Why is Taekwondo always considered weak and ineffective? *conversation included*

Discussion in 'Tae Kwon Do' started by TaeAno, Oct 4, 2010.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Master Betty

    Master Betty Banned Banned

    Tbh I dont wanna get into talking about thai boxing - if you wanna talk about thai boxing come to the thai forum where i can actually educate you a little. I was using that as an exmaple of a SINGLE art where it neither suffers from mcdojos or has mystical bullcrap.

    I don't actually understand why your post is so defensive and yet doesnt actually disagree with a single point I made except to argue about some off-handed remark I made about ninjutsu - hardly the subject is it?

    Come back when you want to discuss the points at hand.
     
  2. kilat02

    kilat02 Valued Member


    totally agree with that:cool:
     
  3. TKDstudent

    TKDstudent Valued Member

    You make some very good points. Please do not get me wrong. I clearly understand that those who train seriously for real competitions are of course going to sweat & gain skills that can also be utilized in a real battle. In fact, just the other day, I watched a WTF school train very hard. I was most impressed with the amount of sweat & how hard they were working. It even pushed me & gave me a few new ideas & re-awakened some old ideas that I had in the back of my mind. However during the class that I wathced, there was virtually no sparring & not even much kicking, but they worked very hard on conditioning.
    If there is a school that focuses on having tough competitors, they will produce players as you stae above & IMO those players will have skills that will transfer over to a real fight. No doubt about that.
    However I am not sure how many commerical TKD schools, of any style or letter designation, really push their students, as most students do not join for a sport or to compete. So they cater to the babysitting & family fun classes.
    I know a few good ITF type of training that does push their students, make them sweat & produce good players. I also have seen & know that such schools exist on the WTF side as well, producing good players & that the skills attained in both styles will help in a fight. However they see to be the exception, rather than the rule. This is & remains my point.
    So from a generic POV, to me & imo TKD generally has become a watered down MA. There are many reasons for this! High among the list is the emphasis that has been placed on sport over SD. This comes right from the top, right from the leaders in SK & how the govt there promotes the martial sport. Insurnace regulations play a part. But the bottom line seems to be the ever growing number of commerical schools that open up with a focus on making money. I do not think clubs like NYU are about making money. They are about winning for the school. Often they do not even pay a fee & if they do, it is nominal & is usually supprted by the school's athletic budget. But commerical schools exist to make a profit. They seek to get as many customers (not atheletes) in the door, so they can pay monthly fees, buy equipment, pay test fees & purchase drinks etc. Once they get them in the door, the business model concentrates on retaining them. So no one is really pushed, as they do not want anyone to drop out. No one is really failed, as they don't want to lose students. So therefore what is taught & learned is mostly fluff. Plain & simple IMNSHO!

    Now again, those that really push & develop good players, be it ITF or WTF, will of course make their players sweat & bruise. In that case, I would think that the sports rules that are more realisitic will have spillover effect to real fighting. Additionally if the school has a realisitic SD aspect as well, it will even be better. Sadly though, it does not seem that many commerical schools have these traits. This is why TKD is considered weak & ineffective to me, from a SD standpoint, as a martial artist. Notice I did not leave in the word "always"!
     
  4. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

    I disagree. The "Junior Olympics" in the United States are filled with hard-competing individuals, all of whom come from commercial taekwondo schools (I'm not aware of serious WTF taekwondo programs in the US that cater to people under 18 that aren't commercial; it's really when you get old enough for university clubs that there's non-commercial WTF TKD here). Do they push their students? Do they sweat? The proof is in the pudding:

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEH3XHHeQhY"]YouTube - Taekwondo Midgets! (uhmmmm little people - 8-9 years old) fighting!!![/ame]

    Don't tell me that nine-year-olds would have that technical ability or that aggressiveness without being pushed very hard in their dojang, night in and night out. A bit older, and it's the same thing:

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMaB4ZCSJbA"]YouTube - Prathit's Sparring Match at Jr. Olympics[/ame]

    No way that's a result of anything besides years of hard work. And those kids look to be high schoolers, so they almost certainly are training at a commercial TKD school.

    That's a false, sweeping characterization of for-profit schools. For example: my first fencing school was a commercial, for-profit school. It was the instructor's only job, and monthly fees were well above $100--I think they could approach $200/month if you were having nightly one-on-one instruction instead of just weekly individual lessons and nightly sparring (which is what I did). Does that mean he didn't push us? To the contrary. Mentally and physically, we were pushed to the breaking point every night. As a result, we had a highly competitive program; it was not whether we'd send fencers to nationals, but how many, and who would dominate (I'm not bragging: I wasn't one of the most competitive fencers there, so I always got my butt kicked at nationals, although I qualified and competed several times).

    Similarly, here's the local, highly-commercialized TKD. I checked out signing up with this club, and it's as commercial as they get: year-long contracts costing $1,200-$1,500 are mandatory. However, that does NOT mean that they take it easy on the students! In the class I watched, people were working until they were nearly falling over, and that was just a routine class, nothing special. And one of their students took gold in her age and weight class at the Junior Olympics--you simply don't get there without being pushed every night in your training. The local news article on her:

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXQWoOQOEJw"]YouTube - ATC's Aloha Kaeo-Wailehua on NBC Channel5 Sports - 07.08.09[/ame]
    (I do not condone girls her age cutting water weight to make weight, but that's not the main point of the story).

    For-profit or not, if a dojang has aspirations of competing and winning at tournaments, it's going to push its students hard, and they're going to push themselves hard. That's just an inherent part of sport competition, martial-arts-related or otherwise.

    Let me re-emphasize: the point I was making in my last post dealt with the alleged lack of intensity in sport-oriented taekwondo training. Not the lack of realistic SD training. Those are two completely different things, as competitive athletes can, and frequently do, train their butts off without having any sort of realistic SD aspect to their training, just because of the nature of competitive sports (just ask any footballer or track athlete, and sport-oriented taekwondoin are no different).
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2010
  5. aaron_mag

    aaron_mag New Member Supporter

    In support of Mitlov's point I just had a dad, who did TKD when he was young, tell me the class looked to physical for him but he wanted to sign up his son. This was a mixed family class. Nothing especially tough about it. If anything I would say the mixed family nature of it made it far less intense than I would have liked. This dad was only in his 40s or so. Should be no problem for him. I had a 20 something 2nd degree from WTF side tell me, "I have been working out on my own, but not to the point where I almost was throwing up. That is the difference of being in a class and drilling by yourself..."

    And my classes are nothing special. I do no special training, etc. But if there isn't a sweat it isnt TKD. I am perfectly willing to admit TKD has faults. Lack of sweat equity is not one of them...
     
  6. Cait

    Cait da Bionic is BACK!

    I know I haven't been on here in quite a while, by I've fielded this question so many times, I thought I'd take a stab here.

    The number 1 problem with TKD is the comercialization. Too many dojangs are nothing but daycare, and too many others train soley for the limited fight set of tournament sparring. And yes, those practitioners are weak, especially placed outside thier comfort zones. And yes, there's a LOT of them out there. Good instructors are few and far between, where weak and just plain bad ones are a dime a dozen.

    My advice? If you want to give TKD a better name, learn as much as you can. Cross train. Step outside the rule set. And for the love of all that is good and holy, learn to shrug off the insults and control your mouth! There are too many loudmouthed hotshot TKDrs out there already who haven't got a clue. Don't add to them.
     
  7. TKDstudent

    TKDstudent Valued Member

    Yes I am sure that many schools, if not all come by a very talented & gifted player. No doubt about that! And it would great commercial business sense to take thise students & push them to develop them into winning players, which of course will add to the school's ability to build a reputation & get even more new students into the door. However I am talking about the majority of TMAs schools, of which TKD, because of the raw numbers is the largest group, that are kid centers that offer TaeKwon Fun & then draw in entire familes so they can all TaeKwon Fun & babysitting services that add in a component of character building & discipline. It is a winning formular & meets a needed demand, it is just noy IMHO a real MA that they are learning & paying for. But as long as the customers are happy with TakeMyDough it is fine by me. I just hate when they use the label of TKD which started as an effective means of SD in the ROK Army. Original TKD is or was a MA. What i see now in commercial schools is simply not a MA to me.


    These are good points, but anecdotal at best. As I pointed to above, of course there are talented, gifted players that are pushed. Of course there are schools that make their students sweat. However, like it or not, TKD in the West is mostly a kid's activity, even in the so called Mecca of TKD, SK. There is a big push there now by the former WTF president, the current presidents of the WTF & KW to address this problem & attract more adults, even teens.
    The terms mcdojo & mcdojang exist for a reason. To me & most posters here, it is because TMAs have become watered down. TKD is a TMA & has IMHO become watered down. In addition, TKD is looked at as a martial or Olympic sport, hence less attention to SD. That to me is natural. MMAs have As are no longer seen by many to fit the bill in teaching SD.
    That is not to say that they are not good TKD schools, ITF, WTF or Independent, as there most certainly are. It is also common sense to me that good stiff competition does demand hard training & that hard training does produce sweat & have an affect on the ability to better protect themselves.
     
  8. TKDstudent

    TKDstudent Valued Member

    Yes commercialization is a huge problem & agree that there still are good TKD schools out there. They seem to be the exception as you state.
    Rule Set: Great point! Rules are for sports. if you are getting ready to play at a TKD tournament, compete in your training by the rule set that will govern your sports match. Train hard & good luck!
    However IMHO not all fighting in your training & inside your dojang should be sports related. Take off the restrictions & let them fight with no rules & everything goes. low kicks, sweeps, all kinds of hands to all areas, grabing, throws, take downs, fighting on the floor etc. This to me is MAs! Believe me you build skills & sweat an awful lot, more so I would venture than sports sparring that is successful by a careful counter-attacking system that leads to a strategic cat & mouse game!
    Cross Training: Another great point! Which I will take advantage of to hammer home the point that I constantly harp on: Originally TKD was devised as a Mix of MAs or a consolidation of the fighting systems available at the time. It was the civilianization, follow by the sports emphasis & commericalization, hampered by insurance regs, that led to the watered down version that gets to be the brunt of much distain in the MAs world.
    Solve The Problem: Get back to the roots of TKD as a consolidation of fighting systems for SD, jmo
     
  9. TKDstudent

    TKDstudent Valued Member

    Yes I agree, no sweat than it is not TKD. Good job!
    However I would render a guess that most students in today's kiddie centers do not want to throw up, nor do their Mums, who take them their by the hand.
    Karate Kid & Ninja Turtle movies started the kiddie invasion & led to a siginificant watering down of TMAs, especially TKD, which has been taught & promoted as a sport & been the subject of a great effort by SK to graduate TKD masters from academic programs with college degrees, dispatching them around the world as a career choice, as always, JMO
     
  10. Bruce W Sims

    Bruce W Sims Banned Banned

    Ehhhhh.....either you are not actually reading my posts....or you have a pat set of responses that you use whenever sufficient provocation ----in your eyes---warrants it. Read my posts again and I think you will find that you have slipped-off the track somewhere.

    Just to re-cap (afaik)

    a.) The thread began with the idea that TKD had a bad rep and that rep could be traced to a fundamentally flawed practice.

    b.) The fundamental flaw seems to come back to using TKD as a sport but representing it as a form of MA or S-D.

    c.) Having identified the flaw, there followed some thoughts on how this "flaw" might be addressed.

    d.) Having addressed the flaw, making TKD more of a MA or S-D, the question followed as to whether folks would pursue TKD given the cost of training for MA and S-D rather than sport competition.

    If I am understanding your post, I think you may have only come in at the last stage ("d.)").

    BTW: Please don't woof quite so loud about the exhaustive nature of your practice. I'm sure you are very proud of what you do and rightly so. But as I have told students on a number of occasions, I have no interest whatsoever of spending 3 3-minute rounds messing around with someone, the fight does not stop when someone throws a red flag or a person goes out of bounds and I, personally, have no real interest in hedging my technique for fear that someone may think poorly of me for getting so nasty.

    Now, if you would like to contribute to the discussion regarding making TKD more "combat-worthy" I'd like to hear what you have to say. Otherwise, your huffing-and-puffing is no more helpful than anybody else's, right?

    Best Wishes,

    Bruce
     
  11. Kwan Jang

    Kwan Jang Valued Member

    My this thread keeps going on for a while. I'd like to address TKD Students' comments first because I believe there is a serious misunderstanding or disconnect happening here. The school I own is a commercial school and we charge what some would consider a large fee (I OTOH feel I under charge for the value we give), use contracts, ect. In my experience, most of the instructors/school owners that are financially successful are the ones that DO teach quality martial arts and really provide a serious challenge for their students. In our industry, the quality of our product is the quality of our students, especially the advanced ranks and the black belts. If we are not putting out a quality product and giving people a real value, there will be no real retention of students in the long term.

    I will be the first to admit and agree that there is a business niche for the belt factory/daycare centers of which you speak. However, the most common and popular business model for that type of operation (which the prime culprits) have advertised to sell to other schools, is not focused on retention. In fact, they tell the industry :"Don't worry about retention because EVERYONE quits". "Just get all the money you can upfront before they quit." They focus on sales based techniques and upgrades to get as much cash up front as possible and when you've burned through one high income community, move on to another.

    The majority of financially successful schools that I have seen in the TMA's (regardless of style) that have long lasting success are the ones that know how to effectively teach whatever age group they are working with and can really challange their students at their level (an appropriate challenge depending on age and experience). They are the schools that can take either the shy and lazy 6 year old, the 22 year old athlete or the 46 yr. old housewife and take them from their current starting point and over the years evolve them into the type of black belt that virtually any instructor would be proud to call their own. If you DON'T challange them, and especially with adults, don't give them a great workout, they will find something that will. You just have to be good enough at your profession to be able to adjust the training to the age and level appropriately and not use a cookie-cutter approach.

    There are also some schools that are a bit of a cross between the belt factories and the more quality instruction schools that do water the training down somewhat and focus on life skills and they do have their own niche, but even they usually have comparable standards (often superior) to the majority of non-profit clubs. And usually light years above the AT...er...ah... belt factories. My belief is that you can and should teach the life skills as well as these schools and even better because they are experiencing it through the reality of their training and not only hearing it preached at them. When I was a kid coming up in TKD, the reality and the life lessons were learned almost exclusively from the training, but for my own students, it's a step up to actually point it out to them and help connect the dots for them.
     
  12. Kwan Jang

    Kwan Jang Valued Member

    Bruce. as I"ve stated in an earlier post, when I was growing up in TKD, sweeps, takedowns, throws, jointlocks, and even limited ground fighting were the norm in our sparring. Contact between peers was usually hard, often harder than I normally do now in MMA training. For those of us who did competition, we would modify our training just before a fight. If we had a TKD tournament around the corner, we'd slip on the hogus and fight under those rules. If we were going to an open sport karate tournament, we'd focus in on point sparring to prep. If one of us had a full-contact/kickboxing match coming up, we'd spar under those rules. Otherwise, we basically did what we called free sparring. It was more of a less refined and more stand up version of today's MMA, but resembled the "sprawl and brawl" style of MMA today.

    To addrees your original points:
    A) Is TKD fundamentally flawed. I can see room for debate here, but I really don't think that the original, complete combat system is flawed as much as it took a wrong turn it it's evolution. There are a lot of BJJ guys that will joke that BJJ is an acronym for "Borg Jiu-Jitsu" and that "we will assimilate you." Meaning that many instructors and practioners will not hesitate to borrow strategies and techniques from wrestling, judo, sambo, JJJ, ect. to enhance their grappling skills and expend their system with this. Muay Thai practitioners and coaches took a similar approach when they were exposed to western boxing. For political and cultural reasons, TKD seemed to mostly go the opposite direction.

    B) I really don't think the flaw comes from sport per se. It's how restrictive the TKD sport rules are that is more of concern. The pressure testing and alive training that exists within sport as well as the extreme conditioning of an athlete preparing for a combat sport is always going to have at least some positive benefits. There are also movements within the heiarchy of the TKD community who see the wrong direction (IMO) that TKD has taken and are tryong to bring TKD back into focus as a combative art and self-defense system. The U.S TKD Committee which is affiliated with the WTF is an example of this. However, it will not come from above or from S.K., it will be a grassroots movement from the instructors and school owners in the trenches. Orgs. like the U.S. TKD Committee will just give them an umbrella and enough official sanction and clout to do what they need to.

    C) As I said, I feel the main flaw is the ENORMOUS emphasis on a sport version that is far too restrictive and actually develops far too many bad habits that would hamper it's players in a real fight. I think the TKD community needs to cross train and adapt as other systems have. The perfect role model would be the Machida family and "their Shotokan". While not completely abandoning or condemning the point sparring used in traditional Shotokan events, they have expanded and made it (IMO) a far more effective sport style of both competition and training. If the TKD community took a similar approach, I think that it would be far better off.

    D) As far as Olympic TKD being a major motivator for the vast majority of people, I don't believe that it is. Adult students come into a TKD school (or any MA school) for two main reasons: self-defense and fitness. Parents bring kids in for life skills, fitness and self defense...in that order. Dreams of "olympic glory" is something that may become superimposed within the enviroment of the school, but it's not what they came there for. If you give adults real self defense skills that they see as effective, keep them fit and they can see both a challenge and progress, they'll keep coming. If kids are seeing and feeling progress and you can find ways of making even the hardest workouts fun, they'll want to be there. And if their parents can see their kids progress and see it have carry over benefits throughout the rest of their lives including home and school, they'll be willing to keep paying. At least, most of the time.
     
  13. TKDstudent

    TKDstudent Valued Member

    Very nice post overall & I agree very strongly about change coming from the grass roots up, within individual training regiments of students & schools led by instructors with that goal.

    My experience with TKD is similiar to yours, except we try to still do the same & still call it TKD, as original TKD has always been a mix of MAs to use.
     
  14. Toki_Nakayama

    Toki_Nakayama Valued Member

    TKD is generally considered weak and ineffective due to its commercialization. fake schools and bad mcdojangs contributed to giving TKD a bad name

    some TKD stylists have suffered embarassing defeats in the ring and this overshadows the Pros of TKD.


    a study into the History of TKD shows that its not a weak and ineffective style. my POV and experience with TKD is mostly from the military side.

    i hear people talking that anti TKD crap, and it gets amusing but mostly annoying.


    my style of the art Warrior TKD which is practiced by US and Korean forces, has the sport competition side of which there is WTF sparring

    and Smokers competition where face punches are allowed as well as sweeps and take downs.

    the SD side of the art covers all ranges of combat including hand to hand in full body armor. its been tested and proven in recent global conflict

    I.E Iraq and Afghanistan alongside its cousin art Modern Army Combatives.


    but these different aspects of TKD get overshadowed by the politricks, fakes, and rampant mcdojangism.


    i know theres weak schools out there, but to make a sweeping generalization is nonsense. Kyokushinkai Karate is very popular in Korea

    ive seen Kyokushin guys get jacked up by TKD guys as well as people from other styles that are non-Korean.


    some of the most scariest artists ive trained with in the military are TKD guys and girls. and ive trained with various military from different countries

    like those ROK special duty who guard the DMZ....at a minimum they must be a kukkiwon Black belt. those dudes are huge.

    or the females from 707 SF unit that do tkd in addition to tukong musul.


    i know that theres limitations with TKD an i dont think its a supreme art, i get into arguments and debates with Korean masters all the time about the history and technique concepts

    but i know enough, experienced enough, and seen enough to know that TKD isnt something to be painted with a broad brush as being weak and ineffective
     
  15. Peter Lewis

    Peter Lewis Matira Matibay

    Toki

    I like your post a lot :cool:

    As an outsider, I can understand the perception of being weak and ineffective. This is very much due to commercialism, mass production and poor representation. Problem is that the majority of clubs / schools / organisations are not effective at presenting the obvious 'combat effectiveness' of the original art. There are literally 1000's of McDojangs and these are what most people see.

    Schools that focus on a military level of brutality are truly a minimum. I agree that we should not generalize here, but it is difficult when most people never get to see the real art. I guess the difficulty for TKD is how to reverse this perception, if that is at all possible!

    With respect

    Peter
     
  16. TKDstudent

    TKDstudent Valued Member

    Good points, but also add into the mix that for a long time now, commerical schools have been giving BBs to some fairly weak people (from a tuff MA standpoint), so that also has to be considered as well from the perspective of turning it around.
    Now 1 way to "reverse this perception" is to label the different types of TKD or the focus of the TKD at each school, ie military TKD or original TKD, sport TKD, Olympic TKD, family TKD. However the schools will not do this, as it benefits them to just use the broad label of TKD, to attract more customers.
     
  17. TKDstudent

    TKDstudent Valued Member

    Original TKD which was the military TKD has not been taught in the ROK Military since the mid 1970s, 1975 I think. It was replaced due to the political payback against Gen Choi as a result of his outspoken criticism of the miltary dictator & his brutal policies against the Korean peopl & his refusal to turn the govt over to democratic civlilian leadership. However this replacement TKD was eventually replaced again by a MA hybrid, not another TKD, as TKD was no longer considered a MA, but a sport. I am drawing a blank on that hybriad combat training now deployed in the ROK Military. maybe you or someone else can provide it

    On another note, Korean males that are drafted into the SK Military, as service is mandatory, can skip a certain amount of physical training in the basic training segment of their service if they have a TKD BB from the KKW. So I have read that TKD BBs go to the KKW with an application in their buddies name or someone who has paid them & they stand in & take the 5 minute mass test on the KKW floor. They then earn a KKW BB cert in the other person's name that now gets exempted from that part of PT.
    What is tukong musul? Is that the combat system used in the ROK Military training?
     
  18. RagingDelirium

    RagingDelirium Valued Member

    Just a thought

    could it be as simple as, TKD is victim of it's own success, due to:-

    expanding on my point B. back on page 19 "... TKD is a known quantity much like kickboxing and therefore has lost any kind of TMA Mysticism, hence other TMA are also perceived to have more content Deadly skills etc."

    so going on the premise that TKD is the most popular TMA in the world
    if out of say every 50 new students only 1 makes it to BB, then out of 10 BBs only 1 makes it to BB 2nd degree, and so forth
    (2nd & 3rd dgree BB seems to be about the level that TKD students just suddenly seem to go up a gear and start to get scary)

    thats a lot of people that didnt make BB
    which then equals alot of resentment, so the rationalism starts that they left because TKD is'nt this that or the other

    But unlike other TMA's there is such a mass of people whining, that it is social acceptable to insult TKD, and explain to anyone that will listen that it's TKD fault that they failed to stick with it and master the skills and techniques

    thought?
     
  19. Peter Lewis

    Peter Lewis Matira Matibay

    Thanks TKDstudent

    Think I've mentioned before about 'mass production' and the awarding of grades, including BB, before people are truly ready is just one negative outcome.

    Your second point about names is a good one and really highlights the commercial focus of TKD...Take Your Dough.
     
  20. RagingDelirium

    RagingDelirium Valued Member

    just a thought why post a few polls as to what people would really like changed or added or subtracted
    to improve TKD, both as TMA, sport MA and reputation?
    and request for it to be stickied
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page