DWx

Awesome. How come Bulltahr made it over to Texas?

Congratulations MatsuShinshii!!

Sounds like a good opportunity! Maybe throw in some partner pad work if you have them or some basic partner drills? Loads of videos on Youtube you can look at. Try searching for the Les Mills stuff or Beach Body / Insanity with Shaun T

How about the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo and the 1988 Olympics in Seoul? This is when Judo and TKD were introduced. For TKD, the end of the Japanese occupation of Korea and Korean war were large factors. Both American and British military were stationed there and brought TKD back with them.

Welcome back G95

Having travelled around most of Europe for TKD I've trained in some unconventional places. Lots of multistorey carparks, hotel roofs, beaches then weirder places like in front of Roman ruins in Greece, medieval castle walls in the centre of Tallinn. I was meant to go to Pyongyang last September but had to cancel as had elbow operation. Know plenty of people who have gone though.

If you like the teachers how about raising your concerns in a positive way? They can't change things they don't know about so let them know what you want from your training. Maybe they can get you access to further courses and training opportunities.

It was originally used in the 60s and 70s to glue wounds together on the battlefield. Some people use it for gluing back ripped skin.

In about the first 5 mins, we see a KO from a jumping front kick. That's not the basic snap kick I'm on about. By 6:50 we've seen several basic front snap kicks. Not a single one of which had any effect. Two of which were effectively blocked with a downward sweeping action. The man doing the blocking seemed to intentionally avoid the toes. I can understand why. Strong toes into the wrist would hurt, but a slight variation on this block would have seen the kickers toes put out of action for a while. 8.23 a KO from a basic front snap kick. Without doubt, it can be effective sometimes. As a side note, I like how that Machida chap bows to his opponent after the match. It's nice to see some respect in combat sports. Too often that respect seems to be missing. Overall, the video hadn't convinced me. A very well trained fighter pulled it off, as anyone can. But that same very fighter showed that it is often futile, and quite high risk. I observed from that video that he threw at least as many roundhouse kicks as front kicks, and most of those round house kicks were taken very seriously even though on this occasion they were not decisive. Of the front kicks thrown, most were variants of the basic front snap kick, with most front kicks proving futile. The scissor kick version is devastating, and although fairly high risk to the kicker, carries enough momentum to be much higher risk to the opponent. The decisive front snap kick near the end was flawless. With risk effectively mitigated by the distraction with the hands. Circumstances allowed it to work effectively. That won't happen too many times. But your original question was "why would we use the front snap kick?". MMA fighters have used this kick with good results in a live high pressure scenario. No technique, not even punches have a 100% accuracy but Machida shows that it can be devastating if used correctly even against trained fighters. Throw some heavy duty shoes on and unleash this on an unsuspecting assailant and you've got a good chance of doing some damage.

In addition to all the normal strapping tape, plasters and bandages, I also carry: ice packs freeze spray heat spray tiger balm muscle rub arnica antiseptic cream non-latex gloves paracetamol ibuprofen aspirin antihistamines loperamide (you do not want these kind of issues at a tournament!) duct tape My sister manages a pharmacy so she keeps me well stocked up

Works for Machida. In fact his front kick KO's are some of my favourite in MMA: For me I use it in 2 ways similar to what's already been alluded to. The variation with the heel in a pushing action to check or stop my opponent. Or smashing with the ball of the foot.

I figure that this might be a difficult question and to be honest I'm not sure how many of you will answer but here goes: How many school owners here turn a profit? I'm a firm believer in that time = money and whilst I want to help people and pass on the love of the art, my knowledge is something I've spent years accumulating and I'm not going to pass on for free. IMHO too many instructors undersell themselves. So if you're comfortable sharing, what kind of profit do you make?

Sounds like you've been having some success with this strategy. Now maybe it's because the way we spar in TKD is different but backing off is a viable strategy I teach. You can draw your opponent onto your counter and force them to come to you. Pick your shots and move off. It's especially useful when your opponent is bigger and heavier than you.

I think you may have to get a larger top and then have it altered. I struggle too, especially as the pants seem to be cut to men too. I end up buying a size bigger and then having them taken up and in.

Congrats Shizentai! It might have been a tough grading but bet it makes it feel like you really deserved your new rank. My hardest grading was my 4th dan. It was just myself and two others testing. One of the guys is just over 6ft and a 100 kg of pure muscle, <15% body fat. We've always tested together and I always end up sparring him but this time as there weren't many of us I ended up partnering him for most of it. We spar without pads in gradings, just gum shields, so needless to say I got beat on pretty bad but held my own. It was a guest examiner sent by HQ and the worst part was the breaking. Rather than let us use wood he made us use the 3/4" plastic boards, the solid plastic ones you shouldn't hand hold, fresh out of the packet. These things are so stiff and they are really unforgiving. He made us do all sorts of spinning and flying kicks. All things considered I don't think I'm half bad at breaking and my training partner is an absolute beast when it comes to smashing things. The final break we had to do was an air break with ridgehand (on suspended board held loosely by the holder). Training partner goes up, did it with the right hand but not the left, comes over to me and says that was really hard, I've damaged my hand. Oh great, if he can't do it I'm hardly going to be able. First attempt I sent the board flying. Second attempt I crack it but the joint doesn't quite split. Then the examiner tells me I have to pick a hand technique and if it doesn't break I'm not passing I thought things were going really well up until that point but now I'm having an internal meltdown. Chose to do outer knifehand and by some miracle it broke first time so I passed. Got home and my ridgehand was all black and stayed bruised for like a month.

Welcome Keith

Happy birthday JR! Hope you have a great day.

With all due respect Prototype, you post a lot of this type of question in the Korean section too. As we've discussed before, it's almost impossible to determine ability and belt level from one short clip of you kicking. All we can do is provide feedback on what we see and suggestions for how to improve. One kick does not make a belt level. Honestly I think you would do better to focus your efforts less on comparing yourself to random videos on the internet and more on training yourself. TKD is not about comparing yourself to others all the time. What benefit does it bring to your training to say you are better or worse than a random video on the internet? For good ITF standard technique you could do much worse then follow GingerNinja's tutorials The forms require high kicks but at the same time you need the correct mechanics. If I had one student doing Hwarang with head height kicks but poor technique and another student good technique but at hip height, the second student would be better.

Congrats!

Everyone is spot on with the fun aspect. I'd also add that I've found kids to respond better to positive reinforcement rather than negative. Rather than telling them they're doing something wrong, praise them when they do things right. If they are in the wrong position, move them to the correct one and then tell them it's good. It builds them up rather than stressing them out when they are wrong.

Bit late to the party but anyway.. The fact that he told you that it should feel unnatural is bizarre to me. In TKD I've always been taught everything should feel natural. This is pretty much my thoughts. You know there used to be lions in Europe? According to some findings these were 25% bigger than those we find today in Africa, about the size of a small car. And yet humans hunted these animals or at the very least defended themselves against them. The ability to use tools and our intelligence is part of our combat ability. If we didn't have this we'd have died out a long time ago.

From the screenshots I think you need to rotate your hip over more. Turning the base further would give you that. Your standing leg finishes inbound of your hips, I would suggest giving yourself a bit more distance, rotating the standing foot more and extending your hips. As for the chamber, watching the video I think it's coming up when it could come round more. A basic test is to try kicking over the back of a chair. You should be able to go over without knocking the chair over.

For what its worth I went to the UFC Fight Night this weekend in Liverpool. Majority of people we saw had UFC or MA shirts on, even if they didn't train. No one in the bars and clubs after seemed to care.

Could try the Ringstar shoes? They're like sports shoes but extra padded: https://ringstargear.com/

Congratulations Patrick and KF