DWx

I've always been in favour of breaking itself as a method of conditioning. Start off with easy stuff; thinner wood and "kiddie" rebreakable boards and then build up over time to harder stuff.

Welcome

What are you competing in? Forms? Sparring? What type of sparring is it as well? As JusticeZero said, being respectful and presentable will help a lot as it'll put you in the judges good books from the start. If you're competing forms, I'd advise you run through them at least once before you go on. Helps settle the nerves and gets you focused. For sparring, make sure you know how the system works and watch everyone who goes on before you to get a feel for how they fight. Good Luck

Not sure about specifically for TSD but most of the TKD mags will feature TSD. Try TKDTimes.

Welcome!

Nice post sensei8. No doubt that Bruce Lee was an incredibly talented martial artist. However, (I know a lot of people won't like this), I don't think he should be put up onto such a pedestal as the greatest maist ever. Sure he was definitely up there among the greatest but to be honest there are probably plenty of great maists around who we've never even heard of. One of the reasons Bruce Lee was so well known is because of his film career, what would he have been without it? The other thing is that Bruce Lee had all these oppotunities. As I understand it he didn't exactly grow up poor and he had plenty off time and money to devote to MA, a lot of people don't have that. I mean there could be 100s of people who could become equally as good if they could give over 100% of their time to training and if they'd been doing it this way since there were kids. No offense but this is really easy. My instructor frequently uses it as an example that reaction is slower than action because it is incredibly difficult to close or move your hand faster enough once the other person is in motion.All of the skills you listed are really difficult to do but still I don't think they are exclusive to Bruce Lee. Check out 1.08 in this video for a 6" board break, or or anything else you can probably find an example of it on YouTube or somewhere similar. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to discredit the guy and I do get the point you're making and I agree that knowledge is far more superior to rank, its just that I really don't like people using Bruce Lee as the ultimate martial artist.

Congrats Patrick! It is such a good site.

Would be interesting to see if they allow head punches if ITF/WTF merged. Punching is such an integral part of our sparring system that I can't see them taking it out but then again, would WTF accept it.

"It's a Ford made by Chevy!" How did it get that particular bit of odd labeling? Its not uncommon. Most TKD schools originally went around using the name Karate to describe what they were doing. Before they knew what to call their style and when they went out to places like America and Europe, "Korean Karate" was a lot easier to tell people than having to explain what Taekwon-Do, Tang Soo Do etc. was.

I have never done Taekkyon or Capoeira but I can't really see how Dong Yi Taekkyon could be considered a hybrid of Capoeira (I had to look up videos too). To me, if anything, it looks more similar to TKD than anything else.

If you mean either blocking simulataneously with both arms to different attacks, using two arms to block the same attack or using one arm to block and the other to support, the answer is yes because we do all of those in my style.

If you're familiar with ITF style sparring, maybe keep an eye out on these sites: http://www.itf-usa.org/events.html http://www.us-itf.com/Events.html http://www.ptc-itf.com/schedule.html Sometimes events are open to people outside of the orgs. ISKA might be another one to check out, they do kickboxing style too.

Depends what is meant by "learn". Learning the sequence of moves can take as little as one class but IMO learning the form itself should take forever. As you get better and gain more knowledge you can apply it to kata you have already "learnt". We have a form per belt level so typical time before introducing new ones for us is 3 - 6 months for colour belts.

Welcome Chris We used to have German Shephard dogs, I really want another but my parents wont until they retire (or win the lottery).

That's pretty cool Patrick. Wonder if that clubs still running after 50 years.

What sort of angles are we talking about bushido_man96? Are we stepping across just to the side with no change in angle, i.e. if we were facing north we'd stay facing north? Or are we stepping to the side and turning at the same time, so we'd be facing north-east-ish? We never side-step without turning as well so the Bruce Lee method of stepping across (like in the senario you described) would be fundamentally wrong for me. I get wanting to cover the groin but to me it makes much more sense to use an arm for that. For the way I fight there is a lot wrong with that method. Firstly I've just exposed my back. I can't really protect it like I do my front with a guard and in crossing over I've just shown my opponent my kidneys. The other big thing for me is that you are having to put weight on the front leg before you move. Presumably you'd want to move to the side either to avoid an attack or to initiate one of your own. In putting the weight onto the front leg you're going to move slightly forward, putting yourself closer to your opponent before you can move away, it'll only be slightly but its enough. You're also limited in what you can do if your opponent is/decides to rush you. You can't use the front leg to kick because your weight's on it, your back leg is at such an angle that you've got to come around to kick and you don't really have time for that (you could probably get away with a back kick though), you're back arm is probably at such an angle and distance that again you've got to come around for it. All you've got is the front arm and to me that's pretty useless, because of the crossed legs and angle I wouldn't rely on it for any stopping techniques. Personally I have two ways of side stepping. The first is actually more of a switch to to the side. If right leg forward and I want to go left, I throw a reverse punch with the left hand to cover and switch the right leg back (about 130° to where it started) using the hip to generate the power. Works the same with throwing a roundhouse off of the left at the same time as switching. Going to the right is slightly different in that, as a rule we don't side-step into our backs but pivot off the centre-line instead. Anyway the right hand would be punching and the left leg would move counter-clockwise about 90° to where it was, again using that hip movement to get some power in behind the punch. Other way of doing it is kinda hard to describe. Basically you just use the legs to shift across..

Congrats

Nice article on how in the Chang Hon forms the right leg is generally favoured as the kicking leg and how the right leg usually ends up doing the more difficult kicks: http://www.itfeurope.org/NL2009-02-05.html I've never really noticed it before, but perhaps thats because I'm right legged. My leg leg sucks for anything more difficult than roundhouse, side or front kick so aside from my lack of left leg practice, maybe the forms themselves are partly to blame because they don't make you train equally? Would be interesting to see if there is also a right hand bias too.

Welcome BOSSAHCRUSH

Thanks for the info guys. I am doing other stuff besides the presses but I'm limited to what's at the gym and what I can do in my room at college. I'm doing stuff like tuck jumps, tuck jump burpees and jumping to the ceiling as well as skipping (drives the person who lives below me nuts ). Will definitely have a go at what sperki said.

I don't get why he did that song first. Didn't do him justice out all.

Congrats

I had a look at shipping and on the checkout pages its £15.53 for International, about how much one book would cost. I think its that much no matter how many books you buy so it probably would be worth it if you did a bulk order.

I didn't really choose TKD myself, my dad did. Someone he worked with used to train at the club and dad found out about it and I started lessons. Didn't have a clue what TKD was so went along to my first lesson with no idea of what to expect. Loved it though and have stuck with it since. Tai Chi I only got to study for a couple of years. My mum wanted to go to these classes at a local community centre and asked if I wanted to go too. I wanted to broaden out a bit in MA, plus it was mother-daughter bonding time, so I went along. She still goes but I can't make the classes anymore.

Amongst other things I'm doing leg presses to increase my ability to jump. But I don't really know what sort of weights to lift or how many reps. Is it better to do fewer reps but a heaver weight or should I be doing lighter weights but more of? The max I can lift is about 1.5x my body weight but most I can do of that is 5 reps. Any help is much appreciated.