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

Thats a comment that hits the nail bang on the head.

 

Not to put too fine a point on this but I think there is enough blame to go all the way around. Having been involved with KMA for the majority of my MA career I can report that it is not enough to lay the responsibility at the feet of the marketing folks at the nearest school. Lets remember that marketing may be seeking to pull in the largest portion of the interested population---true enough. There is ALSO the matter of what the students DO with the material once they get it.

Training for some sort of "full-contact" experience is NOT the same as what one might do for point-fighting. This matter has come up time and again. What I wish to stress is that students may sign-up for a class with the expressed wish of learning, say, full-contact or self-defense material. Still, when its time to participate in the required conditioning, in getting struck/kicked/thrown, in the repetitive....mind numbing.... repetive drills those same students suddenly remember that they have matters elsewhere that require their attention. Later, their meager involvement is embellished and expanded to make it seem like more than it was....so as to impress the immediate gathering.

Its Human nature: people always want more than they are willing to pay for. FWIW.

Best Wises,

Bruce

 

Does not compute.

This wouldn't explain why my old thai boxing gym, which charges a lot less and requires a lot less gear etc. than most other martial arts I've came across, still manages to have hard training, hard sparring and hard circuits.

They don't charge monthly, they only charge for the training sessions you actually make. £4 a night for an adult. For new people who've only been there for a few weeks the first piece of gear anyone tells them to get is wraps which cost again about £6. and the coach doesn't care whether you buy them from him or somewhere else.

Not everyone who comes in wants to actually fight. In fact the majority don't. They still train hard. You can't blame it on the individual students because it's rather obvious that the art is by and large, marketed as a viable form of self defense and full contact fighting. Now, a martial art, for want of a better term, is a set system of training, fighting and competing. The people who decide what the martial is are the vast majority of it's practitioners - not by any conscious decision but by their actions. If the vast majority of people who call themselves TKD "playas" train, fight and compete in a certain way then that is the martial art and THAT is the way that the rest of the world will percieve that martial art. Irregardless of the fact that there are people out there like mitch who obviously train, fight and compete in a different way, they are still in a minority and hence, not a true representation of what the art IS. And I make sure you realise that I'm talking about what the art IS, not what it was or should be - that's too common a cop out.

Concluding that point, it's a sad fact that most TKD places train in a way which is not conducive to self defense or full contact fighting. That, in it's own, would be ok if it weren't for them actually claiming the opposite and hence claiming to prospective customers that they'll teach them how to fight. It's irresponsible and downright false. In fact, it's either completely and utterly willfully ignorant or in outright contradiction of the supposed "tenets of Tae Kwon Do". That, is the issue people, by and large, have with TKD. Not about rulesets and training methods per say, but that it does NOT do what it says on the tin.

 

Some people are overlooking the fact that WTF (Olympic style) TKD is full contact fighting.

As for self defence - I used the head kicks I learned in TKD sparring to defend myself on the street (and in pubs/clubs/brothels) more than any other technique.

In my experience it certainly does what it says on the tin.

 

Again though, from what I know of your training you don't exactly train the same way the majority does - and this is the issue.

 

I used the head kicks I learned in TKD sparring to defend myself on the street (and in pubs/clubs/brothels) more than any other technique.


If this were the norm then I would reverse my opinion of TKD. Until then I'll stick with the opinion that an art that elevates kicking above other areas of fighting is flawed for SD.

 

Spot on! There are far more cons than pros for doing high kicks in the street. It is misguided to think otherwise.

 

Fine. I don't actually have a problem with WTF TKD as a sport. You need to get it out of your head that I am attacking WTF sparring as a sport, Im not. In fact I'm not attacking anything. I'm just addressing the op's question as are others.

Incidentally, all of those first Four clubs on the list you gave me (which supported my assertion that TKD trains with a combination of pattern, one-step and restricted ruleset sparring) also mention self defence in their literature. Fact.

No I havent. I have merely stated that those clubs train in the exact same way I said TKD clubs generally train. You have contested my opinion on the modal training of TKD and yet failed to refute it effectively (And just for the record I'm talking about TKD clubs that train it as a martial art for fighting and self defence).

The debate is about why TKD is widely considered ineffective in a fight. If you mean that a large amount of clubs train TKD as a specific sport that has little carry over to a real fight, then I agree with you. If a club trains explicitly for sport with no mention of self defence then to state it isn't useful as a mode of self defence is pointless.

I agree, and that is not what I'm doing. We are discussing why TKD gets slated by and large for being weak and ineffective with regards to actual fighting. I'm offering the opinion that the way most TKD clubs train and spar is not as conducive to engendering fight ability as other arts. Does that mean that there are no people out there who can fight using TKD? hell no.

 

For the two guys spending half their days cataloging webpages to try to prove a point about TKD, there are two big problems with the methodology being implemented here.

(1) Just because a website mentions patterns-training and one-step doesn't mean it's a primary focus of training. A Muay Thai gym's webpage may mention the Ram Muay and have a picture of people performing it, but that doesn't mean it's 50% of class time at that gym. Likewise, Tufts TKD's webpage mentions one-step. I literally did one-step once, for twenty minutes, in four years, while at that club.

(2) It's not unusual for a fencing club that teaches modern competitive fencing to have some mention of either swordfighting in the days of old (classical fencing) or swashbuckling films (theatrical fencing) in their promotional literature, even though the modern competitive fencing club doesn't teach classical fencing or theatrical fencing. It's not that the school is being dishonest; it's just that the school is trying to give a simple promotional sound-byte to people who have no frickin' clue what fencing is besides "stuff with swords" and you need to give them a basic frame of reference before you get into the boring details. Once they're at a demo or in the club, you can help them understand the differences between those three types of fencing and which of them your school teaches. So long as the school doesn't continue to hammer into students that what they're teaching is classical or theatrical fencing, so long as it's a passing reference in promotional literature to give laypeople with zero experience a basic frame of reference, I don't have a problem with it.

Likewise, I think my TKD club may have made reference to self-defense once or twice in promotional literature, even though we all knew that what our training was primarily aimed at was a sport (a sport that most laypeople didn't have the foggiest understanding of). But you're condemning as dishonest any school that makes any reference to self-defense whatsoever on its web page, even if you went there and discovered that every really understands that the primary emphasis of their training is an Olympic sport.

Finally, there's another point I'd like to make about a slightly different issue. Killa Gorillas and Master Betty, why are you spending so much time trying to prove "what's wrong" with TKD? I could go around cataloging all the webpages of MMA gyms that are focused on spectacle (broken bones and ring girls) like my local MMA gym is, to prove that John McCain was "right" when he called MMA human cockfighting. Instead, I acknowledge that while there's a bunch of bad MMA gyms out there, there's a bunch of good MMA gyms out there too who focus on the technique and the tactics of the sport instead of the spectacle. I've never tried to prove that either group outnumbers the other, and frankly I don't care which group outnumbers which. When I get involved with discussions of MMA here, I talk about the good MMA instead of the bad MMA because the MMA folks here generally all train in the good MMA. Well, the TKD folks here all train in good TKD of one sort or another; why not extend the same courtesy? Do you think you're helping a single member of MAP in any way by criticizing a bunch of TKD schools that nobody here attends, where those schools' practitioners don't have a chance to speak in their defense if you've misinterpreted their webpage or their focus or method of training?

 

why not extend the same courtesy?

Erm...because the OP asked why TKD got so much stick.
Everything thereafter is an attempt to explain that.

 

So if I start a thread in the MMA section called "why do so many people think this is human cockfighting?," would you defend and applaud a MAP member for spending hours cataloguing webpages of MMA gyms that focused on spectacle instead of technique and posting it in the MMA forum?

 

That'd be fine.
If someone came onto the thread and said MMA was all about tattoos, bad t-shirts, ring girls and "the spectacle" and then could back that up with multiple websites that showed exactly that then I'd think that they probably had a point.
It would go towards showing a trend.

 

What we are doing is providing you with your requested evidence, in an attempt to illustrate that our assessment of the common TKD training approach is born from actual experience and objectively observable data not some blind and unfathamoble predjudice towards the art.

Many of those websites include pattern and one-step and self defence drills in their grading syllabi. They mention sparring and show pics of people sparring under under fairly typical TKD rules either WTF or ITF/ITF offshoot.

If they are not spending their time doing pattern, one-step, restrictive ruleset sparring, and self defence techniques as their main basis for technical ability then what do you propose they are doing?

Because that is the topic of discussion on this thread and because you're asking us to prove it too you/to provide evidence and further clarity to support our opinions.

You could... but it would have nothing to do with this debate, nobody has requested you do that and it wouldn't actually serve the purpose of proving John McCain right.

Even most of the tacky gyms train people to fight MMA and compete in it. The worst gyms in my area for both technical base and aesthetic all train for competition and train hard. The difference between a good gym and a bad gym is th equality of instruction not the style of its training environment or the attitude of its students. There are some pretty tacky, macho, douchbag MMA gyms that turn out world class fighters.

You're the one who asked for proof. I'm going out of my way to address your questions and criticisms of my opinion not to invalidate TKD.

If the discussion was about the percieved flaws of MMA though, it would be counterproductive to not talk about them would it not?

Yes. Debate is good, it's a place to hash out ideas and to learn from each other. You have no idea if the people here all train in good TKD and you can bet your ass that there will be some on this board that don't, because bad TKD is everywhere. That's just a fact. Don't believe me? ask someone you respect like TKD mitch for example. Or you could just listen to the other posters on this thread who have said the same thing.

 

You bloody asked me to provide proof. Additionally I took the entire listing for the westmidlands and did not cherry pick clubs that I thought looked bad to support my argument you massive, massive, douche :bang:

 

That's probably agaonst TOS but it IS funny.

 

*facepalm again*

I have been talking about Olympic-sport-oriented dojangs. I'm not excluding dojangs who do Olympic/WTF sparring (or as you keep calling it, "restrictive ruleset sparring"), they're the very core of what I'm talking about with my fencing analogy.

Thanks, that's really helping the discussion.

 

The point is when the training, and hence sparring, they do revolves around point sparring but mention self defense.

Of the 5 or 6 gyms that came up when i searched I've had personal experience with 2 of them. I've also had personal experience with another school that used to be affiliated with my old one before it joined one of the others I mentioned.

Think you need to get a doctor to have a look at that chip on your shoulder because the original OP asked why people give TKD a bad rap and we told him why. You demanded proof. We gave you proof. You then, reading between the lines, basically say that the only way to prove this would be to physically go and train in every single school for a long time before you can make any certain judgement about a particular school. Well thats just poppycock and horseradish (see, I'm adhering to the rules, mods!). Just take a stand back, have a look at the way your martial art is marketed by the vast majority of schools and compare that with the way the vast majority of schools train and you have your answer in as simple and as personal a way as can possibly be stated.

They claim they'll teach people to fight. The either don't or can't. Probably both. If you train differently like mitch and co then good for you - this obviously isn't directed at you. but the majority of TKD schools AREN'T good schools if - IF - they claim to teach self defense and then focus on heavily restricted point sparring. More often than not its only semi contact as well.

 

To prove my case in point, I've recently moved to Bielefeld in Germany. I tried to find a decent muay thai gym. Everything over here charges per month and ties you into yearly contracts etc. so you really have to make the most of your 1 or 2 free trial nights.

I tried out a couple of gyms and immediately settled on one which, while everyone's new and the coach is inexperienced, they have a good attitude, are closer to me, open to change and actually want me to coach.

I DID try out another gym nearby which is a VERy nice facility and produces decent boxers and kickboxers. They also, apparently, produce professional quality thai boxers. I only needed to be there for 5 minutes before i kne the "muay thai" class was almost entirely filled with, and ran by, kickboxers in thai shorts. Actually fewer things annoy me as much on a personal level as that. The didn't know how to link together proper combos, their footwork was bad, kicks were weak, knees and elbows both in very poor form, had little to NO knowledge of clinching and didn't understand the game of thai boxing on even a basic level.

Now I sparred with em on friday - they're good kickboxers. But it doesnt take a month of training somewhere to tell what its like and y'know, before i even went there i thought to myself that, judging by the website, it looked like a bunch of FC kickboxers trying to gain some sort of credibility for themselves by claiming to cross train in thai boxing. Loads do it. Y'know, i was right.

 

It's no less helpful than this...

You need to check yourself before you go spouting off BS like that. I don't know how anyone can take you seriously on here from observing the level of your 'debate'. you are a tool.

 

Easy fellas. You're both making valid points, let's keep it civil eh?