grappling knowledge in but kinda lost on the way

This feels like a martial arts version of archeology. Digging through the layers of obscurity left by time and misinformation to find out what's hidden underneath.

as a taekwondo practicioner myself, I love these traditional martial arts applications and I'd love to see more

I once used the Taekwondo high block to defend myself from a garage door that was falling shut on on my head. It was effective.

Once I started training Judo, all of my Taekwondo forms made so much more sense! I knew the collar tie idea but that transfer to a reverse or a full nelson I havent thought of from those same 2 movements. Thank you so much cant wait to add these in!

Awesome! As a long time Goju-Ryu karate practitioner I'm glad to see more people talking about the grappling! It's an aspect of the martial art that I'm very interested in and have devoted a good amount of time to working with. One of the instructors showed me a few of the grappling techniques in our "H-Pattern" simple forms, and after that I started to notice that most of the kata that I knew were comprised largely of different grappling forms, which I started to apply in sparring. All of those low, wide stances? Throws and takedowns. Cool stuff!

Yeah, this is something that confused me about ITF patterns in my time there. The patterns, in addition to "hidden" techniques like this, explicitly have knee strikes, elbow strikes, throws, hooks; techniques that were never ever ever represented in sparring. Seemed like a strange oversight, particularly for a school that claimed to be as close to Gen. Choi Hong Hi as they stated. The head instructor got his 6th degree from the man directly.

The wrestling techniques in kata, we can safe to say that they had been ignored and forgotten. The black belts today, 99.9% won't know anything about what their kata means and their application. You are doing good work to rediscover the meaning of kata.

That makes a lot more sense now.

I feel the same way about Tai chi, honestly. When I first began learning, I was skeptical that it was good for combat, until I started using it in jujitsu class. I remember my sparring partner tried to double leg, and I reflexively sank into a horse stance and shoved him downward, with more effectiveness than I expected from the technique. I was like: ah, this makes much more sense, now

As a taekwondo practitioner myself, I love to see this. Some of this is explained, but a lot of it is not and I'd like to be more proficient overall and not just for tournaments. Thank you for furthering my knowledge base.

I find "practical" bunkai very interesting, but I think it's worth pointing out to people learning TKD and/or karate (or tai chi or whatever style) that the theoretical presence of applications in the kata doesn't mean you're training the techniques. The fact that a kata may "have" a certain grappling movement doesn't mean you can use it; you're actually going to have to get out there and train in high-resistance sparring/rolling to get anything out of it. I mention this because I often encounter people who tell me "I don't need jiujitsu or judo or wrestling because my tai chi (or karate, insert whatever style you like here) has grappling in it." A lot of guys are basically looking to check off boxes in order to make their styles appear more "complete" than they really are. The fact that a kata may or may not have significant grappling content is really something of scholarly, not practical, importance. Perhaps karateka 200 years ago really did train significant grappling, and that's fantastic, good for them, but it does little for the modern guy who just repeats these motions, likely without even recognizing what they are, ad infinitum.

This makes more sense than what my senseis told me.

Very cool to see. I am very fortunate to be in a TKD school that our instructor has turned away from the modern sport WTF and reverted more to the original form. Yes we do go into take downs, a little grappling and joint manipulation. And yes we do punch to the face during sparing. With body armour of coarse.

It's cool to see you and jesse talk about how movements in the foorms/katas are supposed to be utilized. I did taekwondo for a while, but it wasn't until I started wingchun that I noticed some similarities. And then started to apply wingchun and escrima movements into my sparring. Those collar ties became more pronounced. I have a wrestling background, so this also became more useful.

Wow. I think he is absolutely right. Does make a lot of sense. Especially the details of the „strikes“ only make real sense when you use it for entering like that. Really cool

I think it's so interesting to see the often ignored concept of pulling applied. Usually, the tendence is to push away, to get rid of the problem, but pulling to our own zone gives us a whole new lot of posibilities. Love these videos, great as always! 🙏🏻

If you're going to go into Shotokan with more of your videos Ramsey, please please talk about how important hip movement, body weight distribution in stances is for generating powerful techniques, really interesting stuff, most people who look at Shotokan just do the motions and think that's all there is to it.

Any video with Jourdan is always a treat! Also! I've thought about these forms for the longest time, and just now I see why learning and practicing them is important. Great video!

Traditional martial arts is like a puzzle that you have to solve, you may have all the pieces and train it till you reach the "black belt". But not all of those black belts can solve the puzzle and crack the code....most of them just train like how their instructors teach...and thats why its considered inneffective

Kwonkicker: taekwondo for kickboxing Ramsey: taekwondo for wrestling

As a former Taekwondo practitioner, I appreciate this showcase of the practicality of the forms. I had a very traditional instructor who took this kind of approach.

There a different kind of school around. Some focus only on sparring, some on poomsae (forms) and some on hosinsul (self-defense). My school is trying to do it all (which is a lot of work...) and we are trying to use poomsae in hosinsul where appropriate. On another note, we are taught that you should block as if it was a strike - fast and hard. So you can use the same movement as a strike or as a block, especially the knife hand.

My MMA coach used to be a Taekwondo master. He taught me a lot of good techniques that I implemented to my Muay Thai style. It's pretty neat.

Really appreciate the links to previous videos that expand upon the techniques involved. Saves you going through it all again but allows us to refresh if we need to. Good production to match useful info TY coach

As an ITF Taekwondo practitioner and martial arts nerd, this is 100% something that should be done with every pattern of every martial art. I have started digging in the patterns of Taekwondo myself, and its absolutely amazing what you can find

Holly molly. This is what i have been wandering all those years. I learned those moves but had no idea what they where. I love the archeological diging you are doing. That is adding a lot of meaning and purpose. Also. Waw. Amazing skills guys!

Oh my God ramsey dewey got stabbed to death

I recently watched a series of videos showing the applications of all the movements in the tai chi form I was learning, turns out more than 80% of them were grappling/wrestling related.

Remember finding a book either when I was training TKD or just after I stopped, the grappling of TKD. Aside from some basic breakouts we were never taught close plays or grappling. Not teaching and training grappling and weapons was a big part of why I eventually moved over to hema. It always felt strange to me that we were training forms, that were never applied in any kind of sparring.

This is awesome. Going from wrestling to ITF TKD I realized the value of chambering the other fist very early on, and that what were defined as ‘blocks’ or ‘strikes’ can really be used interchangeably, especially when getting past the 9th or 10th patterns.

You know. After learning that Tang Soo do is actually shotokan karate with taekwondo.... I been seeing it everywhere.... And I love it.

Another thing to consider about why it's "ignored" is Gichin Funakoshi. He explicitly wanted Shotokan to be a system less about fighting and more about personal and spiritual growth. I could easily see that resulting in just practicing techniques without learning how they apply. Now add a few generations and translate it to another language twice.

As someone who has practiced the basic block forms I found this very insightful.

I took old school Tae Kwon Do in the 70s. The way our systems was taught, you learned kicking, punching, and all your forms white through 1st degree black belt. You were not passed unless you could increase the height of your kicks for each of your colored belts. When you continue on through the degrees, you learned Hapkido techniques. I was taught that the forms contained Hapkido techniques. Good job in extrapolating the techniques.

This is so awesome, I learnt taekwondo long time ago, then switched to other martial arts and just thought those techniques are fantasy. This makes me want to decode all those pumses I learnt.

2:48 Absolute Morpheus moment, it's like he's shattering my entire understanding of karate and tkd

I am glad there are those, like Ramsey, who realize these things about Tae Kwon Do. Tae Kwon Do was, and still is, an effective hand-to-hand combat system taught to the Korean military and was taught to our own Special Forces in the 1960's and 1970's. As a practitioner of more than 40 years, I can tell you that what you see today in the Olympics or other competitions is NOT THE SAME TKD that was created 70 years ago. And Ramsey, there are throws and grappling in Tae Kwon Do kata. And almost every striking technique involves pulling your attacker into the strike, as you demonstrated. The reason we don't see this in TKD today is because those techniques have been omitted from the teaching. Good video!

it seems to become more and more scarce for traditional schools of martial arts to pass on this knowledge. im enjoying you re-exploring your traditional roots, Ramsey.

I know the fact that coach has a tae kwon do background but I am so impressed that coach also used the principle of karate called bunkai like how he analyze the form break it down actually applied it. Good job coach!

Iain Abernethy has video on knife hand blocks (shuto uke in japanese) and he shows the exact samething. He also shows that it can also be used for arm clearance to get a shot in.

Check out the pre pandemic videos from Karate Culture on youtube, for a while they were posting videos exploring the forms and then sparing with them with a heavy emphasis on the grappling applications. They are a goldmine.

Ramsey Dewey out here teaching better taekwondo than most taekwondo instructors

Interesting. Awesome video Ramsey Dewey.

This video showed me more karate in 9 minutes than I learned in the years I paid for classes.

Exactly. That's it. I never participated in tournaments way back when I studied TKD. The uses of the knife hand are open and practical. I approached knife hand as another form of open hand fighting.

nice man

You're my hero Ramsey! You should become a superhero action stunt coordinator for movies!

Ramsey, regarding the Chinese salute with the left open hand over the right fist; that is actually seen in TKD. Refer to the patterns Won Hyo and Joon-Gun. They both begin with a version of that salute.

Actually, that upper hand block movement at 1:41 can also be used in a cross collar choke either from the guard or back mount in jiujitsu. It's one of those hidden techniques in Karate that I learned back when I was training in Shotokan.

Man, Jordan Chow is BACK!!!

Karate (Including TKD) was created as a complete fighting system. The forms contain the flow, techniques and base knowledge of the art. Finding applications to those movements is an awesome way to expand the original system. I think there's no right and wrong answer to what a movement can be used for. If you can make it work, more power to you.

I was never taught THESE secrets.WOW,THANK YOU for this lesson.

Ramsey becoming better than the old tkd teachers at teaching the actual meaning behind these strikes or blocks

Hey Ramsey! This is a great video, thank you for making it. You shared a lot of solid information and context that help shed light on why karate and taekwondo have such odd looking structures in their forms. I think we can all reasonably assume that the "old masters" knew how to fight - those were different, violent times. If we also recognize that wrestling was extremely common in Okinawa ("tegumi"), it makes a lot of sense that the kata would include grappling techniques! I think it's also worth noting that the forms often contain things that were the creator's go-to methods for dealing with asocial violence (haymakers, grabs, tackles, chokes, and so on). They should therefore be applied with those things in mind rather than lunging straight punches or jumping spinning kicks (which is one reason why we NEVER see kata movements in sparring). Another important thing you mentioned was that the live training of karate and taekwondo, as it currently stands, is totally contrary to the rest of the curriculum. We practice blocks, strikes, throws, strangles, and all sorts of odd hand shapes in our class... but then sparring is just bad kickboxing. It's hard to apply a neck crank when you're a foot outside kicking range! If the traditional martial artists want to really be able to apply any of their techniques, they (we) need to train them live against our partners in the proper context - and we can't do that if we're foot-fencing. Well done again on the video.

thx man now i feel better traditional can be effective which is what i hope because these arts been around for so long thx Ramsey for showing us that these systems can work

Great video :-) And a great example of why a Martial Art study should be separate from sport, one of the major reasons Aikido founder was against competitions.

I'm eternally grateful to you for helping me understand the purposes of these movements, Ramsey. For years, I eschewed forms and thought my old Tae Kwon Do training was impractical; boy was I wrong. I simply didn't understand the purpose of the movements I was practicing. You have radically changed the way I think about the relationship between different movements.

In addition to the upper block, you can also use the rising forearm portion to the face while the other hand controls the arm of your opponent. Prior to my 13th year in Kyokushin Karate which I'm still in, I did TKD for 5 years and several years Hakko Ryu Jujutsu which enable me to look more into depth of the katas. Yet, still a tons to learn, but so much variation that we as practitioners can discover....Respect for you Ramsey and to Mr. Chow.

When Covid struck we dusted off our forms including the weapons forms. To train while keeping a distance. We found quite a lot of really good technique applications i the forms. Some of them really different from what i had been given when i was learning the forms my selv. And yes when got the chance to train the movements with a partner a lot of them worked as we trained them. Good video btw.

I love that opening.

I love the Taekwondo themed videos lately.

I was not expecting the irony “Knife crazed guy” in first few minutes 🤣🤣👌

This video was great. One of my Taekwondo masters had told me about this application of knife hand attacks as well.

To be fair it's both striking and grappling. Or better to say striking into grappling range. Great video!

This! This is what people miss in traditional martial arts. The forms make things look like strikes or blocks but are often bridges, lock, or throws. This is why learning application (from a reputable source) is so important! I practice Choy Li Fut with Sifu Mak Hin Fai. When we "chamber a punch" it's usually a pull or to unwind the strike to generate power...or both! Great vid!

Shotokai here. Our bunkai is quite similar to this demonstration as well :D great to see Ramsey doing these "bunseki". Shuto uke (knife hand) can be a damaging strike for more "fragile" bones, like the clavicle, the orbital, maybe the trachea... But Ramsey's interpretation is a bit more realistic.

In my TKD system Chang Moo Kwan goes back as far as before the 1970’s. We train basic moves, forms, sparring using hands and feet to the stomach up to the head, and self defense forms of grappling and striking. Our TKD is closer to ITF/self defense vs WTF/olympic.

That Gangnam Style in the end killed me. The whole thing reminds me a lot of various Tai Chi forms (or sections of forms) which, as you have mentioned yourself at some point, is very much a grappling martial art, thought it has some strikes too.

Great video. I finally have an understanding of those 'blocks'

You went full TKD nerd! This was great, thank you.

My background is shotokan, so I was taught that open hand techniques implied a grab. With that in mind, I would practice these as parries with a grab to the wrist. This is an interesting take, and I'll probably give it a try!

Yes it actually has many uses across many different arts, mostly originally comes from long fist, and wing Chuns "giving hand" and "receiving hand". Which in those arts they begin by being trained to use one hand for defense and the other hand for attack then they learn to switch it up and the eventual goal is to be able to attack or defend either side with each hand.

This is the kind of shit that is actually a useful application of Taekwondo. People tend to forget that before sport taekwondo, these moves existed as legitimate self defense techniques.

Reinterpreting the old and outmoded blocking and punching techniques used in taekwondo and karate, in the light of effective MMA.

I would love to see a playlist of all of your videos talking about this.

Ashihara Karate actually specifically mentions the hand-sword as a guard frame, stuffing/blocking the opponent’s arm movements when u get in close. transitions really well into sleeve grabs & thus the reverse collar tie 👍

Everyone should check out Iain Abernathey he does an amazing job breaking down kata for self defense purposes. Better than I have ever seen.

Knife hand application were taught to me by Vinicio Antony, Machida's trainer, at a seminar in 2019, I even used them to trap a pankration guy after a sprawl an year later. But what to do next? The nukite was the hold you showed on your student

The knife hand strike being really about arm drags blew my mind

like wing chung, in a street fight you usually square up, well square on. so parring and blitz punching to gain intial ground and set into stance, boxing kicking etc. i think wing chung was only designed for close combat. This was an eye opener episode

Yes yes yes! I've been a Goju Karateka for nearly 12 years and I'm only just starting to unravel this stuff myself! It's so great finally seeing the old school stuff getting revived. Great great work as always gentlemen! P.S. Another clue to the knife-hand/collar tie connection: In my school, we were taught to draw the knife-hand back in toward us (like a slicing knife), i.e. snatching the head down to disrupt their posture!

Thank you. This is very helpful and informative. Thank you for taking your time to show how traditional martial arts work properly. Unfortunately the sports don't represent the arts very well.

I like it that you "reverse engineer" Taekwondo. And of course always watch out for Jourdan when he has a knife! ;)

Where I trained TKD we were "ITF" style. Besides supplementing Judo, we were taught these 1-step sparring techniques that implement these grab and strike combos. While we sparred continuously, I can't recall anyone seriously attempting to use them in live sparring. I don't think it was explicitly disallowed either.

Taekwondo competition needs a complete overhaul and ought to be reworked to improve the full application of what Taekwondo is and can be to include grappling, take downs and follow on strikes minus the hogu and headgear.

For literarally decades I have been wondering about this.

Nicely done again man. Dude. This is why I watch.

i LOVE that x block at the beginning you showed, im definitely gonna try that soon

Wish these were allowed on knockdown karate. Have you seen the old sabaki challenge fights? Old tournament that did allow some basic throws or grappling. I’d honestly love for rules that allowed this in like a big karate knockdown tournament

At this point i think that PARKOUR IS BEST MARTIAL ART FOR SELF DEFENSE

Was honestly shocked at how few people knew about the grappling aspects in these forms. Thanks, Ramsey for bringing this to light and even showing me a few applications I'd missed!

You are the mma supernerd. Bro I love your channel.

Ramsey, you have filled my wrestler heart with joy! Those goju ryu guys always seemed to have a lot in common with us, now I see they had even more than I thought .

Hi Mr. Dewey, I saw your video and I saw the channel one minute bunkai. I also found a a channel called traditional taekwondo ramblings. He has a playlist called practical poomsae applications. He explains forms and how are they used in grappling. I’d love to hear your opinion on that as well. And I know you talked about it. But, I started with taekwondo and I’m trying to get down the grappling in every form that I learned. It’s a game changer. Thank you for everything and thanks in advance Ahmed

2:55-3:05 of Tim Witherspoon analysis of Ali/Foreman rounds 1-3. Ali uses a double knife hand. Clinching foreman's lead arm and controlling the head. He does it often.

Actually it was not so much as forgotten as it was changed after WW2. Before WW2, the more effective Bunkai for Karate kata which included an equal mix of grappling and striking applications was taught. And those applications were brutal. But as Karate was introduced to Japan and then slightly modified to be taught widespread to younger children, there became different layers to the applications, with the more dangerous versions being taught later on, when the student was older and more advanced in their training. But later on, after WW2, quite a few Japanese and Okinawans that taught military servicemen from America and European countries, incorrectly taught them basic level applications on purpose. And since Arts like TKD and TSD were heavily based upon Shotõkan Karate, the applications of their own Poomse, Tul, and Hyung contained the same basic level, and somewhat diluted applications to the movements. Thankfully there are quite a few Instructors in both TKD and TSD, just like in Karate, that have devoted time to rediscovering those original movements and applications contained in those various forms. And in arts like TKD, I think they would regain alot more wider respect if the instructors taught the art's curriculum more completely, rather than just streamlining it to what is currently popular or trendy.

Great video! I love seeing explanations of how misunderstood moves in traditional arts make sense.

Holy elephant! It all makes sense now. But it's still strange that clubs don't teach the application instead of the poomses and katas. I switched to Muay Thai because TKD seemed very unrealistic. Interesting to see such a glorious and reasonable explanation eventually. Thx, man! That was a great lesson!