azn tiger

Muay thai is a great hand to hand style. i myself would like to try that to compliment my tkd but i am having trouble locating muay thai schools around here.

Ninjitsu has to be cool, after all the ninja turtles studied it and they were awsome. come on, all of us that grew up watching the original ninja turtles wanted to learn martial arts. Anyway, I say go for it. You should see if the school is a good school first though.

how old are you now?

I have done ata and itf, i like both, they both have the good and the bad. i do like the ata forms better though, their are two front kicks and two side kicks in the very first form. in itf the first two kicks you see are front kicks in the 3rd form. in itf you don't even see a round kick in a form until hwa rang, the 8th form. you see four round kicks in the second ata form and two front kicks. you see 2 jump front kicks in the third ata form and 6 kicks altogether also you get to see kicks on consecutive movements. in itf you don't see more than 2 kicks in any form until joong gun, the 6th form and you don't see more than four kicks until toi gye, the 7th form. in the ata forms there 10 kicks in the forth form and you get to see reverse side kicks already.

My Master said that when he was younger his Master always told him to never wear leg weights while kicking hard. He said that he didn't listen and he did it anyway. he said he became really fast, and it helped a lot, but he said when he got to around 40 he could really feel it in his knees, now his knees are all messed up. My advice is if you kick with them do it slow, don't be tempted into kicking fast or hard with them. Take care of your knees now so you wont regret it later in life.

i think that they do need an age limit. i thinkt that 16 would be good. i think people see it as a joke when you see black belts that are really young, easpecially under 10.

It depends on belt as well as the teacher. Most schools you need to know(or at least should) one step sparring for your current belt as well as your former belts, hyungs(forms) for your current belt as well as former belts, certain kicking, striking, and blocking techniques and certain self defense moves. depending on teacher you might need to know certain korean words or phrases. also depending on rank you might need to do free sparing and board breaking and advanced 1,2,3 step sparring. You might be asked to do things from your previous belt so you need to know everything you have been taught to up to the point you are at. There are a certain amount of points you need to pass each test, i believe it is 130 for white and it goes up from there, to 250 for black. each thing you are asked to test on is a certain amount of points. If you are a black belt they will(or should) time your forms. The first degree black belt form must be within 2min. 5sec. and 2min. and 25sec. to pass. every form has a time. that is not really too important until you get up higher in rank. Yes you must start at white, ocassionally the teacher might skip you up belts if you have prior martial arts experience, but you must learn all of the tkd things you need to know before moving up. the belt system may vary slightly from school to school but for the most part it is white, orange, yellow, camoflauge, green, purple, blue, brown, red, recommded black, black.

i have noticed from many sources that the majority of people that bash on the ATA do so because of most make you pay for everything, it has to be their uniform, their sparring equip, they make you sign contracts, they charge for belt testing, they charge for stripe testing, they charge for board breaking, basically that they charge for everything. I think that it is a shame when a martial arts school is interested more in making money than teaching. Of course it is a bussiness and I can see why you'd want to make money but sometimes you can get a little too ridiculous. On the other hand I go to an ATA school. There are no contracts It is $45 a month which I have found out to be pretty good, I got a free dobak, I had the instructor for self defense and he said if any of his self defense students joined his tkd class that he would give them a free uniform, it is usually $35. Belt testing is $25. Basically when you are a lower belt you always pass but once you get to higher belts, brown and up you can, and will fail if you don't know your stuff. There is no charge for stripe testing. There is no charge for breaking boards, you can use your own sparring equipment as long as it meets requirements, i.e. no big boxing gloves etc. if you want you can buy it through our master for $135 which I have found to be a good price. The first two times I was ready to test in which sparring was a requirement I did not have the money to buy the sparring equipment. So instead of sparing the other students, i got to spar my master. The problem with ATA is that they can charge whatever they like or basically do whatever they want since each school is indiviually owned. It is sad that too many people take advantage of this and give ata a bad name.