Hey. It's one of the reasons I signed up to the forum. To have people who know more than me whip me into shape.
I am a student of grandmaster Woo Jin Jung's at a branch school-hopefully I will meet him when I test in December, but according to the acadamy web site he is at least an 8th dan- gradded from the Kuggiwon Institute and has the certificate in his office sighned by Kim Un Yong. You can check out the web site at http://www.jungstkd.com/story.html .
this whole talk on 9th dans... eek. i believe there are none in my country. highest ranking practitioners are 2 7th dans i believe. the highest i've trained under is a 7th Dan, which runs my TKD club. my regular teacher is a 4th dan, simply because he hasn't really been able to afford testing. he used to be the same rank as the man who runs our club once, they studied under the same master. in any case, there is another instructor above him in the club, a 5th dan, but not cert. by the Kukkiwon. one very impressive thing about our 7th dan master is the fact that he was a very successful competitor once, but due to a bad knee injury, was told he would never be able to practice again. this brought him to depression, and excessive eating. and when i mean excessive, i am talking the man weighs over 400 pounds. he had a miraculous recovery, injury wise. however, 400+ pounds is not something you can just lose. so, yeah, he still has the weight. but let me tell you, i have never seen a 400 pounds man who can kick over his head and still perform effective jump kicks. he seems almost unaffected, in terms of agility, by his weight. makes me wonder how fast he was before this happened. oh, and i can imagine a 400+ pund side kick must feel like getting hit by a truck
There are perhaps more people who are '9th Dan' in terms of accomplishment than are officially registered. Also, according to the WTF, you can also be automatically promoted to 8th Dan if you are an Olympic title holder. That thus makes some people just in their 20's an 8th Dan! I can strongly recommend this 9th Dan who teaches in Korea. He was awarded 9th Dan last summer, and is still relatively young at 55 years old! Are we going to see anyone with 9th Dans in more than one art? I'm not aware that this has happened yet. Anyway, it doesn't really matter about ranking numbers. If you like and respect your instructor, that's the most important factor in 'boastability'.
Have you had the chance to train with Master Chang? I'm hoping to go and train with him next year, had to put it off this year due to lack of funds. Where did you hear this? I think you've got your wires crossed on this one a bit. I refer you to Article 17 on the Kukkiwon site.
I was first trained under a 7th Dan by the name of Grandmaster Y Won, does not give much away as he was a quiet character. His training was awfull and he over charged me and most of the students and I learnt nothing. It also didn't help that he thought his class were too thick to do TKD. I left and now train under a 5th and 1st Dan and they are both superb. Tans
Sorry, apologies LC. I was sure I had read previously that an Olympic gold medallist could bypass all testing up to 8th Dan. What's it saying then? You can just bypass one belt rank with an Olympic medal?
I believe it's saying that between 1st-7th Dan you can speed up the time required between your current rank and the next. I believe you still have to test though.
or lie, I don't beilive my ex-teacher is as tough as he is made out to be. He hit me in a fight ages ago but it didn't hurt, when I spar now I am literally knocked out my TKD shoes! Tans
I think a person can only promote early one grade at a time or can promote earlier than the time in grade by a certain percent. All of the details are available from the Kukkiwon website. Article 17 http://www.kukkiwon.or.kr/english/examination/examination08.jsp?div=01
Who promotes the first practicioner? If you run an association, who promotes you? If you get someone in from outside to promote you, who promotes them? Most of it is nonsense. Does a Dan Grade mean anything? Does 2nd mean more than first? Does 5th mean more than 6th? Bearing in mind the minimum training requirements most associations have, anything above third or so is largely honorary. That doesn't imply any lack of respect. Any 6th Dan who has served their time probably deserves some respect purely because of their dedication and what they have most likely put back into their art (6th Dan in TAGB means 23.5 years training minimum). You don't train for that long without showing some of the tennets. Will they, at 44, be able to beat a 20 year old 1st Dan in a sparring bout? Unlikely I'd think. Do well, yes, but win over a long bout? Dan Grades are largely symbolic, as with other grades; the abilities of the individual are, well, individual! Mitch
Our association still has (ridiculously) strenuous testing for higher dans, rather than honorary or token promotions. You can see a visible difference between the 6th dans and the 4th dans in spite of the age difference. One thing that helps this to happen is that we are required to be on a pretty strict regimen of nutrition, cardio, weight training, and MA training (including boxing, kickboxing, submission grapping and NHB) for a minimum of 12 months prior to testing. Most of the 5th dans and up have stayed with it (though not always quite as strict) as part of their lifestyle for years and have continued to improve despite being old enough to be a parent of the 1st dan previously mentioned.
I have no idea...if you mean my ex-master I don't know. Current teachers are brilliant and they have been in competions, but some of my class have not been allowed into the Olympic try out's as they were deemed too violent. As for ex master...if anyone is in New malden Surrey UK...do not train under him, he also trains in Honslow...you have been warned.
I completely understand where you're coming from. But in my experience, the answer is generally yes. My instructor is around 50 and with an old back injury that stops him from really going for it like he would have done maybe 20 years ago. However, while he may not be pulling off 540 kicks three in a row when it comes to sparring, he will land every single kick he throws, and every one of them would have hurt like hell if he wasn't pulling. That sort of thing you can only gain from experience, which in turn only comes about from training for a long time. There's also a 4th Dan that trains at our club (as well as running his own) who's a Moroccan ex-national champion. At 47 he can still move faster than any of us young whipper-snappers. But just there is a big difference between him and myself, there's also still a gap in ability between him and the 6th Dan.
