DWx

Good article, probably the most common things people do wrong. One thing though is that they don't mention with the epi pens not to look for a vein and to just stab it straight into the leg. The amount of people who think its best to look for a vein in order to get it straight into the system.. you'd probably end up killing them.

As said above, its hard to know what to suggest without seeing what you're currently doing. I would say though that speed, or more specifically acceleration is very important for power. It doesn't matter how much mass you have, if you don't have a decent amount of acceleration the impact at the end of your technique will be severly limited. Also like other have said, working your technique to finish through the target rather than on the target will also affect how much power you transfer.

Ok I also read it wrong too.. you shouldn't have pointed it out

That's just ridiculous.. you must be wired up on coffee or something. That helps a bit. I think mostly its because I wait for it to happen and when it does I'm too tense to press the stupid mouse button.

Congrats joesteph

Glad you liked it Joesteph. Seriously Patrick, how on earth did you get the 0.2s?!? Mine gets worse the more I sit here staring at the screen.

I didn't know it was out already.. might have to go out and get it. Will be a while before I read it though as still have the last Harry Potter to read .

Welcome!

I can be quite philosophical... sometimes!

Found this reaction time test. Its pretty cool as you can test yourself with different colours too. I seem to do better with the pink/red colours but I'm a bit slow, usually get around 0.4 seconds. Anyone get below 0.3? http://www.tkdtutor.com/06Concepts/Techniques/ReflexTest.htm

Welcome to the forums . First of all, nerves are a thing everyone has to deal with. Some people deal with them better than others and some people don't show them at all, but guarenteed everyone will have some degree of anxiety when it comes to standing in front of a crowd and putting yourself forward for critique. I'm guessing these nerves have something to do with getting your blackbelt. Maybe if you could work out why then you'd be able to address the issue. Has it got something to do with the level of skill demanded from a blackbelt? Or maybe its that everyone is watching you because you are in the blackbelt division? I think before you even try to find a solution to the nerves you have to see what has changed and why you now feel nervous about performing at a tournament.

Off to Tashkent, Uzbekistan! Your instructor must really enjoy the competition circuit, DWx. Good for him. Bronze medals too! . . . . . . . . . . Yep, his enthusiasm kinda rubs off on you. He doesn't really get to compete all that much though because 5th dans don't really compete on national level and most of the time he'd be coaching or umpiring.

No chest protectors and no headguards although if its a local tourny with no mats, sometimes headguards are compulsory. Don't fight to knockout but fight for points. However if knockout occurs and the technique that did it wasn't "excessive" then the person still standing will get the win. I checked it out from the drop-down menu, DWx, and centered on the following: Article 53. Attacking Tools 53.1 Hand parts – fore fist, back fist, side fist, knife hand and reverse knife hand. 53.2 Foot parts - ball of the foot, foot sword, back heel, instep and sole. Article 54. Target Area 54.1 Face and neck area at the front and sides (excluding the back). 54.2 Frontal area of trunk of the body from a line drawn from the armpit vertically down to the waist on each side (excluding the back). 54.3 When the arm, from the elbow to the fingers, is in contact with the body, then this is regarded as part of the body, by which the opponent can therefore score points. When I read this, I thought it was contact sparring, and I didn't like the reference to having the front of the neck being a permitted target. It is contact sparring although its meant to be semi-contact. Bit of a loose term though because at lower belts and pre-national competitions this can mean a tap whereas when its higher colour grade / blackbelts at national and international, the contact is stepped up a bit. If you compete on this level its generally accepted that you can hit and will be hit back. My sister, for example, got a bloody nose from a punch in the first round of her sparring at the European champs this year and another lad from the squad got a fat cheek. It says you stop at 2cm but nobody does. You train to hit and its usually ok if you do. Watch most videos and its unikely you'll see people stopping. The two punch rule is a more recent addition (and only for this particular ITF). Those rules are from 2005 and so are unlikely to show this, I was just using them as a general reference. Just to clarify, the two-punch rule is only implemented in one of the ITFs (there are three). ITF-NK, which is the group under the leadership of Prof. Chang Ung, is the one that uses it. I know ITF-C doesn't and as far as I am aware neither does ITF-V. I am a member of and usually compete under ITF-NK. I fought the six-footer in an ITF-C local tournament to which my dojang was invited. I used to be a member of ITF-C so was used to fighting this way for the most part of my training but now have been with ITF-NK for just over a year. My initial post (which is almost a year ago) was my first time fighting under these "new" rules and given the circumstances of which I found out about them I was far from happy to compete under them. But since training and working on it, and competing since then, I think I actually like these rules better. As far as the sport side of my training is concerned, I am happy to play by these rules even if they don't necessarily translate well to other areas of training.

I guess video reply might work. One of the GB team, Sarah Stevenson, appealed after she scored a head shot and the judges didn't score it. After studing the replays she got back in the tournament. Maybe having someone like a video referee to consult with if a point is contested.

Turns out he actually got bronze in sparring too!

I would say we a got a fair bit of coverage of TKD, boxing and judo. Only from the semis up really but then again that was what we got for most sports. They even showed TKD on the main chanel on a Saturday morning... http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/olympics/2008/08/taekwondo_needs_to_move_with_t.html Some good points in this post on the BBC Olympic blog which pretty much sums up everything that went wrong for the games. Also according to BBC there is likely to be an electronic scoring system for 2012.

Congrats!

Spar continuously for 2x 2minute rounds with the 4 corner refs totaling up what they see. If its a draw at the end, got to extra time, still a draw after that, sudden death where first point wins. Depending on the punch, sometimes they'll ignore it but if its quite clearly a violation, you get a warning. Then if it happens too many times its -1 point. Hooks aren't so bad if you do them with control and you look as though you're moving your body round, you can sort of get away with uppercuts but only if they're to the body. You can find the rules here (although they are from 2005 so they aren't up to date): http://www.internationaltaekwon-dofederation.com/ About ITF > Tournament Rules

I like punching but even then, if you compete in ITF, you can only do straight jabs anyway so there's not much of an opportunity for a punching based strategy. You can't uppercut, hook or whatever, its got to be straight forward jabbing. Its not so bad adapting the way you spar to this method though. You can get around the rule by breaking it up with a kick every two punchesand the kick doesn't have to score, just so long as you do something to break the combo up. In ITF sparring anyway, you're unlikely to score for the whole flurry. You'd probably only ever get one or two points for the lot so in some ways its better to keep it to two clean punches rather than waste your energy on five or six bad ones. But I agree that it needs to steer clear of becoming another Olympic style.. TKD isn't just about the legs. I would like more punches too. For a start two punches doesn't feel like the combo has ended and your opponent will always know that there can only be one or two punches to the string so they just have to wait it out until you're done before coming back with their own.

We have exactly the same tenets as you Truestar. You learn them for your first grading and even the kids are expected to know what they mean by the second grading. If you don't implement them in some way in your life its unlikely you'll ever get asked to grade for the higher colour belts or blackbelt.

Welcome! I think I've bought some stuff off of you guys before..

Time is certainly one of the most limiting factors with regards to MA training. You need time to cross-train, to train sport, to train SD, to work on flexibility etc. In the end everyone has to make choices about what they want to get out of their time and what they want to do. This seems to be the way of martial arts in general today. This does seem to be how it is. Another time thing? Could also be down to the younger generations being more interested in that side of it first and they want to compete whilst they are still fit and able. I know I myself weight my time slightly more to competition than I do to SD but that is because thats what I want to do right now. I love application work and the types of things you get to work with for self defense but given the choice, at the moment, I'd go with the competing. But thats how I want to use my time. Compared to some I don't need SD skills as much, I would never need it at my current job and the current level of SD I have will suffice at the moment.

Looking good. I'm gonna comment from a TKD point of view... To me, your guard looks a little more open than in your first videos. It just cries out for a roundhouse to the body. I would bring the rear arm forward and down just slightly to close off more of the mid section. Because of the side on stance you use, the main sort of attacks you will be looking to defend will be kicks and punches to the front and a roundhouse type kick to the right hand side. I'm guessing you wont be getting many kicks to the high section so you can afford to drop your right arm and cover up your torso a bit more. Then your left arm can still take care of your head and left side. Your right punches will be coming from a bit lower though so you'd have to work on a bit more speed to get them in there. You also seem to have a little bit of what I call "chicken winging" (don't ask ). When you kick, your left arm goes upwards and exposes your ribs on your left, (see 0:44, 1:14 and 1:17). Although it protects your head, its a great opportunity for you to be punched in the ribs as you go in. If you can, try to hold your guard where it is to stop exposing yourself and because it acts as a tell. Seems to happen slightly on some of the punches too. I'm with bushido_man96 on the front legs. Your punches are good but because its the punch on its own and you are out of distance, you can see them coming. Even if they don't score, closing the distance with a leg would be better as then you can fire out with the arms once you are in range. Combining a couple of punches too would be a little better as you tend to do one technique and then back off. What you did at 1:19 and 1:33 was real good so try to see if you can work the combos a little more . One thing I noticed about your opponent is that once he does those front kicks he puts his foot down and tries to push back (e.g. 0:30). That would be the tme to throw the roundhouse and take the fight in. Overall pretty impressive though especially seeing as it was your second tourny.

I think USCMAAI's story is exactly the reason why men shouldn't try to hit women. We can hit back harder!

But surely if you were still training whilst gradually adding that musclature you'd be retaining most, if not all, of your speed and flexibility? Its possible to have both, look at most of the heavyweight TKDers. Some of them are solid muscle and can still kick you in the head before you've had time to blink. Or better yet, look at any male gymnast. Those guys really do have loads of muscle and flexibility and are pretty fast. Sure you won't have time to train as much as they do but if you train in the right way you can still have both musclature, flexibility and speed. Its all about balancing the stretching with the weight training.