EternalRage

Also, probably reiterating this, but style vs style comparisons are useless. Too many people these days crosstrain and have varying real life experiences and also competition experiences. Hence styles can end up encompassing a wide array of practitioners, from well rounded cross training competition seasoned fighters to the narrowminded newbie. Can't compare anymore, it is all on the individual. How hard you train, how conditioned you are, how much resistance you have in sparring, how much crosstraining you do to counter inherent weaknesses in your style and your own physical attributes.

The problem with the "deadly strikes in WC" argument is that yes, muay thai do not practice these things. Neither does WC, at least not against a fully resisting opponent where you can execute these techniques with proper power, accuracy, and contact. Most WC schools (I say this from first hand experience) do point of contact drills where they stop strikes like the bil jee before hitting their partner's eye. The way you train is the way you fight. They train this way, with incorrect distance, timing, and without practice of true target accuracty, that is the way they will execute them. In fact, the practice of this can potentially lead to such bad distance/accuracy habits that perhaps a MT fighter who HASN'T done drills like this may do them better in a real confrontation than a WC fighter who has practiced jabbing the air in front of their partner's eyes. On the flip side, I have heard of WC schools putting on goggles and jabbing eyes for real, which is far better than the alternative of striking air, but these are few and far in between.

Haven't really revisted this thread for a while, but some great discussion on this topic. I agree with the contention that it comes down to a matter of quality versus quantity. There are drawbacks to setting up a belt system to solely either, and since it is a versus issue, trying to resolve them against each other in some sort of compromise would be very difficult. The only option I see is to abolish the practice alltogether. It has been already stated that many schools use the belt system as a way to make money. As for its worth as an organizational tool for a large amount of students, tournaments, etc, the meaning behind belts has become so scattered that whatever potential benefit has been utterly destroyed. Ideally I'd say pulling a Jerry Maguire would be best, narrowing down the clientele list to a few, teaching a few, getting to know their skills, POTENTIAL, and rate of growth, and evaluating them from there. Would result in better instructors too, because then they'd be focusing on a better professional relationship with their students as well. Rantings of a guy at 3 AM inflicted by insomnia. (very Jerry Maguireish indeed

I’ve no prior knowledge of this style or anything about it. I haven’t done any research at all yet, so I don’t want to pick a side on this topic. I only want to say and ask a few things about...[edited for space] You can’t just say that the style is a cult because they taught bad technique. What is it about the style, or its leaders, that make it a cult? The US government categorizes different recognized organizations as cults. At some point in the last 30 years, it labeled Oom Yung Doe as a cult under its own criteria. Forgotten where the source was, if I find it, I will post it here. But is US government says so, I guess that's good enough for me...

A 4th Gup learning Bassai and Jin Do???? Go back and make sure your earlier forms are solid. Your instructor is not letting you go to an advanced class because he thinks you are that level. He's doing it probably because you are a somewhat decent hard worker and he wants you to have a taste of what's to come so that you keep up the hard work. It doesn't mean he wants you to operate on a cho dan level. So instead of trying to get seconary training on forms that you don't need to learn in the first place, just work on getting your technique better on what you are supposed to know for your rank.

Yeah, its something I've always wondered about many Korean styles/organizations. If you look at Japanese and Chinese systems, there are many offered tournaments that are mostly full contact fighting with a host of different ranges. Japan = kumite, best examples include Kyokushin. Chinese systems = lei tai fighting, san shou/shui jiao. Korean systems don't have anything like that. Everything from TSD, to TKD, to whatever generally tends to only have some form of point sparring, or some form of heavily restricted continuous contact. Now I'm not saying get rid of point sparring or Olympic sparring or whatever, but all these organizations and styles should at the very least offer some sort of full contact full range fighting competitions, because I think it would be very interesting to see a Korean version. There's not even a Korean word describing such a competition like kumite or lei tai. : /

WTF does continuous sparring but with no punches to head or takedowns. The contact is hard. ITF does point stop and go sparring but they punch to the head and don't wear too much gear (ie NO HOGUS) I think if the two merged, it would be great. Continuous sparring with punching to the head with takedowns and hard contact with minimal gear. THAT would be old school TKD. ie more Tang Soo Do like aka not a sport but hey Kukkiwon and Choi do it how they like it.

There's alot of politics involved with TSD and the Moo Duk Kwan branches in TKD. Some TSDers see the MDK TKDers as sell outs to the government, feel that sport shouldn't replace tradition, or maybe they see the MDK TKDers as traitors who left the founder Hwang Kee. Mostly I think the political hate comes from the fact that the Korean government battled it out with Hwang Kee in court for 4 years, trying to force him to join the TKD wave, also shutting down his TSD schools in the process temporarily. This dislike was probably handed down from instructor to student in some form or another - outright degrading statments or perhaps just subtle pokes, who knows. The only thing I don't like about TKD is that generally they promote too fast and are geared only towards sport competition. Its like there's no alternatives for TKD people who might want to focus on other purposes to their training. The other thing I don't like about TKD is that it breeds athletes, and part of being a successful athlete is having the winning attitude, which sometimes gets turned into inflated ego. Sport TKD practitioners who think they can fight and are the deadliest people on the planet yet come up with a convenient excuse when its time to throw down make me not like TKD. But those are starting to die down thank God...

stretching machines are a waste of money unless you're just impatient and have the money to throw away. Just discipline yourself to do it naturally, you don't need a torture machine. There are many different routines for stretching, a 5 second google search will get you good ones (will dig up links later). Machines only take you into the side splits. They don't work any other stretches. the ideal way to do it is to work everything gradually up to the splits. you need hamstring stretches, quad stretches, butterfly stretches, groin stretches, hip stretching, and work on all your splits, not just the side splits. get a machine if every thing you try blows up in your face, if you have the money, and if you don't mind only being able to do side splits and nothing else.

Probably can't give you tips without looking at it. For now just make sure that your basic form skills are sharp. Ie - breathe well, make sure your stances are defined, don't have limbs just laying about during your form if you have special moves in them, make sure your kicks are crisp and all at a consistent height for each different kick. If there are slower parts and faster parts, distinguish between both. Make sure you're always looking where you're supposed to look, etc etc you're a black belt so you probably should be aware of all the many factors.

The risk of recoil is why people learn all those moves where you fold the nunchaku around parts of your body - ideally after striking something and having it fly off randomly, you can just take that momentum and direct it around your body and not have to stop and restart. Done correctly, you can chain together many different attacks fluidly even though its flying off everywhere. Fumio Demura has a beginners and advanced Nunchaku book. The advanced has a form in it. There is no set nunchaku form that everyone practices, although I would assume that various styles/lineages of Kobudo probably have ones that are standardized to their own organizations. But you will find many many weapons forms. It's not like empty handed where you have forms like Bassai which everyone and their mothers know from here to Tokyo.

MT is more straightforward. No forms (except for that dance thing they got), heavy conditioning, fully resistive training (ie padwork, bagwork, etc instead of fighting air with techniques you would never use), and alot of sparring. Basically you get to test what you learn, then train the heck out of it, then test it some more, etc etc while all the time hardening your body into a painless rock. There are some TSD schools that do this, albeit along with forms and one steps and whatever, but it's generally not the common standard. MT is solid and strong for competition or street or whatever because you are constantly training and testing yourself. Alot of TSD doesn't encourage this as a system, although there are practitioners who definitely do it. Difference is how and what they train, MT is overall better these days. Yes you have TSD schools out there that do train hard, that do produce equivalent fighters, but they are the minority whereas in MT they are the majority. And yes, there are even practitioners in cruddy TSD schools who push themselves hard regardless of the current state of TSD to become good fighters, but at least in MT, the majority pushes you to that standard whereas in most TSD its "based on the individual."

Well that was me. The Songahm forms are protected as the intellectual property of the ATA. If anyone is caught teaching the Songahm forms without permission form the ATA (good luck with that) legal action will probably be taken. It's happened before, a group of former ATA instructors (ITC) were teaching the Songahm forms and were sued. The suit was dropped after they agreed to refrain from teaching them. Heck, when GM Pierce dropped out of the ATA, I was given explicit instructions on how to answer the phones. After what happened with the ITC gents, he wanted to give no reason for anyone to look at him, for any reason. Bah all this politics. I thought TKD was supposed to be an art everyone could appreciate. How do you "copyright" art... you could always argue that the way you do it makes it different, that your interpretation makes it uniquely yours. When you have copyrighting and trademarking of martial arts material, red flags should go up.

ATA is not fighting. ATA is sport. ATA has no groundwork. You take an ATA to the ground, he will know as much as the layman. That being said, if ATA schools are advertising their art as the "uber deadly system that can contend with anything on the planet, the best martial art" then we have a problem. BUt looking solely at the system of course they won't be able to defend a wrestler... they don't teach that. Good lord man. You're criticizing ATA and then recommending SCARS??? Talk about pot calling kettle black and jumping from frying pan into the fire... This is a generalization, if ATA members choose to, they can train to the bone. If they want to be fat lazy stumps who can't kick above their ankles then that's their choice too. Although the latter presents a problem. Point is they can train hard if they choose to and if their instructor is good. That's a legit question. At least have ATA hosted open tournaments... My TSD organization does the same thing, but mainly because they want people to pay money and register... not really a ego thing. If people want to be members come in and trounce everyone go for it.

Ok so Do Hap Sool is different than TKD. What's the difference between Do Hap Sool and Hap Sool Do? (someone previously asked, but I'm suspecting there is no difference, just different ways to say the name). Can you give us any references - like good DHS websites or possibly even books. Also do you know who the founder is and whether or not this art was derived from one of the original kwans that opened in post occupation Korea in 1945-1947? (most korean arts can be traced back to one of these, even the founders of the different korean arts.)