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

Well obviously it is! Thing is people don't always choose their schools like that. Most people want to do some form of martial arts and then look at a bunch of places until they find somewhere they like. I doubt that your students all hand it in mind to train TKD from the start and that this is why they are with you.

My point was that the only reason I would train at your place is if I wanted TKD specifically.

I would only train TKD if the school looked like it could teach me to fight well, because that's how I choose schools.

Cheers.

not really

 

Alright dang it all. Now I'm going to have to get really serious. Here is proof of the effectiveness of TKD on THE STREET.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExYDayLPfSk&feature=related"]YouTube - Hwoarang - Ultimate Combo[/ame]

See the hard pavement. The sketchy feel of the place totally hard core.

 

Haha :hat:

The funniest things about that clip are to me

1) That's how lots of Taekwondistas actually try to fight.
2) Hwoarang is the cheapest and most easily beatable character in the whole game.

 

Just for the record.. I`m not trying to teach TKD of yesteryear, just TKD with a bit more 'oomph' and effectiveness that the current 'status quo' and I think I achieve that - a merging of the standard aspect of TKD, with a SP/SD side (that works just fine).

Well obviously it wasnt for you to have to state what you did.. ditto btw, I`d only train at a BJJ school to learn BJJ and (ditto 2) if it looked effective! :hat:

Whilst I agree with this in the main - students can quite easily leave if it doesnt live up to their expectations of martial arts and provide what they feel they need - we have no contracts or anything, so people can leave as and when they wish - so far, not ahd any leave to join an MMA school, despite many of them loving the UFC and such like!

As was mine about BJJ

It can, and it does and uses TKD to do it, but also encorporates all the other areas of TKD, so we can teach the full system to those that want it.

Stuart

 

Does most of the Korean army during the Vietnam war count?
Or is that discounted because it wasnt a sport based match?

You know, I always find the 'sporting' anology funny - I bet on the other forums people often say the same about Karate, Jeet Kune Do etc. but then they wouldnt wanna meet people like Geoff Thompson (Karate), Jamie O'Keef, Marc McFann etc in a street fight - or try to argue that they can't fight despite the fact they have never fought in an MMA match - cos lets be honest, thats really how you are judging TKD here.

Despite the fact its become a popular 'sport' art too - TKD, like Karate was never formulated to be a sport; even its principle founder never wanted it to become 'sportified' - people often forget that (if they knew it in the fist place!).

I agree, the big orgs have really mucked it all up (as I said on my first post on this thread), and that is where the blame lies to what the OP asked. I`d be the first to stand up and say most TKD today is taught in a crap and ineffective way - but thats not TKD how it was meant to be - at least not to me or when it was formed for the Korean army.

Stuart

 

Hi Stuart

So, TKD can and does teach people to fight...but in what format. I try to distinguish by calling 'sparring' any normal club sessions, tournament training and actual tournaments. 'Fighting' I prefer for survival...a real confrontation. Still unsure about how well TKD can actually achieve that. For example, as you'll know by now, I teach the FMA. One aspect of the FMA is that we specialise in knife tactics. These can and do cause serious problems for TKD practitioners and I've yet to meet someone from TKD able to cope with this scenario of relentless knife attacks.

What are the other aspects that are encorporated which you mention Stuart?

With respect

Peter

 

LOL.. yes, I thought so (obviously KG disagreed, but there ya go, he's entitled to his opinion of course) :yeleyes:

My format

But distinguishing between the two, relaxing the rules (alot) and increasing the contact. As well, as utilizing more modern stuff like colour codes etc.

How about the TKD guy with a primed and targetted AK47? Seriously, I dont really know any unarmed combat system that can properly cope witha trained knife fighter unarmed - my advice is to always grab an equalizer (aka, your own weapon).

Well, we train a lot of self protection stuff such as line-up techniques, pre-emptive strikes, getting up from the ground if you go down, fighting from the floor, anti-weapons training (defending against knife, stick, pole and pistol) and these are stuff taught to me by military and LEO's not the standard MA defences that you see in the books from yesteryear that will more than likely get you killed. We do spirit training to force students to keep going when they think they or their bodies can't, pattern applications to make patterns more productive, hosinsul (for defences against chokes, grabs and unconventional strikes etc.), throws, sweeps, locks/breaks - all against opponents that resists and as well as traditional sparring (all in sparring), restricted sparring, knife 1 step, free sparring against knife, multiple attack senerios (sometimes role plays), some of the better pressure points and vital point strikes/applications, plus a few other bits and bobs.

Stuart

 

No its not, though some seem to like to think they are professors of arts they have never really studied in depth!

Still, guess the Tai Chi guys get it worse when it comes to fighting, never seen one of them in the MMA ring at all.. still, little do they know eh!

Stuart

 

You dare to mock Hworang? I feel a match coming on. Anyway you can get yourself pixelized? We may not be able to change you back. But luckily there are lots of hot pixelated babes for you to date if we can't change you back. One word of warning...around half of them are violent psychopaths, well actually more than half. But they look real nice. Its all about trade offs.

On another note...sorry if my post is not serious. But the truth is I'm tired of debating this particular thing online (and not just in this thread). This is something each practitioner must decide on their own. If you don't like it then don't practice it. If it gives you something you feel is valuable, then good, you don't need to justify your decision to everyone on the internet.

 

That's because by and large, the majority of people in TMA's would rather talk about doing it rather than actually doing it. Don't kid yourself on that they don't leave to do MMA because they get everything they need at TKD. If they wanted to do MMA they'd do MMA yes, fair enough. But by and large, most people DONT want to do ANY kind of serious contact sport. They'd much rather stick to their comfort zones.

Believing anything else is being willfully naive.

 

I train in Sambo with a guy who was a low level unarmed combat instructor in the Marines. And, while they worked on some knife disarms, he has said a lot of it was about using what was in the environment. IE grab a chair and hit them with it (or whatever else was at hand). But for Sambo he is totally into the sport part of it.

 

No they don't. Because I must have missed the part of the vietnam war in which the korean army was engaged in hand to hand "TEH D3ADLY" combat.

My point about TKD is not just that the way it's taught is, by and large, crap (which most of us agree on) but that a large degree of the techniques just aren't effective. This would be fine and you could argue that all you have to do is shift the emphasis from one side of the technique spectrum to the other and hey presto you've fixed TKD as a viable combat system.

Wrong. Just plain wrong. There are so many techniques in TKD that actually have a set proscribed layout for how that technique is supposed to be done which, when under scrutiny, just don't work.

Now, to clarify, when I say something doesnt work, Im not saying that if the kick lands, it wont have any power, which is what most people who don't fight at least full contact seem to take from that. What "doesnt work" means is that it can't be executed in the proscribed fashion in the majority of scenarios.

The way roundhouses are done, the sidewards stance etc. are all described in detail in the TKD handbooks. As described, they don't work.

Since the way these techniques have been described is an integral part of what TKD was to start off with, if you deviate from this then you're doing something that isn't TKD. You're cross training. There's nothing wrong with cross training but at least learn to realise when that's what you're doing.

 

I have no problem at all with anything in this post. The only issue I have which you mentioned in passing was Kudo. So a TKD guy does well in a sport that has a fairly low competition level. I'd have 2 questions to ask there. Did he fight in a manner that would indicate TKD? And why don't TKD guys do well in sports that have a HIGH competition level. Kickboxing, Thai Boxing, K1, MMA etc. are all examples of sports that have good striking based ruleset included and all have a high competition level yet the TKD guys who do well are in a minority by a long shot and then some.

 

Or maybe they just liek the sport shows!

Thats basically what i said isnt it. point is, people stay because they want to, not cos they have to, so they are getting what they want out of it and don't feel the need to change schools/system for something thats missing. If I did have a student interested in what MMA gives (or any other art), I`d strongly encourgae them to pursue it.

What I`ve found with my adults is that through time, they tend to transend away from the 'sport' side of things, but embrace the 'contact' side more, as long as its beneficial to self defence/protection - maybe its a case of not wanting to risk damaging themselves for a sport! I knew a very good TKD BB who never enter TKD comps, even though he would have probibly wiped the floor with most in his divisions, and his reason was simply, why risk getting my face mashed up for a plastic and metal trophy - my son doesnt want that (he has a little un at the time he said it). Lets be honest, the average guy doing martial arts cannot devote enough time to train up for paying MMA bouts - so its a case of what one feels best to invest thier time in. Training for semi-pro MMA IS a full time affair in my book and to not take it on board surely means a loss is on the cards.

Sure. But a lot of what we do (albeit with more senior grades) is designed to take people out of that zone. We have had decent comp type sparrers come to our club who are totally lost when you allow sweeps and takedowns into sparring.

Stuart

 

I mean the actual physical body mechanics that you are told to use in order to execute said techniques.