Officially founded in 1961, Kuk Sool Won combined the many fractured branches of traditional Korean martial arts into one unified school. In Hyuk Suh, the grandson of legendary Korean martial artist Suh Myung Duk, forged Kuk Sool Won into a complete, all-encompassing martial art, including hand strikes, leg strikes, throwing, grappling, joint locks and various other techniques.
Hand Strikes
In Kuk Sool Won, hand striking can involve both closed and open hand techniques, with blows delivered with the palm, wrist and fingers. Hand strikes will often target pressure points and can also be used defensively to block and parry blows. The art of Kuk Sool Won contains countless hand striking techniques, including juhng gwuhn, a reverse punch; yuhk guhn, an uppercut; and pyung soo, a palm strike.
Leg Techniques
Kuk Sool Won’s fundamental leg techniques include variations of front and side kicks, with each strike usually targeting pressure points on the body. Advanced Kuk Sool Won students learn more advanced leg techniques such as a spinning kick, known as doh rah cha ki, and a knee smash kick, called moo reup cha ki.
Throwing
Kuk Sool Won practitioners master an array of throwing techniques, using the hips or the legs or even the entire body. Kuk Sool Won also features grappling and wrestling techniques for exceptional ground fighting. Once again, Kuk Sool Won favors pressure-point grappling to level the playing field when facing even larger, stronger opponents. White belts learn the basic throwing techniques known as ki bohn soo before moving on to more advanced throws to counter most any situation.
Joint Locks
Unlike other strictly striking martial arts, Kuk Sool Won also teaches joint lock techniques called kwahn juhl ki. These joint locks, which target the fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders, knees and ankles, can be used to restrain or redirect opponents, gaining compliance through pain. In extreme situations, Kuk Sool Won joint locks can be more penetrating or even break the joint, if required.
Falling
Kuk Sool Won instructs students on the proper way to fall, implementing structured forms of acrobatics to enable superior body protection and even some more advanced offensive techniques. A basic rolling fall, known as hweh juhn nak bub, transforms a vertical fall into a horizontal one, redirecting the energy along a different plane to soften the blow. Other fall techniques include a one-handed cartwheel, called hahn sohn poong cha, and an elbow cartwheel, known as pahl koom chi poon cha.
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