My Name is Ciaran McDonald M.A., M.Ed.  I am an academic, celebrated author and martial arts nut.

 

I started Martial arts in the 1980's when I studied karate.   But my true love is TKD and I have been involved with it for the last 20 years.  As a young man I competed regularly and spent huge amounts of time perfecting my side kick. I loved the sparring and the patterns but I always felt there was something missing.  

 

As a child and a young man I had numereous violent encounters and though I never felt comfortable with violence I grew to recognise and prepare for the chaotic and frenetic nature of it.  

 

However, it always perplexed me why my TKD training, which consisted predominantly of the heavily ritualised 3 step sparring or the rule bound arena of free sparring, never looked anything like my encounters of ‘real world’ violence.  

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I felt unprepared and VERY vulnerable...  

 

The more I trained the more worried I was that I would not be able to defend myself if I was attacked.  I suspected that the patterns had some great self defence but no one I met could confirm it.  So I went on a journey a discovery to confirm what I always suspected. 

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The patterns were the answer I was looking for  

 

My journey took me round the world and I trained in many grappling systems and striking arts.  Many of these arts seemed to have some of the answers but none had all of what I was looking for until I met Patrick McCarthy 9th Dan in Koryo Uchinadi.  Through him I learnt an old form of application based karate which dealt with all manner of violent encounters in a systematised and hands on way.  I learnt:

 

• Pressure point striking  

• Throwing

• Ground fighting

• Strangulation

• Joint manipulation

• Clinch work

• And kata applications

 

 

All the bits that were missing from TKD.  I suddenly felt I was not vulnerable and had no gaps in my defences.  Not only that but the Old School Karate was so similar to the TKD patterns that I began to learn 

 

The 'REAL' and secret self-defence applications from the TKD patterns

 

 I began to see that hidden within plane sight, within the patterns of TKD, were all the self defence techniques I would ever need to defend myself.  

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Though I was already a 3rd degree and Instructor in Taekwon-do I decided to gain my blackbelt and teaching qualification from Hanshi Patrick McCarthy 9th Dan and in 2012 I opened my own school teaching Koryu Uchinadi (KU).  I was now an instructor in both TKD and Old School Karate. 

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But TKD was my first love and I wanted to share my findings with the world of `TKD'

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Thats why I founded 'Old School Perspectives on Taekwon-do'