Here's a link to some short clips from the France championships this year. WTF style competition. Already notice a lot of tactic changes with the new rule revisions. France National Champs 2004
I've downloaded the vids but while watching them I noticed that the competitors always had their arm's down by their sides. I havn't yet had any experience in WTF style sparring, but will when I become 6th grade. We do sparring in class, but not sport type sparring, there are seperate classes for that. So why is it they don't keep their guard up? This seems rather strange to me. Also I'm guessing punches arn't used because it's hard to score with them? Anyways, I enjoyed the videos. Some of them looked abit hectic at times.
In Olympic point fighting, there is very rarely punching involved. So holding your arms up just uses up energy. Hanging them down allows you to bring them up when needed for blocks.
I've always been curious about this. Surely having your hands up would make blocking easier? The bouts are rarely of a duration whereby your arms would get tired. Presumably you lift the arms when you're going to kick, so doesn't this telegraph the intention somewhat?
Arms block wonderfully against punches when held high, but kicks tend to travel from low to high, so holding your arms low allows you to block low faster. Just a guess.
ive done a lot of training in olympic style sparring, and the reason fighters keep their arms down to the side is coz most kicks dont go for the head, and when they do they just raise their arm to stop the kick most kicks are aimed at the chestguard, so it is actually logically correct to keep our arms at our sides if you notice, when a kick comes for their chest guard, the fighter will take the hit in the arm and move his arm away from his chestguard, then he raises the arm to show the ref that the kick only hit his arm
But the target area is above the waist? Hey it's a sport, so top competitors wouldn't do it if it didn't work I guess. Thanks
i guess it's what you're used to - we do a lot of tournament training and competitions and we always keep our guard up as we seem to use more hand technqies than other tkd clubs in tournament fights. i see many players miss scoring opportunities that they could have made with their hands in combination counter techniques, but they had their hands down i notice that the players in this tournament don't use back kicks, but they seem to trade kicks all the way through - i would have thought trading kicks would be a very good energy wasting strategy...
Thx for the videos, i enjoyed them Although i must admit the fights have gotten very scrappy....The short range roundhouses in particular. Although some of the headshots were still very nice, and where that guy does a 360 fake to jump backkick and knocks the guy over the corner judge was sweeeeet
Ya to bad he didn't connect with it, though he did hit a nice axe kick earllier on. I think this is the way you'll start seeing sport TKD progress. With the new rule revisions initiation of attacks is being awarded much more heavily instead of technical superiority, or even counter attacks. As well with the kicking to the back rule now in place, you're going to see alot more unpredictability in the matches. Basically the matches now have become faster, more intense, and with more continuous action.