Quitting Tang Soo Do: Good Idea?

[shogeri]

My first reply was to this:

I think I'm quitting TSD for Muay Thai. The Muay Thai school seems particularly authentic. I'm judging this over combat efficiency. What's your opinion?

Experts and the Master's of old tradition, have said over and over that the Martial Arts are not based upon beginning conflict, rather finishing it.

An aggresive person seizes the moment, but is just as willing to create an opportunity for attack as they would wait for one.

Now after a situation begins, you can feint, fake, or taunt your opponent, and then bring them into a strike zone or simply closer in range in order to expand your options.

The above is not agression, rather it is strategy.

An aggressive spirit is something that is found within you.

The level of confidence in your own fighting skill will aid in the determination of how aggressive you will be.

On the other hand, an assertive person is willing to wait for the proper moment, and tends to not take the initiative even when they are presented with one.

You take the philosophy of martial art, and the techniques from TSD, and with some work, I am sure you could be just as good a fighter as the next guy.

The same goes for Wing Chun.

But it takes work, and switching styles is not necessarily the answer.

TSD and WCKF are traditional syles designed for a person taking time out the time to master a given way.

What you seem to want is the military method of learning. Whereas it's comes in high doses, and is very specific and to the point.

I would say take a year of boxing, and then a year of jujutsu, whereas you have the basics under your belt. Then just work on those over and over. Take them at the same time if you want. Or take MT, or any other progressive fighting art (method), such as JKD.

If you have time to invest, choose Baquazhang or Taijiquan (the Martial kind, such as found at https://www.flowingcombat.com).

The point I am making is to take something and stick with it. The style should confom to the person, not the person to the style.

Those are my opinions. Other folks on here have good ones too. Take a little from each of us, and use what you can to do what works for you.

Good luck!

[aefibird]

You need to decide what you want from your martial arts training. If it pure fighting/combat then MT is the way to go. If not, then stick with TSD.

However, as has already been correctly stated, you get out of your training what you put in. If you feel your TDS is slow then try training harder and see if you can move it up a level. Chat with your instructor and see how you can improve.

If you're not 100% dedicated to constantly improving (not that i'm saying that this is the case - please don't think I'm having a go at you!) then your training and learning will be "slow".

Also, you mentioned that you've learned much more in a few months WC than you have in TSD. However, think about your initial days in TSD - your knowledge levels would have shot up and you would have been learning loads.

It's the same in WC - you learn a lot of new stuff right at the begining and the amount of "new" stuff that you actually 'learn' decreases over time.

i.e. once you've been shown Siu Nim Tao a few times and you can do the movements then you don't need to 'learn' it - you just need to perfect it.

There will come a time in WC when the things you are 'learning' are outweighed by the things you already 'know' but just have to work on and keep improving on.

However, take a few lessons in MT and see what you think. Make sure that you really think about what you want to do before making a firm decision either way.

Finally, make sure that if you leave, you leave on good terms with your TSD instructor - in case you ever want to go back!!

Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

[EternalRage]

MT is more straightforward. No forms (except for that dance thing they got), heavy conditioning, fully resistive training (ie padwork, bagwork, etc instead of fighting air with techniques you would never use), and alot of sparring.

Basically you get to test what you learn, then train the heck out of it, then test it some more, etc etc while all the time hardening your body into a painless rock. There are some TSD schools that do this, albeit along with forms and one steps and whatever, but it's generally not the common standard.

MT is solid and strong for competition or street or whatever because you are constantly training and testing yourself. Alot of TSD doesn't encourage this as a system, although there are practitioners who definitely do it.

Difference is how and what they train, MT is overall better these days. Yes you have TSD schools out there that do train hard, that do produce equivalent fighters, but they are the minority whereas in MT they are the majority. And yes, there are even practitioners in cruddy TSD schools who push themselves hard regardless of the current state of TSD to become good fighters, but at least in MT, the majority pushes you to that standard whereas in most TSD its "based on the individual."