30 Years of Service

I remember when I joined Shin’s Tae Kwon Do back in 1984.

On the patch was the symbol for “art”, a colorful yin/yang representation and the number 1972 – the year that Master Shin opened his first martial arts academy. I remember thinking at the time that 1972 was a long time ago, and I remember how it made me feel to know that there was a history to the style I was pursuing, along with an air of authenticity that leveled a sense of confidence. I never put much thought into the validity of the style; it was presented to me as thousands of years old. Passed down from generation to generation; from master to disciple, finally landing in my lap with the intellectual rigor of a time-tested path – it felt like a well-worn pair of shoes.

Up until that time in the ‘80’s the prevailing wisdom of all well-known styles of martial arts was that only those styles that could claim lineage tracing back centuries were legitimate. There was a flurry of what we called “McDojos” popping up all over the place.These strip-mall versions of martial arts were often headed up by people who had little to no training, no lineage and no blessing of some Asian master lending their name to the franchise. Still others were headed up by actual masters from Korea or Japan who added stripes to their black belts upon landing in the US (along with a long list of championships and honors from tournaments or institutions that simply did not exist…).

There was no central body of oversight that any potential practitioner could reference when seeking out a legitimate dojo; those who knew this and trained in academies that were reputable looked down our collective noses at these hucksters with scorn and derision. We were proud of the fact that our black belts actually meant something, that we had the weight of a thousand years giving us confidence in what we were learning.

Or so we thought…

When I began learning about the history of Korean martial arts, I found out that the version of forms I was learning, the Taegeuk forms – had been written only about ten years prior to me learning them, that they were based on an older set of forms, the Palgues. These were presented to me as based upon the eight trigrams from the I Ching, and also were represented on the Korean flag. Then I came to understand that these were created in the 1960’s, and were based upon an older set of forms written by the founder of modern Taekwon do, General Choi – colloquially known as the “Choi-hyungs” and include some forms that Quantum continues to use in our youth programs. Again, we were told that General Choi wrote these forms after Korea was liberated from the Japanese in the aftermath of WWII. Prevented from teaching or learning Korean arts during the Japanese occupation of 1910-1945, the Koreans wanted to give new life to their ancient empty handed art forms, and create a style that was uniquely Korean.

It turns out that these forms were based upon the Japanese Heian katas, written in the 1920’s. Which were based on the Pinan katas from Okinawa from the early 1900’s. Which were based on the Chinese forms from Chiang Nan in the 19th century…you get the picture. None of this was all that old, and the forms I was learning were actually younger than the dojo I was attending at the time. Still, I thought that there was more validity to what I was doing than those McDojos, right?

I never set out to found my own style of martial arts. It simply happened as I was meandering down my personal martial arts path when I set out to write my own system of forms. Again, I wasn’t trying to write a system of forms, I just wanted a more formalized way to practice and keep fresh many of the techniques and concepts I had scooped up along my path. Having been indoctrinated in the systems of thinking I had been exposed to, it would have seemed the height of hubris for me to entertain such thoughts. I wrote them for my own use, and never intended to present them for public consumption. We all know how that turned out. They don’t resemble anything that I’ve seen, nor are they copies of older styles. They are uniquely Quantum, and are original in that they sprung from my mind and experience.

Fast forward, and while we’re looking forward to celebrating 30 years of Quantum, I actually wrote most of the forms in 1987 – nearly 40 years ago. This means that the Quantum forms are older now than the oldest Taekwondo forms were to me when I attended Master Shin’s dojo in the early 80’s. While this may seem like a large span of time to many, from my perspective it has only now begun to carry some weight and earn its place in the annals of time. These would be the concepts that my 21-year-old mind required in order to speak with legitimacy and authority. 

Thanks to you all for celebrating this remarkable milestone with us!