Each week sports reporter ROBERT CARRY tries out martial arts from around the world. This week is the self-defence method of hapkido
“I grew up in a rough area of Tehran so I had to learn how to defend myself, ” says Massan Ghorbani, head of Bray-based martial arts centre The Master’s Temple. Forty-two-year-old Ghorbani initially got involved in Olympic wrestling at the tender age of 11 before getting stuck into a variety of stand-up martial arts. He became a professional instructor, and moved to Ireland in 1986. The Iranian adds: “I came to visit my sister for two weeks and I stayed for 20 years! ”In the intervening years, Ghorbani has become one of the best-known figures in Irish martial arts and has risen beyond black-belt level in karate and kickboxing. However, I went along to the temple to take a look at one of the rarer disciplines he has come to master – sin moo hapkido, or ‘the way of co-ordinated energy’.
There is some debate about the exact origins of the form, but it appears to have developed in Korea from a feudal-era Japanese fight style called aikijitsu, with influences of kick-heavy tae kwon do.
So why would anyone pick this particular style from the alphabet soup of East Asian martial arts? Well, hapkido is designed to give practitioners an advantage over attackers who might be stronger or larger than them, which makes it an ideal form of self-defence for women, children or the elderly.
I found my way into The Master’s Temple, off the Queensborugh Road in Bray, to discover an extremely well kitted-out gym designed purely for use as a martial arts centre. The class was a relatively small one, with everyone (except me) wearing the traditional white gi, which, for all the world, look like pajamas. Although I felt rather uncomfortable at being the odd-one-out in the clothing department, I was heartened by the fact that the whole class was considerably older than me.
Hapkido differs from most mainstream martial arts in that it’s purely a form of self-defence. There is no rigid fighting stance, because you’re supposed to be training for an attack at any time, and practitioners don’t take part in competition. This has a knock-on effect that ultimately dictates the pace and nature of how hapkido classes are taught.
We went through a brief aerobic warm up at the beginning of the class before pairing off to practice each of hapkido’s 25 basic kicks. In karate we kicked our partner’s hand pads. In kickboxing we kicked our partners. In hapkido, we kicked the air in front of our partners. It seemed odd initially, but as the various kicks began to unfold it becomes somewhat easier to understand. Some are thrown at such odd angles that the person tasked with holding the pads would need to be a contortionist in order to properly catch their partner’s strikes, and the inherent nastiness of some of the blows, such as face-level axe kicks, mean that the no-pads approach would inflict far too much damage.
Next we went onto some of the more acrobatic aspects of the eclectic form – namely, how to land properly should someone push you from behind. The forward rolls I practiced so diligently in primary school held me in good stead and I nailed this one no bother.
Next we moved onto meditation, which is another key aspect of hapkido. This is always going to be a turn-off for teens and young adults with too much energy on their hands, but many older people would find it beneficial. I tried to clear my thoughts as I sat there in a lotus position with my eyes closed, breathing in time with my fellow aficionados, but a thought kept popping into my mind and ruining my focus. It was simply: “I must look a right plum.”
Hapkido’s one saving grace is that it teaches people to use absolutely any means necessary to fend off an attacker. Because the idea is to prepare to defend yourself against someone bigger than you, rather than to take part in a competition, hapkido students are taught to fight dirty if necessary. So after I drifted out of my kneeling Buddha stance, Ghorbani – who has been a professional martial arts trainer for over 20 years – began demonstrating the use of pressure points and small joint manipulation, and I have to say, this stuff really, really works. One particular thumb lock, which is extremely easy to execute and requires only minimal strength, would reduce the baddest, most feral mugger to a blubbering wreck in seconds. I couldn’t wait to try it out on my friends.
Although the hapkido class did come through to some extent towards the end, I felt a bit disappointed at having chosen it out of all those practiced by Ghorbani, who is widely considered to be one of the best martial arts trainers in the country. He has trained a number of accomplished fighters, including three-times world light contact champion Julie McHale (her home town was so enamored by her achievements that they awarded her the honour of ‘Bray person of the year 2005’).
I found that while hapkido is interesting, it is also inherently limited and was a poor vehicle when it came to experiencing the value of what really is an excellent martial arts centre. Indeed, Ghorbani himself pointed to hapkido’s limitations, saying: “Due to it being a solely self-defence style, [hand] strikes are not practiced at all.”
He continued: “If boxing or kickboxing techniques are practiced as a compliment to hapkido, it would be far stronger, and practitioners would be prepared for a broader range of self-defence situations.”
The value of hapkido can probably be best judged by the fact that out of the 150 active members at The Master’s Temple, only 20-25 practice hapkido.
Beyond the meditation and thumb locks, Ghorbani’s centre has proved extremely popular among the local community and a broad range of nationalities are now regularly taking advantage of his wealth of expertise in karate, kickboxing, grappling and oriental weapons. Ghorbani notes: “We have kids from Spain, Moldova, Italy, Poland, Lithuania, two brothers from Chechnya and several kids from Russia.”
Ghorbani believes the nature of martial arts means it can be an excellent integration tool. He elaborates: “In martial arts, everybody who comes to class wears the same uniform and trains the same way. They are expected to show respect towards each other regardless of what colour they are or what country they’re from.”
The 8th degree black belt adds: “The only people they have to respect a little bit more are the higher grades, but that is open to everyone.”
