Prototype

Tang Soo Do has a bit more chinese martial arts, including a couple of forms. Other than that it's Korean Shotokan.

Not harsh at all. I have worked up a certain ability with 4 years of dedicated training. To start over and learn new bodymechanics does not appeal to me. I have begun a journey and consistently stuck with it all the way to red belt. I am close to a first degree black belt. The techniques seem to fit me too. The options I was concidering was joining a Kyokushin club, but there is none in my city, only a Kyokushin budokai one. You wouldn't really have to learn a whole new set of body mechanics. The think about martial arts is that they tend to have been developed and refined by people who understand how the typical human body works. Gods forbid, if you ever have to be rushed to hospital for emergency treatment, rest assured that the experts there won't be frantically leafing through your notes to fund out what martial art you practiced so they can understand your anatomy. Of course there are subtle differences between styles.my first style was wado. I went from that to a form of kung fu. Fighting stance was a little bit different, and there were more open hand techniques, and the roundhouse kick was toes back instead of instep. But many core principles were common between the two. More recently (last few years) tang soo do became my chosen style. Almost everything is the same as wado, but with subtle changes, and a bit more kung fu style open hand stuff. I did aikido and judo for a while. Guess what, I see every style I've ever studied in every other style I've ever studied. The main difference I've found between the styles I've practiced is the emphasis. Tang soo do has pretty much all the elements of wado, but wado focuses a lot on 'boxing' (by that I mean more closer to Chinese boxing than western). Tang soo do emphasises kicking and joint manipulation and take downs. But I've yet to come across anything unique. One thing that's surprised me in a good way with having a few different styles, is that each 'new' style I try doesn't teach something new, but rather instead, shows me something I already thought I knew, but from a different perspective. I only did aikido for a short while, but that short time added loads to my tang soo do understanding. I recently started tai chi (the meditation kind, not the combat kind). My Tang soo do experience is helping me pick it up quickly, while the tai chi is making a big difference to my tang soo do. Sorry this is quite a long post. What I'm trying to highlight is that martial art is a rich tapestry to be viewed from many angles. Some of the most insightful martial artists I know have tried multiple styles. The fact that you've stuck with one for 4 years shows you have what it takes to commit to study. Maybe have a look about. Keep an open mind. You don't have to quit your current one (unless you want to). You might do one class somewhere else and decide not to go back. Or you might try it and love it, for a while, then get bored and try something else. All good. You might even switch completely. You won't lose anything. As long as you keep an open mind, you're pretty much guaranteed to broaden your skills and understanding. People seem to think every thread is inherently a problem solving request. It is not. I wanted to relay my experience of ITF TaeKwonDo and compare it to other peoples experience. That is whether my school is a statistical outlier (which I strongly suspect it is). You wrote yourself that Tang Soo Do emphasises kicks over punches, and Tang Soo Do is the precursor of ITF TaeKwonDo.

Not harsh at all. I have worked up a certain ability with 4 years of dedicated training. To start over and learn new bodymechanics does not appeal to me. I have begun a journey and consistently stuck with it all the way to red belt. I am close to a first degree black belt. The techniques seem to fit me too. The options I was concidering was joining a Kyokushin club, but there is none in my city, only a Kyokushin budokai one. You wouldn't really have to learn a whole new set of body mechanics. The think about martial arts is that they tend to have been developed and refined by people who understand how the typical human body works. Gods forbid, if you ever have to be rushed to hospital for emergency treatment, rest assured that the experts there won't be frantically leafing through your notes to fund out what martial art you practiced so they can understand your anatomy. Of course there are subtle differences between styles.my first style was wado. I went from that to a form of kung fu. Fighting stance was a little bit different, and there were more open hand techniques, and the roundhouse kick was toes back instead of instep. But many core principles were common between the two. More recently (last few years) tang soo do became my chosen style. Almost everything is the same as wado, but with subtle changes, and a bit more kung fu style open hand stuff. I did aikido and judo for a while. Guess what, I see every style I've ever studied in every other style I've ever studied. The main difference I've found between the styles I've practiced is the emphasis. Tang soo do has pretty much all the elements of wado, but wado focuses a lot on 'boxing' (by that I mean more closer to Chinese boxing than western). Tang soo do emphasises kicking and joint manipulation and take downs. But I've yet to come across anything unique. One thing that's surprised me in a good way with having a few different styles, is that each 'new' style I try doesn't teach something new, but rather instead, shows me something I already thought I knew, but from a different perspective. I only did aikido for a short while, but that short time added loads to my tang soo do understanding. I recently started tai chi (the meditation kind, not the combat kind). My Tang soo do experience is helping me pick it up quickly, while the tai chi is making a big difference to my tang soo do. Sorry this is quite a long post. What I'm trying to highlight is that martial art is a rich tapestry to be viewed from many angles. Some of the most insightful martial artists I know have tried multiple styles. The fact that you've stuck with one for 4 years shows you have what it takes to commit to study. Maybe have a look about. Keep an open mind. You don't have to quit your current one (unless you want to). You might do one class somewhere else and decide not to go back. Or you might try it and love it, for a while, then get bored and try something else. All good. You might even switch completely. You won't lose anything. As long as you keep an open mind, you're pretty much guaranteed to broaden your skills and understanding. People seem to think every thread is inherently a problem solving request. It is not. I wanted to relay my experience of ITF TaeKwonDo and compare it to other peoples experience. That is whether my school is a statistical outlier (which I strongly suspect it is). You wrote yourself that Tang Soo Do emphasises kicks over punches, and Tang Soo Do is the parent art of ITF TaeKwonDo.

Not harsh at all. I have worked up a certain ability with 4 years of dedicated training. To start over and learn new bodymechanics does not appeal to me. I have begun a journey and consistently stuck with it all the way to red belt. I am close to a first degree black belt. The techniques seem to fit me too. The options I was concidering was joining a Kyokushin club, but there is none in my city, only a Kyokushin budokai one.

DWx, in your expert opinion, which of the two side kicks do you think is most profound on a technical basis between mine and this one? https://postimg.cc/image/b5weykzrx/99569c54/ I argue that this side kick is more severely flawed by the backwards lean and overall bodymechanics of the leg, and is frankly subpar.

You could always break the golden rule, and ask if there could be more emphasis on kicking, or why it appears to be lacking. Beware though, if he is old school, your question may be frowned upon. If you do choose to have a word, I would recommend doing so tactfully and in private. It may even be the frustrating thing of 'everything in due course', where stuff gets withheld until a certain grade. We have that to some extent in ours but really not that much, and certainly not in basics. Basics in our case meaning all the techniques including all kicks, punches and blocks etc done in isolation or very basic combos. How long have you trained where you're at now? Do you have other options in your neighbourhood if you can't get what you're looking for from your current club? I have trained for 4 years. "Complained" as a beginner that I expected more kicks in training (it was heavily advertised with kicks). Got him to add a few aerial kicking training sessions. Since that time though, back to basics - hand techniques and stances ad infinitum. We may even go over to mitts practise with a few minutes left and still do hand techniques! An entire class devoted to hands, only to do more of it. I love the asisstant instructors lessons but they are few and far in between. There's more of modern flare to his classes, if you know what I mean. Actual kicking drills, kicking each other, kicking mitts, kicking in prearranged sparring. Tougher conditioning. Higher pace. You really catch a good sweat and get your legs working like in a proper TaeKwonDo class. No other available ITF school. I won't start over as a white belt in KKW Taekwondo.

Hand techniques are often neglected in Korean arts. I have the opposite complaint that we focus too much on kicking. I can understand your frustration. But, what if your instructor is the real deal? What if he or she is not interested in the impractical show moves and wants you to learn a combat art? In a real scrap, kicks should be kept fairly low to avoid loss of balance and to reduce the risk of the leg being caught. And they should be simple. The tornado kick for example, perfect it is your youth. Try doing it effectively when you're 40plus and carrying your fair share of old injuries. That's not to say kicks are bad. They are a great training tool and I guess they have real uses. But your hand techniques. Think about your blocks that you're getting bored with. How practical are they as blocks. Imagine a punch or kick is coming in at full speed. Do you have time to do a perfect block? Think about that for a moment. Then think about the movement of the block. What else could they be? While your hand is going up to your opposite shoulder for example, what is your elbow doing? What could it be doing if modified very slightly? Think about where the hand goes when blocking. Is it knocking a punch or kick off course or is it doing something else? Think about what the other arm is doing when blocking. Think about the motion in preparing to block. In a knife hand centre for example, hands come to the hip first. Is that just setting up for the block or is that an action in itself? We're often taught that a block is a block, but as you move up through the grades, if you haven't started to realise it for yourself yet, the instructor should start to reveal, that blocks are anything but blocks.in fact they are useless as blocks. Far too slow. But they are quite forceful actions. Think about how a high/rising block might work if your opponent has hold of you and us too close to punch or kick. Think about what your knife hand block might do to an elbow of somebody that has got hold of you. There's a lot going on in hand techniques. Your instructor no doubt wants you to develop the techniques and the muscles that support them, so that by the time you figure out what they really are, they will be formidable techniques. Not show techniques. Not for competition. But maybe to keep you in one piece in a real scrap. That said, he should be teaching kicks too though. If my instructor feels that way he picked the wrong art. Taekwondo is supposed to have a 60/40 kick/punch distribution, bare minimum. This is more like 10-20% kicking. Kicks are not taught as rigidly either. He might demonstrate a roundhouse kick half heartedly at low heights. No lectures on the proper body mechanics involved in roundhouse kicks. No lectures on how to apply kicks in sparring, that is no tactics lectures. No lectures in sparring tactics at all. Etc Who said taekwondo is supposed to be 60/40 kicking? And what are 'sparring tactics'? There are no tactics in real violence. Just action. Tactics are for sport. Taekwondo is often interpreted and presented as a sport. And that's fine. But at its roots it is very much a martial art. Grandmaster Howard states it here. At 0:52 And was 9th Dan grandmaster Howard trained by any of the founders of Taekwondo in Korea? I mean no disrespect to him, but the idea of attaching actual percentages to aspects of a style is laughable. If you get into a fight and you use Taekwondo, and you manage to land 6 kicks before your enemy closes you down into hands range, are you only allowed to punch 4 times before it stops being Taekwondo? There's a similar bizarre notion in tang soo do. Apparently it's something like 60% karate, 20% northern Chinese kung fu, and 20% southern Chinese. I'm not aware that anyone has ever picked the style apart to say which bits are which. It just sounds good when summarising the style. You're missing the point. It's more about why take TKD classes over Karate and vice versa. The hole point of doing Taekwondo for most people is to have an emphasis on kicks, while still training hands. In Karate, you have an emphasis on hands while still training kicks. With respect, I get the point, but I think you're missing my point. Taekwondo has some epic hand techniques in it as well as kicks. Unless the school promises a particular focus, then surely it is up to the chief instructor of the school to decide where to place the emphasis? It is the up to each student to decide if they like what's on offer. Tang soo do covers the broad range. In ours, our chief instructor loves kicking. Another instructor can't really kick any more due to a past injury, and a third is an epic grappler. We can guess what the focus will be depending on who is standing up front. But it's all one style. If I were at your club, I might love it. I'm not really a fan of kicking too much. A kicker might hate the very same club. It's an individual thing but doesn't necessarily point to a problem with the teacher. That's what buggs me. I am confident that if my instructor was younger, then he would have more advanced kicking lectures, instead of just front and side kicks. The assistant instructors lesson have a majority of the time spent on kicks. He also said it was much more training in kicking during the 80s and early 90s. Now we barely scratch the surface, just because the instructor stiffened. Why not just use his assistant instructor for more elaborate stuff? Now we're stuck on blocks and front kicks

They split away in 1983. Pre-sine wave, post-knee spring. But they still don't even do knee spring. If the instructors they had early on were from the early days of TKD before General Choi tinkered with the "Karate" he was actually teaching, then the probably just used more of the hip rotation than knee spring. That's just me spit balling, but that could be part of the influence.If their instructors were ITF:s then they most likely made the shift. Not 100% some obscure schools stuck with old school hip twist.

He was trained by Korean Rhee Ki Ha, who was General Chois favourite student.

Hand techniques are often neglected in Korean arts. I have the opposite complaint that we focus too much on kicking. I can understand your frustration. But, what if your instructor is the real deal? What if he or she is not interested in the impractical show moves and wants you to learn a combat art? In a real scrap, kicks should be kept fairly low to avoid loss of balance and to reduce the risk of the leg being caught. And they should be simple. The tornado kick for example, perfect it is your youth. Try doing it effectively when you're 40plus and carrying your fair share of old injuries. That's not to say kicks are bad. They are a great training tool and I guess they have real uses. But your hand techniques. Think about your blocks that you're getting bored with. How practical are they as blocks. Imagine a punch or kick is coming in at full speed. Do you have time to do a perfect block? Think about that for a moment. Then think about the movement of the block. What else could they be? While your hand is going up to your opposite shoulder for example, what is your elbow doing? What could it be doing if modified very slightly? Think about where the hand goes when blocking. Is it knocking a punch or kick off course or is it doing something else? Think about what the other arm is doing when blocking. Think about the motion in preparing to block. In a knife hand centre for example, hands come to the hip first. Is that just setting up for the block or is that an action in itself? We're often taught that a block is a block, but as you move up through the grades, if you haven't started to realise it for yourself yet, the instructor should start to reveal, that blocks are anything but blocks.in fact they are useless as blocks. Far too slow. But they are quite forceful actions. Think about how a high/rising block might work if your opponent has hold of you and us too close to punch or kick. Think about what your knife hand block might do to an elbow of somebody that has got hold of you. There's a lot going on in hand techniques. Your instructor no doubt wants you to develop the techniques and the muscles that support them, so that by the time you figure out what they really are, they will be formidable techniques. Not show techniques. Not for competition. But maybe to keep you in one piece in a real scrap. That said, he should be teaching kicks too though. If my instructor feels that way he picked the wrong art. Taekwondo is supposed to have a 60/40 kick/punch distribution, bare minimum. This is more like 10-20% kicking. Kicks are not taught as rigidly either. He might demonstrate a roundhouse kick half heartedly at low heights. No lectures on the proper body mechanics involved in roundhouse kicks. No lectures on how to apply kicks in sparring, that is no tactics lectures. No lectures in sparring tactics at all. Etc Who said taekwondo is supposed to be 60/40 kicking? And what are 'sparring tactics'? There are no tactics in real violence. Just action. Tactics are for sport. Taekwondo is often interpreted and presented as a sport. And that's fine. But at its roots it is very much a martial art. Grandmaster Howard states it here. At 0:52 And was 9th Dan grandmaster Howard trained by any of the founders of Taekwondo in Korea? I mean no disrespect to him, but the idea of attaching actual percentages to aspects of a style is laughable. If you get into a fight and you use Taekwondo, and you manage to land 6 kicks before your enemy closes you down into hands range, are you only allowed to punch 4 times before it stops being Taekwondo? There's a similar bizarre notion in tang soo do. Apparently it's something like 60% karate, 20% northern Chinese kung fu, and 20% southern Chinese. I'm not aware that anyone has ever picked the style apart to say which bits are which. It just sounds good when summarising the style. You're missing the point. It's more about why take TKD classes over Karate and vice versa. The hole point of doing Taekwondo for most people is to have an emphasis on kicks, while still training hands. In Karate, you have an emphasis on hands while still training kicks.

Hand techniques are often neglected in Korean arts. I have the opposite complaint that we focus too much on kicking. I can understand your frustration. But, what if your instructor is the real deal? What if he or she is not interested in the impractical show moves and wants you to learn a combat art? In a real scrap, kicks should be kept fairly low to avoid loss of balance and to reduce the risk of the leg being caught. And they should be simple. The tornado kick for example, perfect it is your youth. Try doing it effectively when you're 40plus and carrying your fair share of old injuries. That's not to say kicks are bad. They are a great training tool and I guess they have real uses. But your hand techniques. Think about your blocks that you're getting bored with. How practical are they as blocks. Imagine a punch or kick is coming in at full speed. Do you have time to do a perfect block? Think about that for a moment. Then think about the movement of the block. What else could they be? While your hand is going up to your opposite shoulder for example, what is your elbow doing? What could it be doing if modified very slightly? Think about where the hand goes when blocking. Is it knocking a punch or kick off course or is it doing something else? Think about what the other arm is doing when blocking. Think about the motion in preparing to block. In a knife hand centre for example, hands come to the hip first. Is that just setting up for the block or is that an action in itself? We're often taught that a block is a block, but as you move up through the grades, if you haven't started to realise it for yourself yet, the instructor should start to reveal, that blocks are anything but blocks.in fact they are useless as blocks. Far too slow. But they are quite forceful actions. Think about how a high/rising block might work if your opponent has hold of you and us too close to punch or kick. Think about what your knife hand block might do to an elbow of somebody that has got hold of you. There's a lot going on in hand techniques. Your instructor no doubt wants you to develop the techniques and the muscles that support them, so that by the time you figure out what they really are, they will be formidable techniques. Not show techniques. Not for competition. But maybe to keep you in one piece in a real scrap. That said, he should be teaching kicks too though. If my instructor feels that way he picked the wrong art. Taekwondo is supposed to have a 60/40 kick/punch distribution, bare minimum. This is more like 10-20% kicking. Kicks are not taught as rigidly either. He might demonstrate a roundhouse kick half heartedly at low heights. No lectures on the proper body mechanics involved in roundhouse kicks. No lectures on how to apply kicks in sparring, that is no tactics lectures. No lectures in sparring tactics at all. Etc Who said taekwondo is supposed to be 60/40 kicking? And what are 'sparring tactics'? There are no tactics in real violence. Just action. Tactics are for sport. Taekwondo is often interpreted and presented as a sport. And that's fine. But at its roots it is very much a martial art. Grandmaster Howard states it here. At 0:52

Thanks! The alignment looks better but is my chambering improved by ITF standards? This is my peak flexibility when actively training. When I get inactive it quickly deterioriates. Or it's the same! You tell me Here's a still of it below: https://postimg.cc/image/z0p5dbofx/

Thanks. Could you elaborate on how it's bordering on a back kick concidering that my shoulder and upper body is facing towards the target? One thing that did dawn on me is that the leg seems to have a curved trajectory? I think this might be me trying to kick next the camera lens for a better view of the technique, instead of straight forward (in which case the foot would cover most of the body in the photo). It might be deficiencies too, I just don't know. I rarely see myself kick. As for the extended arm, this is indeed how we have been taught in ITF Taekwondo. I am perfectly capable of side kicking without it, and I don't feel it's necessary. Maybe it's a camera position thing, but it looks to me like relative to the target, more of your back is visible than your front. Out of curiosity, did your instructor give a reason for extending the arm rather than maintaining guard? In tang soo do we have a couple of places in forms where we do that, but it represents grabbing an opponent's wrist while kicking his knee or lower ribs. In basic techniques, we always maintain the guard. I don't recall if we do side kicks with arms extended in basics. We kick so rarely outside of the forms, unless it's on mitts, so I don't even remember.

Thanks. Could you elaborate on how it's bordering on a back kick concidering that my shoulder and upper body is facing towards the target? One thing that did dawn on me is that the leg seems to have a curved trajectory? I think this might be me trying to kick next the camera lens for a better view of the technique, instead of straight forward (in which case the foot would cover most of the body in the photo). It might be deficiencies too, I just don't know. I rarely see myself kick. As for the extended arm, this is indeed how we have been taught in ITF Taekwondo. I am perfectly capable of side kicking without it, and I don't feel it's necessary.

Hope this works now.. https://postimg.cc/image/60lk65wal/f24dee73/ How do you rate it on a scale of 1-10? Any input is welcomed.

Hand techniques are often neglected in Korean arts. I have the opposite complaint that we focus too much on kicking. I can understand your frustration. But, what if your instructor is the real deal? What if he or she is not interested in the impractical show moves and wants you to learn a combat art? In a real scrap, kicks should be kept fairly low to avoid loss of balance and to reduce the risk of the leg being caught. And they should be simple. The tornado kick for example, perfect it is your youth. Try doing it effectively when you're 40plus and carrying your fair share of old injuries. That's not to say kicks are bad. They are a great training tool and I guess they have real uses. But your hand techniques. Think about your blocks that you're getting bored with. How practical are they as blocks. Imagine a punch or kick is coming in at full speed. Do you have time to do a perfect block? Think about that for a moment. Then think about the movement of the block. What else could they be? While your hand is going up to your opposite shoulder for example, what is your elbow doing? What could it be doing if modified very slightly? Think about where the hand goes when blocking. Is it knocking a punch or kick off course or is it doing something else? Think about what the other arm is doing when blocking. Think about the motion in preparing to block. In a knife hand centre for example, hands come to the hip first. Is that just setting up for the block or is that an action in itself? We're often taught that a block is a block, but as you move up through the grades, if you haven't started to realise it for yourself yet, the instructor should start to reveal, that blocks are anything but blocks.in fact they are useless as blocks. Far too slow. But they are quite forceful actions. Think about how a high/rising block might work if your opponent has hold of you and us too close to punch or kick. Think about what your knife hand block might do to an elbow of somebody that has got hold of you. There's a lot going on in hand techniques. Your instructor no doubt wants you to develop the techniques and the muscles that support them, so that by the time you figure out what they really are, they will be formidable techniques. Not show techniques. Not for competition. But maybe to keep you in one piece in a real scrap. That said, he should be teaching kicks too though. If my instructor feels that way he picked the wrong art. Taekwondo is supposed to have a 60/40 kick/punch distribution, bare minimum. This is more like 10-20% kicking. Kicks are not taught as rigidly either. He might demonstrate a roundhouse kick half heartedly at low heights. No lectures on the proper body mechanics involved in roundhouse kicks. No lectures on how to apply kicks in sparring, that is no tactics lectures. No lectures in sparring tactics at all. Etc

I just visited a Shotokan school. I understand that schools differ but TKD is supposed to have somewhat of an emphasis on kicking, even "traditional" TKD. Yet the Shotokan school does far more of kicking drills than we do. A Shotokan school!!

They split away in 1983. Pre-sine wave, post-knee spring. But they still don't even do knee spring.

The ITF is also allowed to compete in the Olympics. WTF is not a style.

Karate is primarily kata and kumite training anyway, so what would be the difference?

No it is not. You do not recieve any WTF or WT certificates in the gradings. It is the Kukkiwon. You do receive ITF certificates, however. So that's why ITF is both a style and organisation(s) and the WTF is NOT.

The World Taekwondo Federation is not a style of Taekwondo. It is solely a sporting organisation, just like the WKF. People call it WTF TKD because the original president of the WTF also resided over the KKW style. This is not however the case nowdays, the ITF is allowed to compete in the TKD Olympics along side the KKW. As for Shotokan, it is not my experience that this style of Karate places an equal emphasis on kumite. You don't even start free sparring until around brown belt in the JKA and off-shoots.maybe the WKF affiliated schools are differentm

I would characterize Kyokushin as Okinawan style Karate as it relates to the curriculum. Japanese Karate is much more kata and line training.

Since the Olympic entrence foe WTF/KKW Taekwondo made free sparring the nr 1 priority, one wonders naturally if WKF Karate will follow suit? I have always been critical of Japanese Karate styles emphasis on kata over kumite, when in fact the latter is more critical for self defence. Any free sparring is better for combat readiness than kata. You at least get a feel for distancing, sharpen your reflexes, etc. But Japanese Karate training tends to put more emphasis on kata, thus highlighting the art aspect of Karate, rather than the combat element.

So why don't the TAGB do sine wave? Didn't they form a federation post knee spring (SW precursor)?