DWx

Welcome maressa

Welcome Sapper Woody

Welcome to the forum Asm Shir

Welcome Gary

Yeah I can see what you mean. Even if you take how they do middle blocks or guarding blocks it is noticeably different. Even the build of each team is different. The ITF guys physically look more built whereas the WTF guys are smaller framed which emphasizes the power vs finesse thing even more.

Congratulations on such a big achievement Heidi Couldn't have said it any better than this

I think it's great. ITF World's are later this year I'm Bulgaria so will see if the invitation is extended back the other way. I've seen the ITF demo team perform at a couple of these so would be good to see the WTF team there too. What I like is the difference shown between the 2 styles and the areas each choose to put emphasis on. For ITF it's power and strength whereas for WTF it's finesse and athleticism.

I actually found /r/karate to be a little hostile at times especially to anything that isn't pure Karate. I got downvoted to oblivion once for daring to suggest reading or researching different styles might yield better answers. Then I find /r/taekwondo to be a little simplistic..

Highlights of both: ITF: WTF:

Happy Birthday Ken

Skip to 1 hour 20 mins for a special demonstration by the ITF demonstration team and to 2 hours for the WTF team. Amazing milestone for both WTF and ITF Taekwondo to share the same stage at such a prominent event.

Bit late but congratulations

Depends very much on the tournament for me. Just been away for a week long competition that I was preparing 6 months in advance before. That involved plenty of extra technical sessions, lot more fitness (mainly interval work), peaking about a week and a half before the competition started. The week before I deloaded and did minimal work, mainly focusing on the technical side. If it's a smaller local tournament I'll do away with the fitness prep as I should already have a baseline level but continue to focus on the technical aspect, resting a day or 2 before. Day of, tul (kata) always come first so to warm up for that I tend to do a bit of kihon, stretch loads for about 30 min before and maybe run through my choice form. Our "kata" competitions run a little differently from the norm in that alongside our chosen form we will also be asked to perform a random one chosen from the syllabus up to our current grade. In the past I've had a ritual where I have to do every single one on my own outside before going on the mats but I've forced myself to drop that as was getting into right states questioning myself about technicalities and stressing out. Now just leave it to muscle memory! For sparring, I'll skip to get a sweat on. Lots of dynamic stretching and then pad work. If I do it properly it takes me around half an hour. I also compete in breaking... For that its headphones on and lots of dynamic stretching.

It can be a lot worse with ankles than with wrists. Wrists take the impact when we punch or strike but ankles have to hold and bear our weight all the time and this load is constantly moving and forcing our feet and ankles to adjust. So I would 100% agree that ankle strength should be something you focus on. Ankle supports help to an extent, and there was a period when I was wearing them for months at a time after rolling my ankles, but they are only addressing the symptoms and not the cause of poor ankle strength. Try some of these exercises to help: http://runnersworld.com/workouts/feet-ankle-workouts https://www.aofas.org/footcaremd/how-to/foot-injury/Pages/How-to-Ankle-Sprain-Strengthening-Exercises.aspx

Congratulations! Best of luck to him.

Kind of topical: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-32417699 It's that saying: "Abs are made in the kitchen and not in the gym" Same applies to the rest of your body.

This. It's about learning your own tells, either through your training partners pointing them out or by videoing yourself, then making a concerted effort to not do them during training. Eventually you can condition them away. I find my tells are worse when I reach the point of exhaustion. They start creeping in when all I'm concentrating on trying to keep going so in training I've a) upped my cardio to prolong this and b) train to this level semi-regularly and make myself concentrate on a clean performance. My training partner used to have a great one: before launching any punching combo, they'd double tap their gloves together. When that happened it was simply a case of timing a step off the centre and you'd evade it every time. Think it came from when they were wearing old gloves that used to slip so they'd tap them together to check they were secure.

"Technical Sales Manager" - I work for a chemical distribution company and sell things like additives, catalysts, pigments etc. to companies who make coatings. So products like your household emulsion paints, through to coatings for turbines and oil rigs, inks, glues, sealants... Never thought I'd wind up doing this..

Similar to wu wei (無爲)? Action without action. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei

Happy Birthday Noah

If I can throw my 2 cents in... if I understand Davis correctly, he is describing the mindset taken in my school and within the style of Taekwon-Do I practice. Our tul (kata) are to be used as a framework for learning movement principles and transitions. Principles of stepping, power generation, body movement etc. which are to be applied to every move outside of the kata regardless of which techniques you chain together. Our mindset is that there is no need to practice and perfect endless scenarios, better to practice how to flow and chain together movement so that you can adapt to whatever the situation is: This is probably why we struggle with the concept of bunkai or oyo bunkai as we just don't have this mindset with our training. Now I'll go back to my corner in the Korean forums

Funnily enough our current premises and the first full time location for my instructor (until recently we trained out of community centres and school halls) is effectively a dojo for rent. After many year's on and off looking for a venue, my dad found a fully kitted dojo for lease. He's an architect and was discussing with a business acquaintance who happen'd to have dojo he needed leasing. Story was the Kuk Sul Won guy who was in there hadn't paid rent for a while and was uncontactable and the landlord had ended up with this fully matted hall complete with changing rooms, kitchen, offices etc. and no tenant. Rather than him pay to have it converted back to offices or a retail property it was a perfect fit for us to move in. We did do a little work such as move a few internal walls to create a waiting room and redecorated but pretty much took it as it was. So this might be a special case but could be that the property has been set up as a dojo in the past and just simpler for the landlord to market it like this.

Congrats!

With Norris a bit of Google-fu says he started training when he was stationed in Korea in the 60's. That would put him in his 20s when he started: http://articles.latimes.com/1996-10-02/news/ls-49498_1_chuck-norris As I said in my earlier post a lot of the original TKD masters began learning whilst in military service. The 12 original masters were and still are able to perform some incredible feats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_masters_of_taekwondo UFC fighter Nate Quarry started at 24: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Quarry Depending how you see this one, Kimbo Slice didn't have any formal training until he hit his 30s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimbo_Slice Bas Rutten started TKD aged 21: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_Rutten So it's not the end of the world. Being young isn't a guarantee of success. Working damn hard is.

I think this comes down to what your training goals are and where you are in you training. In general to get a good level of fitness you really do need to supplement training with both cardio and strength training as 30 minutes every couple of days is not enough generally and eats into training time. I would say there are two groups of people who benefit from a greater allocation of fitness. Firstly those who are competing or are interested in the sport side of things. Naturally you've got to be fit to do this. The second group are beginners, especially if this is the first physical activity they have done before. Though general kata and sparring practice etc will raise the fitness level, it helps to have a base level of fitness. People who are used to being sedentary most likely do not know how to train or structure a workout so it can help to introduce them to basic calisthenics in class.