This has always puzzled me about TKD. Explanation?

[battousai16]

on top of all of that, because the instructor said so, and it's not especially worth fighting for

[TJS]

Dont get me started on this subject..

[battousai16]

...but i think the point of a forum IS to get people started on the subject... and something tells me you wouldn't have brought it up if you weren't interested...

[John G]

Shorinryu Sensei, Ninjanurse and MadCapoeirista summed up much of what I had to say.

 

The senior BB who stated "We don't attend open tournaments because we would DOMINATE them so much that they wouldn't invite us back again." is either an idiot or just yanking your chain.

 

Sparing is only a sport, it doesn’t represent real life combat, nor is it touted to be the be all and end all of martial sports. It is what it is, a game played like any other game with rules.

 

Somehow I think you already know this…

 

Respectfully,

[Shorinryu Sensei]

The senior BB who stated "We don't attend open tournaments because we would DOMINATE them so much that they wouldn't invite us back again." is either an idiot or just yanking your chain.

 

I'd say it was the 1st option because we discussed it at length one day and he truly felt that he was doing the ultimate in martial arts. I told him to do himself a favor and attend one of the open tournaments..then come back and tell me what he thought. He out and out refused to consider the idea because he said his sensei would be quite mad if he found out. That alone tells me quite a bit.

 

I appreciate your feedback people. I already knew the Olympic TKD was just a game..and IMHO, a poor one at that because people look at that and think all martial arts (such as karate) are the same. Personally, I think it hurt the publics opinion of the arts in general.

[CloudDragon]

I agree with you SS about people saying they would dominate open tournaments, but not going to them, and I would like to restate that it's fine with me if people want to learn Olympic TKD except for the instructors that don't tell their students that they are learning a sport, not a viable means of self defense.

[MadCapoeirista]

I think it's a huge and common misconception, even among other taekwondoin that all Olympic stylists do is spar and train to spar. Not true, most of the student body of a school will 1.) be dojang champions (never compete but maybe good at sparring w/peers in class), 2.) Focus on other things and maybe go to a tournament just to see what's up. The students that are usually at tournaments, especially at BB level and at State and National events are people that choose to be doing it at that extra level. They choose to do the extra more sparring oriented training in ADDITION to everything else. Often times...in my experience this training enhances their normal training/techniques.

 

You can develop and enhance attributes one would need for self defense with competition style training and sparring/competition. The training is not just for tournaments and tournament fighters and is often mixed in with normal class curriculm so everyone can benefit. I'm stating this from personal experience here...from the inside not just from the outside looking in. WTF competition is not an easy game...

 

BTW, SS, I think the general public has a distorted view of MA no matter what they see. You could tell them you train in jujutsu and they will ask you if that's a type of karate. Questions about what you do can depend on what type of movies are out at the time (I got a lot of can you jump and kick three times like Neo in the Matrix when it first came out.) No one knows what capoeira is and when I try to explain, they look at me like I'm a nut and then assume it's just "another karate". I think it is something that will never change and Olympic style TKD isn't the blame for it.

[monkeygirl]

Any good dojo, IMO, should make a clear difference between what you do in the dojo, and what you do in a tournament.

 

Dojo sparring should work power and be a little more realistic. You should also have a lot of self-defense training, because this too can be different from dojo sparring. The only time your sparring should be anything but that is in preparation for a tournament.

 

Dojo sparring and tournament sparring are two separate beasts. Both are good training tools, both are very difficult, and both can consume a lifetime in the pursuit of their perfection.

 

I think it's very very important to remember that TKD point sparring is not meant to be realistic street fighting. Because of this, it's going to have some funky rules sometimes. Like kata, it's part of the "art" in "martial art" and has a place and a purpose. Unfortunately, too few TKD dojos stress this fact, and that's where TKD (or any art that is artistic, and not exclusively martial) can start making all MA's look bad. If they try to use their unrealistic, high-speed low-power training tool to defend themself against a 300-pound bruiser with a baseball bat, they're probably going to get trashed. But if they use the discipline of mind that (IMO) they're supposed to have, and make the mental switch to go into self-defense mode, then they are using the style as it's supposed to be used.

 

If you feel that you shouldn't have any point-sparring, kata, or whatever, "encroaching" on your no-holds-barred self-defense skills, then you should probably find another art. I personally like a little art in my martial.

 

I'm a little confused, though: why do you feel that TKD can make all styles look bad? Before I joined a dojo, all I knew of martial arts was what I saw on TV and in movies, which was rarely ever pure TKD. In fact, I knew absolutely nothing about TKD...I didn't have biases or anything. Of course, I'm just one person and can't pretend to represent other people, but because of my experience, I'm having difficulty understanding this "Tae Kwon Do makes martial arts as a whole look bad" mentality.

[Shorinryu Sensei]

I'm a little confused, though: why do you feel that TKD can make all styles look bad?

 

I saw this most often after the last Olympics where they televised the TKD competition. I had many friends and co-workers that wtched it and said that it looked really stupid to have people standing toe to toe and trying to kick each other in the head. Why not use their hands? So I'd have to try to explain it to them as best I could..which I'll admit, wasn't that good because I didn't understand it either. Plus, many times I've had people ask me about karate classes, and then say that they saw it on the Olympics, and weren't impressed. I'd try to explain that what they say, and what I do...are totally different and not in the same universe.

 

I just feel that the Olympic TKD, because so many people watch it, gives the general public a bad misconception of what the arts are really about. The majority of martial arts in the world are NOT played like a game, but rather taken as serious practice for the purpose of self-defense, not sport. But do people see this on a nationally televised basis? No. The same goes for the movies...the majority of what you see is so much * and wouldn't work for real, and most of the public can recognize the fact that a man just isn't capable of jumping along the tree tops, fighting 30 guys at a time and winning, or doing 5 backflips and landing 20 yards away.

[TJS]

...but i think the point of a forum IS to get people started on the subject... and something tells me you wouldn't have brought it up if you weren't interested...

 

I made a Topic on it quite a while back but it got closed.