Last week, we held special classes for self-defense, street clothes, and sticky finger techniques. 1) Self-defense is pretty obvious - learning the three basic rules and applying them to various attack situations. 2) Street clothes class makes sense - you probably won’t be wearing a gi if you’re ever attacked on the street, so it’s important to see how your body moves with the restrictions of regular, street clothes. 3) ‘Sticky finger’ is a phrase I coined in the late 1960s. My Tae Kwon Do class was working on hand presses, grabs, twisting motion, etc. to off-balance your opponent and increase the damage done to him. My younger sister had a toy called ‘Sticky Finger’, so I used that phrase to remember the whole concept of what we practiced in that class. Several years later, Bruce Lee became famous and talked about his instructor, Yip Man, and the special ‘sticky hands’ techniques they practiced. Great, now it sounds like I’m ripping off Bruce Lee! I’ve been teaching ‘sticky finger’ techniques for decades now, since there are many hidden grabs, locks, twists, etc. in Shotokan kata, and telling the story of my sister’s toy. One time I saw a student rolling his eyes in a ‘yeah, riiight’ manner. For the record, a recent google search gave evidence of the original toy, 'Sticky Finger', from Mascon Toys, 1965. To that student who rolled his eyes I say, “yeah, right!”
