I expect a clear division between kids and adults classes. the majority of students in our adults classes are adults do you suggest a further splintering of taekwon-do is the answer? Maybe your instructor is to blame for how you are feeling, not Taekwon-Do.
In my school, we generally start out with high belts first. 1st-Basic punches, blocks, and kicks 2nd-Form 3rd-Board breaking 4th-Sparring
Most ITF schools here--if not all--have neither the time nor the amount of students necessary to split the classes up, so everyone trains together. And the majority of people period who train MT are adults, so you naturally see a focus on adult-oriented aims and curriculum. I've already acknowledged that my instructor sucks, but that doesn't change the fact that TKD has some issues. How many TKD tournaments have you been to that allow knees and leg kicks? Or throws and ground work? Or that are both full contact and do continuous sparring? Not many, I'd imagine. . . And honestly, I could give on the full contact, provided not going full contact doesn't mean light contact. There's a good middle ground. But the rest of it is pretty important, I think. Yes individual schools are the problem, but they're not the whole problem.
I'm not trying to defend your instructors (as I stated before, your situation seems very odd), but: - Why are throws and ground-work considered a necessary factor for an art not to be decided to "have issues"? Most muay'ers and Western-style kickboxers I've seen generally don't that often do too much throwing, or much of any ground work (except if they cross-train), and no one goes around claiming that "muay Thai has issues" or "kickboxing has issues" simply because of that. (That said, why assume that taekwondo was intended to train for groundwork in the first place? I don't see an ounce of ground-fighting [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x-vJYLDAVo"]here[/ame]. Do you really expect the skill of groundfighting to just appear out of thin air?) - Why assume tournaments are the end-all and be-all of a given art? What do you feel the rest of the problem is?
Well TKD does have some rudimentary grappling in the curriculum, though most of it seems to be related to hosin sul. A variety of techniques have been taught as being "defense against a headlock," "defense against a choke," etc. At the testing the other day, the green belt did a wheel throw and a shoulder throw, and one of the red belts did a hip throw. So I'm like, Why are these grappling techniques not allowed in competition? They are obviously not NOT taekwondo. So why put all these restrictions into place? Okay, okay. . . How about this, we don't have to have ground fighting, but at least throws. And you should at least be able to catch kicks. Because all these weak hop-around-on-one-foot kicking habits that a lot of TKD competitors use to score is stupid and they need to get punished for it by getting taken off their feet. And I also think that if you're going to penalize for excessive contact, then you should also penalize for too light of contact. Points are scored, at least in the ITF, by touch far too much than by damage. At the very least, in order to get a point, you should have to land a solid, clean hit. It's not, but even if we stress the SD aspects of a style, they're still sports. And the aim of a sport is to win. Football players may enjoy practice, but ultimately they want to win games, and that's the dominant goal. The same goes for basketball players, marathoners, and wrestlers. Which leads me to another issue: the infrequency of tournaments. But that's another conversation. I was just referring to everything I've talked about in this thread.
BJJ is very much a 'traditional' art in the sense of self-discovery. I've seen many schools with a huge portrait of Helio with '20 characteristics of a black belt list'. And humbleness is listed, courtesy, etc, etc (note I am not sure if it is 20, but something like that). Note I am not saying any of the stuff I mentioned above is 'exclusive' to TKD. I was just making an observation based on SPX's posts on something I was sensing underlying his words...
yeah I just guess that I don't see the deeper or more eosoteric nature of the martial arts as being something that can be prescribed. It's more something that naturally occures through the process of physical training - through arts that require their exponants to endure physical punishment and to confront themselves in a certain way. I don't believe that a framework of tenents, rituals, or ideological dogmas facilitate the type of growth you might associate with martial practice at all. I believe the trappings of 'enlightenment' are basically window dressing which serve to preserve a cultures aesthetic and social practices. They contribute nothing to the experience of the 'spirtual' side of the martial arts beyond serving as it's cultural representation. Rattling off the tenets of tkd in unison, barking sir, and facing away to straighten your dobok are hollow acts of obedience to a set of cultural practices. Getting hammered in the face, getting crushed under side control, feeling physically dominated and pushing through in an attempt to assert your will, whether successful or not is a visceral and personal event of some magnitude and does far more for the internal spiritual growth the practioner. I would also say that the distiction between 'traditional' arts as being growth orientated and 'modern' arts as being focused on pragmatism in combat/winning is as erroneous as the distinction between trad and modern arts in general. Meaning that many arts that people consider trad are infact quite modern (tkd for example) and genuine trad arts are mostly pragmatic combat disciplines first and foremost (wrestling for example). I don't know, these are the conclusions that I have drawn from my experiences of what the martial arts appear promise and what they actually offer. Romantic notions of enlightenment and the grandeur of the spiritual eastern warrior are often just that.
I always have had issues with all of these. Especially the "sir." I like to talk to people like a normal human being. I like to be relaxed and joke around. So when someone pushes the "sir" thing I really want to ask them who they think they are.
Hello- I know what you are saying Hello. Heck I tried for months to continue grappling with a ruptured disc in my neck thinking I could just push through the pain. And I used to play the sports where they always preach mental toughness, taking a hit for the team, etc. Those sorts of things are the mantra of any sports team. However there is a danger with focusing on these things too much (as dangerous as their absence in a martial activity. Our physical abilities are quite transitory. One little burst disc and I was suddenly couldn't escape the most simple side control (all they had to do was hold my neck in a certain way and I was paralyzed with pain). Heck we could get into a car accident tomorrow and all that goes out the window. The trappings of a 'traditional' art may very well be window dressings (note I put traditional in quotes because they are modern). That does not mean, however, that these dressings have no meaning. A list of tenets, a series of forms named for Korean historic figures, etc are a bit silly when one sits back and thinks about it (especially for a half Chinese ancestry guy like me born and raised in the USA). Yet the symbolism does something for me. I met a guy who had taught at many of the MMA gyms and he surprised me by saying that what many of the schools needed was a cultural connection. He went on to explain that many of the schools were like a revolving door. Lots of people joining for 6 months or so, but not too much long term retention. He kept saying, "one thing the 'traditional' arts did was engaged the heart as well as the mind and body..." Note I don't know if this is true or not. It was just two guys chatting and I was a bit surprised to hear him saying that (since he was a MMA guy with a strong wrestling base).
That seems unusual to me. At our gradings the higher grades do 1 on 1 free sparring and 2 on 1 free sparring. While the contact levels aren't heavy as they're not wearing gloves, it's not uncommon to see people put on their backside. Sweeps and other techniques are allowed. We don't spar in every class but instead dedicate entire classes to sparring regularly, more often in the run up to competitions. We start sparring at white belt, though not as often as the coloured belts. Contacts levels are light in class, though I've had a fair few sore hits. Competitions are billed as light contact but feel a lot heavier. A friend of mine (green belt) KO'd a blue belt at the last comp we went to with a turning kick/back kick combo and wasn't penalised. I believe knockouts aren't the norm but they happen (this occasion the blue belt dropped his hands and dipped his head after the first kick and caught the second straight on his chin). Uncontrolled, excessive contact is penalised. As far as I could tell from the other schools represented at the competition and from reading this forum for a while what I experience in our school is pretty much normal for ITF in Scotland and the UK.
I'd absolutely agree with that. One thing I like about trad arts is that sense of "place" or heritage. MMA doesn't have that in the same way (even though a a concept it predates most arts around today). I'm still a big fan of MMA and that training "model" but there's defianately a part of me that gets something from wearing a gi and knowing the heritage of the arts I do. It has naff all to do with being good at fighting but certainly helps me stay in the arts.
Fair play to you. However I totally do not advocate training through a serious injury. Missed my last session due to a knee injury and am hoping it'll healed in time for the next... if not I'm gon ab esitting out anything that puts undue starin on it. That's just sensible training in my opinion. In my post I was refering to the benefits of having to struggle and dig deep through pain, physical limitations and sometimes humiliation. Pain and injury are different things though IMO. I never said they were meaningless. I stated that they were signifiers of a culture/philosophy/spiritual concept, but that does not make them agents of it's transmission beyond a purely intellectual level. It's my opinion that the true nature of spirituality within the martial arts is experiential and dappled in the sweat of the practitioner not inked on the dojo wall. But what does it do exactly? That is the question. I would offer the possibility that it seduces the part of you that buys into the romance of the martial arts more than anything? I don't know. I think hes pretty much wrong to be honest. I've trained in 'traditional' japanese and chinese systems as well as sports systems, students come and go like anywhere else. I've been to places where I myself have stayed for 6months or less - some places I stayed for years. I'd like to know what he means by this. I can't really see what he's driving at? It sounds a bit like romanticised bs to me. :meditate:
Neither do I. I was in denial... I finally got the MRI, had the surgery, am in recovery, etc. I'll start training again in a couple of months. Oh I totally agree with you. That is what SPX and I were talking about. We are faced with the conundrum of Byron's "the problem is, despite it all, I *do* believe..." It is a romantic seduction. But sometimes we need a little romance in our lives. I actually told him this! I said, "Hey look. Lots of people come and go. That is just the way it is..." But then he would say, "No. I think there is something there. You get people culturally tied up and there is more retention. BJJ has this, but not MMA as a whole..." It was just one guys opinion. It was just an opinion that surprised me and I found interesting. And it was just a conversation. He wasn't going to become a TKD convert from MMA. He was just theorizing. It was kind of funny actually. Total role reversal. The MMA guy talking about cultural value and the 'traditional' guy saying, "I don't know how much it really helps to be honest..."
Haha hope you heal up well! Fair enough. You enjoy a certain aesthetic with your training, Im not going to knock that
I think MMA attract a different customer than the traditional arts and I don't know whether it's a cultural thing or the black belt that hold such allure We have guys that disappear for weeks, months even years then just turn up and get back on in there. I think a lot of people also realise that it isn't really for them when fighting becomes a real possibility.
I know what you mean, near where I work, there's a MMA school and also an aikido dojo located right next to each other. In the MMA school, there are lots of young blokes, military types and professional fighters. The aikido school, on the other hand, which was taught by an elderly Japanese gentleman, was filled with white collar, the lawyer/banker, office worker types. Moral of the story? If you want to make money teaching MA, probably better to stick to teaching traditional MA.
Could be, but sometimes it's fun to allow yourself to be seduced. When I was younger I bought into the romanticized concept of "martial arts" much more than I do today, and I actually miss it. Sometimes I think illusion is better than the reality.
Martial arts in general is no gold mine. Challenging way to make money. Look at the number of schools that close. I watched too many instructors struggle growing up...which is why I kept the day job.
