I've quit Taekwondo.... had enough of the crap at my club Its getting too mickey mouse there with the 'anyone can be a black belt if the monthly fees are paid'. Standards are poor and falling, the senior instructors are younger than i am and have bad attitudes. In the year and a half i've seen kids become black belts and even the youngest black belt in the country (hit the papers)... I worked out i will save £1500 a year ($3000), testing fees, monthly memberships, replacing sparring gear etc... I'm a red belt and only had two more gradings till black, it was soemthing i was nervous about as it was the anticipation of being a black belt. But seeing the standards or the current black belts, all it would be is a different colour round my waist. A few students have quit the club due to bullying from the senior instructor who is a 20yr old girl who likes to b*tch behind every students back. So far i'm enjoying the more free time i have and will look to take up Muay Thai or kick boxing... my growing frame from weightlifting isnt geared towards flashy kicks /vent
From what I read there, I agree with you entirely. It's still sad when an era comes to an end though. But if you have local Muay Thai schools.... Why are you doing TKD in the first place! Hehehe. Best of luck mate.
lol, if i had a muay thai club in portsmouth i'd be happy. there is a muay thai club in gosport i've got my eye on. yes a name change would be ideal but hey ho... Time to pluck up the courage and speak the truth to the master about the staff he employs...
I'm sorry to hear about it Taekwondo Guy, but I'm sure you can turn this into an opportunity, and get into something which won't ever disappoint you. Best of luck.
cheers johnno... i am looking into something more physical, taekwondo is great for kicks but lacks the grit and intensity i really want. I'm not bashing TKD as it will serve me well. ps. i miss our daily 'conversations'
Good luck. As Rags said, if you could have done Thai Boxing in the first place - why on earth were you doing TKD? If you don't want to 'waste' all the work you've done, you could probably get up to a high Kyu grade in any matsumura based karate style pretty quickly if you learnt the Kata (bearing in mind that TKD is descended from Matsumura Karate) . That way you'd have a black belt that was worth something - if a black belt as opposed to just being good is what you want.
Sounds like Nam Pai Chuan would be right up your street then..... except there isn't a centre near you. I'm sure that everything you have done will stand you in good stead. Even if you have to 'unlearn' things, I'm sure there are still many benefits: flexibility and stamina being two of the more obvious ones. Me too! I was starting to think you'd left MAP. I lay awake at nights wishing I hadn't been so harsh on you. :cry: But then every time I'd post a nice warm fuzzy feelgood post defending the rights of three-legged orphaned kittens, I expected you to chime in and tell me not be so 'politically correct'! It's good to know you're still around!
I was here before him anyway! I did originally think about his when I signed up, but then assumed that it must be taken, so chose ATKDG for a bit of irony as well. Also, with mine, people can go "hey look, it's another tkd guy, you guys breed like rabbits" in chat, which totally makes up for it.....
Taekwondo Guy - if you had been in London I'd have invited you to my club. Good luck with finding something that suits you!
Well done on having the motivation to get out of a crap school. Im sure you can take what you have learned and apply it in a better school. Good Luck.
So should we just call you "Guy"? Anyway, sounds like you've made the right move if you're so dissatisfied with the instruction you're getting. I wish I'd had the foresight to do that with my first driving instructor!
Have you simply thought of finding another TKD club? Not all schools are like how you describe and seems a dam shame to get to red belt and at least not see it through to black, just somewhere else? Stuart
i wont miss learning knife hand blocks and twist kicks Lol, you weren't harsh, we like to fight our own corners and hold onto our morals like a white knuckle ride. Hence why we still replied to each others posts i left MAP for a while as i was part of a McDojo of the biggest kind, seeing that i went from white to red in 1.5 years It makes it hard to comment on others learning when i was being taught the McDojo way
ha ha, guy it is... i know ATKDG gets all red faced when i start posting, bless. It was a butterflys in stomach feeling when i hovered the mouse over 'cancel standing order'
there is another club a mile away from me that is part of the same association but the instructors are all pally pally from the club i just left. Its the association that is mickey mouse (ITA) and any decent set up schools are ITA. The rest are school hall weekend warrior classes that would take forever to progress due to once a week classes
