Why I Quit Tae Kwon Do

[White Warlock]

And just to make it clear, someone at this site corrected me on tkd's origins, and thus i pass my newfound knowledge along.

[Zorba]

exactly,

a lot of the basics are very similar, infact at the club im at now, the first poomsai is exactly the same as the first kata at my shotokan school.

the blocking is similar as are the stances. the main difference is that tkd concentrates on kicking while shotokan concentrates on hand techniques

[ElbowTKO]

why not just spar the other blackbelts you believe aren't as good as you are?

[Zorba]

i did, they hardly got any attacks in.

i had one of them just cower away from me

tho we never did any contact sparring, (well, not with them, with the other black belts that were more my level we did light contact that some times got a bit rough, especially without protection)

[jj19902003]

at my old tae kwon do eveyrone was like family it was awesome i wish we didnt have to move. and all you had to do to help teach a class was to be a higher belt rank than the class you are helping to teach. it was awesome.

[Rainbow_Warrior]

Martial arts went in part , to be a piece in the economical market of today..but I think TKD is a special case ( I AM NOT SAYING THAT ALL TKD IS MC DOJO)

Here , in my country we have a lot of TKD dojos ( I mean, A LOT ,at least halft thousand at least in my city -3 million people city) , most of them are ITF and WTF.

Those styles , here ( I just can speak about what I know) , are belt factories. I saw 10 years old chubby kids 2 dan black belts , coming with their mom´s to the dojo. And , I saw that MANY times. Even , my brother when he was 7 years old , had a semi green belt after training for 6 months ( each belt change was $100).And a friend of mine told me that some people was able to skip belts doing a certain test.

I am sure that the traditional TKD is a good and serius thing ,as every pure art is.In fact I have a TKD friend who is really good. But the money can ruin anything.And at least here, TKD is a money machine. I have not seen that problem with Karate , sipalki (no threads about it in this forum), kung fu, etc.

[wagnerk]

It is now 4 years later and I began Shotokan a year ago. I am enjoying it immensely.

Glad you enjoy Shotokan Karate.

Like it's already been said, your experience isn't just limited to TKD. I've been to various Associations/Styles/Arts where just looking at the 3rd kyu's and above basic's and I wonder how they ever got their rank (on the other hand I've been to associations where I've thought to myself, ah yes I'll integrate that into my class - there's always room for improvement). At the end of the day it's down to the individual instructor and not the art itself.

-Ken