Is Tae Kwon Do actually "useless" against other styles?

Forgive me guys, I just don't feel like reading this entire thread. So if it would be okay I'll just respond to the OP.

Much depends on which Tae Kwon Do school you learn in. I was extremely fortunate to start out in a very practical Tae Kwon Do School. It was a simple backwoods pre-Sine Wave ITF school that had been reinforced with HoshinSool from Hapkido.

It served me quite well for years before I moved exclusively to Hapkido. It served me well in a couple of hair raising real encounters and in innumerous friendly sparring sessions with people from scores of other styles including other Tae Kwon Do people.

What I learned wasn't ideal for tournament sports but was otherwise practical for most other situations.

 

If you perform anything close to how Hwoarang does TKD, then it can be quite effective against other arts as demonstrated in the King of Iron Fist tournament, in this video.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjgGLdpy94I"]Tekken Tag 2 Hwoarang Combo Video Part 1 By Mordrek - YouTube[/ame]

 

Blame yourself for that one. I merely said that TKD's main weakness is in the punching dept. and you went on a lengthy rant, making up stuff that I supposedly said, but didn't.

 

Every single TKD school I've attended, visited or have seen online has been without doubt a terrible alternative to the more respected fullcontact striking arts such as Thai boxing, western boxing, european rules kickboxing, knockdown karate etc (with only the extremely rare exception) due to sub optimal training methods (pattern, one step), McDojoism and belt factories and it's sparring rule sets. Even the exceptions appear weaker than the stronger examples from other arts. That, coupled with the current incarnations of tournament rules and deluge of TKD fighters being battered in more open rule sets/challenge fights and you have an earned rep for not producing optimal results.

TKD has all the tools to be a fine standup art that is very much the equal of its better contemporaries, has produced some decent fighters and has lots of useful things for a fighter of a different discipline to add to their repertoire but it wont earn that public image or embody that ideal until it's community can fix the above issues in a meaningful way.

Arts are as much the sum of their respective training cultures, teaching methods and testing arenas as they are of their techniques IMO.

 

Well Mike turning kicked that out of the park.
Couldn't agree more.

 

I'm going to have to disagree on this. When in school, I've seen about 5 different fights where a wrestler took down punchers, controlled them and just started grounding and pounding. This was when the UFC wasn't even around yet. I had no idea whether the punchers had fight training or anything, although one of the fight was a TKD Black Belt who kept saying right before the fight that he was going to kill him due to his being a BB, like 3x. Wrestler shot, at a sidekick but kept on going, they hit the ground, the Wrestler just started to wail on him.

Anyhoo, this was when I was a kid and did TKD and knew nothing about grappling. But now that I have much more fight training and experience in many different styles, including fight experience....and as someone who likes to standup and trade strikes for a KO (even though I do have 4 years of BJJ)...I'd have to say that pure grappling still has the edge over pure standup. I'm not talking about the best of the best in the UFC now....just amateur fighters to even low and mid level pros.

Say a pure Striker fights a pure Wrestler. Unless the Striker is a knockout artist, it's going to be very hard for him to KO the Wrestler before he is clinched. He may get a few strikes in, but not many. And on the ground, the Striker will be like a flipped over turtle. Most of the strikes won't have any oomph now as the Wrestler pins him. While the Wrestler on top, can throw some of the sloppiest punches (w/o any training), but raining down from a dominant position, they will hurt....and easy to land as the Striker can't use foot work and only extremely limited head movement and blocking.

And choking someone out while on the ground is much easier, compared to trying to punch and kick them for a KO while standing. Also consider that Wrestlers do train standup. They just don't train strikes, but they are fast as hell and they do dodge, feint, etc. with their hands and such, while trying to setup for a takedown.

Now factor in the fact that TKD in general, will be horrible with punching....initiating TKD kicks against a Wrestler is serious death wish.

 

Catch up turbo.

 

Which is why it's so important to spend time with grapplers early and often for anybody in a striking art. Getting skill in a single art is important but equally important is preparing for the real world.

 

Originally Posted by miles
"Nowadays we don't teach people to swim by throwing them into the deep end of the pool."

LOL.. that is actually how I learnt to swim... when I was about 8, my brother pushed me in the deep end of the pool at a holiday camp... and I had to swim to the edge.. no one to jump in to save me as he legged it!

Its sort of how I learnt to spar as well in a way!!! You took your licks til you could give them back... I admit, its nota great way to learn as very few stuck the course back then.

Stuart

 

But i bet the ones that did were great sparrers!

 

It was at times a very painful way of learning though and the learning curve was steep... the ofset was, you became better/stronger fairly quickly.


As for great sparrers, I cant speak for myself (I was okay I think), but the few that continued to BB were pretty decent. Though sadly many many others dropped off cos of it, who were potentially quite good (which is why I dont feel its the best way to learn - especially not nowadays), including the seniors that use to give out the pastings, once those they technically extolled their skills upon could dish it back.

Stuart

 

Tdk has a look of fantastic kicks in it's system down side from what I've seen after only two lessons, only start last weekend . There is a lot of hand based stuff in the system and very technical every thing is every precise

 

Fighting is a fight, where two people agree the winner will be the one who knocks the other one out or make it so that the other does not want to continue or cant continue.
A sparr,even at full contact, should still be training and learning. The point is not to badly hurt the other person and 'win'. Dominate yes, but not win or beat the hell out of someone.

I wonder how many people think sparring is like a real fight or subsitute sparring for fighting?
Even sparring with less rules is still a spar.
Unless its a fight in the gym. But thats fighting not sparring.

I have made many mistakes in my training in martial arts and a big one was subsituting sparring for a fight. A real genuine violent encounter is not like a spar .
Its not even like a competative fight but thats closer than a less rules spar.
A full contact spar is a step below a full contact fight, which is a step below a real fight.

 

historical context

I would just like to say from a Taekwondo person's point of view myself, that its important to add some historical proven context to a martial art in terms of whether it is effective in a real fighting scenario. Taekwondo is a martial art that was developed during the second world war by General Choi Hong Hi when Korea was under Japanese occupation, it was developed specifically to combat the short range powerful punches that shotokan karate uses. Taekwondo was a success from its start and was used by Americans very effectively during the war in vietnam; its kicks are specifically developed to destroy the opponent from a distance.

 

As opposed to any other kicks which are designed to massage nerve clusters and give them a nice cup of tea after.....

 

Oh and I forgot to add how little veracity I actually attach to this explanation - hyperbolic nonsense and typical "RARR!! KOREA!!" Jingoistic tendencies

 

Easy, Hannibal. Nobody's enthusiasm for their art should ever be used as a weapon against them. There's much to redress in the typical history of taekwondo. But let's try and keep that a friendly process where possible. Dig?

 

As opposed to any other kicks which are designed to massage nerve clusters and give them a nice cup of tea after.....

First of all some martial arts such as Southern praying mantis only focus on low kicks not as a method of destruction and many others use them to create distance. The Taekwondo kick is unique because of the positioning of the foot as a knife edge, as opposed to Karate styles like Mushidokai that use kicks but use the sole of the foot which does not have breaking potential because the power is distributed across the foot.


Hannibal
Oh and I forgot to add how little veracity I actually attach to this explanation - hyperbolic nonsense and typical "RARR!! KOREA!!" Jingoistic tendencies

Lol you are funny, do not judge something as nonsense because you don't understand. What I said was a historical fact and you can research it yourself. Or are you going to tell me that General Choi Hong Hi was not the founder of Taekwondo and was not the general of the South Korean Army or maybe you will say that Korea was not occupied by Japan during the second world war, what a joke