You mean what's so good about it. Purely from the competitive side alone, TKD is the pentathalon of martial arts - you've got individual sparring, team sparring, patterns, hand destruction and foot destruction in one event. It makes you a much more rounded athlete and requires a lot more effort to medal consistently in every division, than say just winning a single boxing or mma fight.
First to do what? Foot tag for a point? Or those handtechniques we only get to use in a form? Another bad thing about wtf tkd: forms and sparring are different worlds.
Haha haha you guys are great. So what I meant is in the arena,but other critiques are welcome too. I also hated the point sparring, especially in versions when we stopped after every point. I hated it when my school switched from ITF to WTF because we essentially stopped using hand techniques. And I wish I could throw a straight in sparring. Does the TKD roundhouse kick have any value in MMA? Do the other techniques?
I did (at low levels). The hand techniques were only weird ones to the side of the head, basically useless in sparring in my experience. And the moves are built for speed and disguise, not power, so foot tagging sounds about right. Please prove me wrong. The only local gym is TKD.
But you can't punch your opponent in the head which is quite a disappointment. I feel like, as with modern Judo, Taekwondo has an over-specialized ruleset which ends with a predominant focus on high kicks and it not living up to its potential as a striking art. The positive is that it brings to light techniques which one might not otherwise unearth and which can then be brought to more open rulesets. If my choices however were TKD or Muay Thai/Kickboxing/Savate/Sanda it would be a cold day before I donned a dobok again.
Oh, absolutely agree, WTF sparring is not my cup of tea really, though I admire the athleticism and speed of the players. But too often it is denigrated by people saying things like, "it's soft contact point sparring," when clearly it's more than that and what they really mean is, "I don't like the rules." Having held a kick shield for a female competitor who was a good standard but not Olympic level, I know for a fact that the WTF style back kick packs plenty of power Mitch
Yes. Hence the foot tag remark. Anything harder to the body and you'll get a warning. Head ko's are indeed legal yet a keeping your hands up is discouraged. Even blocking is discouraged. And dont get me started on leg kicks..... I love the art and I love its techniques. Taekwondo has done wonders for my agility and movement. But the sparring is plain silly. Last time I felt so frustrated with TKD I switched to kickboxing for six months to learn how to properly attack with and defend against a leg kick. It also improved my hand strikes. Im seriously considering taken some time off again after I get my red belt. As for MMA; plenty of fighters with a TKD background that use TKD in the octagon.
I guess the real question for most people is why in its dominant resistant testing ground TKD doesn't emphasize a more well rounded striking skillset and why more fundamental skills like punching are left by the wayside.
Being discouraged to keep your hands down and not block is because you had a rubbish coach, not because TKD itself is bad.
