Last weekend i went to a SD seminar held by the head of our organization who tore strips off us for focusing too much on kicking and sport TKD, as he said our style is Oh Do Kwan which he said is a military style and too many people are turning up to gradings with only basic/limited SD training meaning they only know some 1,2,3 step and some grab defence, Again as he said ODK TKD should involve everything as it is a military style ,so what he wants to see more of is take downs, throws and ground based grappling:happy:. Luckily some of the other instructors there hold multiple BB in other styles some including jujitsu,akido,judo and bjj so we were put through 4-5 hrs of take downs, throws and ground based grappling, lucky for me my mma friends had already twisted me into weird positions in order to submit years ago so i knew what to expect but what i found really amazing were other 2nd,3rd and 4th dans who didn't even previously consider any form of cross training . So anyway i'm now resolved to stay with my TKD club in light of its direction i'll still train elswhere aswell but now i'll continue with tkd aswell
Why did that suprise you? Surely plenty of people take taekwondo because they want to learn taekwondo, not grappling and ground wrestling etc.
I've seen what it can do in the hands of expert practitioners. Also, traditional Taekwondo has very good philosophy, and works well against one or multiple attackers. Finally, traditional Taekwondo emphasizes power and good basics.
I dunno - a lot of those jumping splits kicks and the like look way more difficult than thigh kicks and teeps.
Good for you! I am happy to see that others realize that original TKD developed in the Oh Do kwan, the military gym as a MMA of that time period (1950s+) Maybe we don't have to leave TKD, but rather return to the original TKD or to how the original TKD Pioneers trained their TKD which was the 1st TKD & that they 1st spread around the world. Sadly far too many do the martial sport of TKD, which was originally called Tae Soo Do & far too many focus on sport TKD rules of their respective orgs, including the ITFers. If TKD is to be effective for SD, it has to be trained for SD! Good luck!
Eh.....pardon? What Taekwondo have you been looking at? Locust, great to hear you had a good time and hopefully came away with a lot of good insights-it's great to see a few more switched on people in those sorts of positions. It's truly staggering to behold the way people carry on when the potential of the art is there, staring them in the face! Locust, what organisation/instructor is that?
Sorry, are people criticizing me here for suggesting that most people don't practice grappling in their TKD class? Admittedly my experience with TKD isn't extensive, but without a whole heap of you guys posting that you grapple regularly in class, I'm standing by my initial judgement. Most people don't learn grappling in their tKD and don't care.
Most people don't because most people do a watered down version of the original art. ITF TKD always included some stand up grappling, so it should be part of training now. Mitch
No you are 100% correct! The overwhelming majority of people saying that they do TKD all around the world, do NOT do any type of grappling or ground fighting
Depends on where you are looking for the difficulty. In the techniques themselves or in the training/sparring/drilling?
This is so very true & worth repeating! It was not the ITF, but the Oh Do Kwan that developed TKD. That is an historical fact. It was also developed by soldiers who had experience, exposure & talent in the various fighting systems of the day (1950s). So when they made TKD it was a MMA & trained that way. The confusion comes in as the same men not only established the ITF, but were spreading it around the world, long before others even used the name TKD. However the ITF itself pushes a unique rule set for sports which sadly has dominated what passes a TKD fighting. It also, to the detriment of the SD focus, spends way too much time in technical & very minute details of the patterns in an attempt (very successful & unprecidented) to achive a true world wide standard. They then at best, often include some go along make believe SD & step sparring, as how much time can you devote to all aspects in a class. More importantly, far to many don't even realize that free sparring is not tournament sparring. Free sparring is when you are "FREE" to use all available means for attack & defense. Once you understand that & infuse realisim into your training, you can not help but be on the floor, in a clinch, grappling, throwing sweeping etc, all which BTW are against ITF tournament sparring rules. Some in the ITF poke fun at the WTF for their extremely limited use of 1 hand technique to only 1 area of the body & say that is not fighting. Some in the WTF poke fun at the ITF as they do not do full contact. The truth is that both systems are a sport & not fighting, period, end of story. It you want to learn to fight, to defend yourself, your training must be well rounded, SD based, with as much realism as possible, given obvious safety concerns. Most TKD schools are a joke at best. Some customers do get what they want, baby sitting, discipline building for bratty kids, loss of some weigh, a sport etc. SD need not apply, unless it is an original TKD school that HAS the SD focus, not just the name or label.
The same could apply to many styles really - often instructors are not taught the whole system. Heck, I once learnt a bit of a style where the grandmaster had 3 students and taught 1/3 of the style to each, as he did not really like any of his students enough to teach any one of them all of it. Dead now. Oh well.
Yes good point & fair observation. I was just centering on TKD as this is a TKD section & I do TKD. Critique from within, with a purpose of making better or increasing awareness is IMHO a good & even noble thing, actually required of you, if you care. I refrain from critiquing other MAs, as I am not a member, nor as concerned with their issues as I am with my beloved TKD
You know I actually agree with Moosey. The claims of TKD originally containing significant ground work is a ridiculous. A while ago someone gave me a box of old black belt magazines because they wanted to get rid of them. Before my wife threw them out I flipped through them and I found really old ones (1980s or before) that had 'The secret ground techniques of TKD' in the title. I got excited and opened the magazine...I just couldn't wait to see the lost ground work we'd all been missing, anticipating the joy of seeing some TKDist doing armbars, chokes, etc... Do you know what was in those photos? Kick and punches from the ground. Admittedly it wasn't that bad. MMA has shown that knowing how to kick and punch from the ground is a good thing (BJJ includes a sidekick type technique from ground to be used to regain your feet). Some of the techniques in the magazine were similar. I saw an old video of two koreans sparring and it was fairly interesting. One of the koreans knocks the other one down and the grounded korean uses some kicks from the ground to regain his feet. I am at the airport and facebook won't work (where I saw the video), but I will try to find it and post it here. This should come as absolutely no surprise since there isn't an armbar or any guardwork or even a decent bridge escape found in the old edition of General Choi's book. So why should people assume the 'original art' contained all this? Admittedly many of the original koreans crosstrained in Judo (our Korean master has a BB in Judo and still demonstrates breakfalls at the age of 70). Yet never has he even hinted that the training was mixed at all. You trained TKD and then you would train Judo (or vice versa or whatever). Here is the deal...Royce humiliated a bunch of us in 1993. He exposed a weakness. We were not alone. There were MT guys, boxers, etc. All were clueless to what he was doing. This does not mean we should engage in revisionist history and say, "Hey guys. Guess what? Our old guys could have beat him! They knew all this stuff..." Personally I love TKD. I think it is a great stand up style. I have sparred with MT style rules, etc, and I came away thinking, "Hey. I did pretty good. All this training was good." (and friends of mine had similar experiences). Alternatively I was choked out, armbarred, smothered, etc, etc, etc when I first started grappling (and again friends of mine have had a similar experience). I do not, however, blame this on TKD. Realistically no art can cover everything under the sun and I certainly wasn't alone in finding my ground skills lacking (MT guys, Karate guys, etc...we were all finding ourselves clueless). Sometimes I wish MAP was not so spread out across the world so we could all get together and lay out some mats and I could say, "Okay. Show me this original TKD that was the equivalent to MMA." Because I want to believe it and I'd gladly tap out/etc and become a believer. But the thing is you hear about it (it has become the party line), yet no one ever posts something like a photo of Choi or Nam Tae Hi demonstrating an armbar, a cross choke, not even a sweep from guard (which is a technique that is pretty easy for TKDist to pick up ). Sorry for the long winded post but I see people jumping on Moosey's case when I think he is just being honest and objective and our second tenet is Integrity.
Ive got to say, that the TKD I have experienced as a student was all legs, very competetion based, with no groundwork. I imagine it would not be approriate for huge organisations like the dreaded bytomic to teach its students another element to the style it claims to teach, afterall why bother? with profits of an organization that large there's really no need to branch out is there. If sudenly groundwork came into to play, there would be an entire reshuffle in the way the organization pyramids itself, it would be massivly damaging to the accounts.
