tournament tomorrow

[Azmyth]

My school is hosting an open tournament tomorrow.

I'm a little worried though for 2 reasons.

1. I'm doing Yul-gok.. even though my school has its own system consisting of American Kenpo and Jiu Jitsu my roots are in TKD.. so will be doing a TKD form. I was watching videos to brush up... and noticed that noone does it like I was taught. Is my way wrong? or is it normal for there to be slight variances in the way its done? I usually do my forms very "strong" and "fluid". I am out of breath by the time I finish. I don't "bounce" like the sine wave guys do. ITF style I suppose, but I've seen the movements done slightly different in every video. Should I just stick to how I was taught?

2. If I kick with my left leg, I have a sharp pain up near the upper thigh/groin area.. I've tried stretching out some tonight hoping it won't be as bad tomorrow.. but its preventing me from kicking as high as I normally do. I take pride in my point fighting ability, and thats where I shine.. not being able to kick high is going to severely drop me, since almost all points I score are to the head. anything I can do?

[bushido_man96]

First of all, good luck at your tourney. I hope this isn't too late to help.

1. I do the ITF forms, but I don't do them with the sine wave, either. Mine probably resembles yours more than the ITF version. Just do it the way you are taught. At this point, trying to relearn the sine wave nuances is going to hinder you more than help you.

2. If kicking with one leg is causing you problems, then you may have to try to switch legs in sparring. If you feel comfortable fighting from both sides, then you will be ok. If not, it is going to take some figuring out. Otherwise, try to fake your kicks high, and then go to the body. You may have to try a different strategy to get around your injury.

[Azmyth]

Well, I went ahead and did it the way I was taught.

Alot of the divisions were sparce.. mine was one of the larger divisions as small of a tourney as it was.

It was me, another of my classmates who did one of our school's forms, a TKD guy who did Palgwe 4, and 2 Shituryu(sp) Karate guys not sure what forms they did.

I placed 4th in forms.. with my classmate coming in 4th, the other TKD guy in 3rd, and the other 2 in first and 2nd. In my eyes, one of the shituryu guys deserved first.. however the other was very sloppy even though I didn't know the form he was doing it was terribly sloppy. He stopped several times because he seemed to have forgotten parts of it, and his stances were weak. The other TKD guy had decent form but I believe the only reason he ranked higher was due to it being more difficult than mine. I was told by several people afterwards they thought I should have taken 2nd. Eh.. but judges decision.

Sparring...

After watching the video everyone agreed I won 1st hands down. However thats not how the judges saw it. same guys this time. I had to spar the other TKD guy first. I was nervous because he was GOOD.. he had really strong kicks and and was a monster with the backfist and he was FAST. He did one of the prettiest jump spin side kicks I've seen and landed it perfect on the guy he sparred before me. Weirdly enough me and him fight almost identical, and me being more experienced I beat him pretty easily.. but it was a dang good fight and everyone said it was one of the most "technical" fights of the entire tournament.. almost "movie like".

After he and the other 2 shituryu (they have sharp forms, but not so much sparring ability) guys had been eliminated.. it came down to me and my classmate for 1st and 2nd. I knew it was going to end this way. For some reason, me nor anyone else in our school has been able to beat this guy in class ever. Even black belts (he's blue). Its not because he's good.. its because he's "wild". He just throws crap and hope it lands. I got nailed in the mouth by an uppercut (which are not legal). They didn't count that, but they did all the other crap he threw. Basically.. all he does is stands there and waits for you to do something, or he will throw a low round kick that I blocked every single time. When he kicks he throws both his hands up with palms turned outward but he throws his body back so u cannot reach him when he does it even though he is wide open. It looks almost like how you would see a girl with no martial arts experience fight. As soon as you would throw anything, he would rush me.. and instead of using actual technique he would throw wild rabbit punches and haymakers. He got all of his points via beating me on the top of the head as he ran me out of the ring. The center judge even told him that he had to stop "clashing" as you can't tell what to score because its just wild moves thrown randomly. He's never point sparred before and is very cocky anyway.. he's training to fight MMA so he has that mentality. I didn't say anything and let it go. According to the rules the only punches allowed were reverse punches with the back hand, and backfists and ridgehands.. jabs were not allowed as they are too hard to score. However he would just run and jump nearly on top of me and "girl fight" punch to the top of the head with his fists pointed down. On the video I had already won the fight a minute in, with 3 obvious body kicks.. worth 2 points each.. but because the judges weren't paying attention they weren't scored. He beat me 5 to 4, all my points were scored via backfists to the head when he would try to kick. all his were the wild clashing blows when he would try to pretend my head was a speed bag.

I think I am gonna let my instructor see the video because someone needs to sit down and talk to this guy about point sparring.

I took 2nd.. he took 1st.

[ps1]

Congratulations on a job well done.

It's always a pain when the judges miss a point or don't agree with you. But that's the nature of the game.

I agree that it's very annoying that certain techniques count as points. The "flying chop" to the top of the head seems to be the technique of choice anymore. But in the end it's a game of tag. The first person to touch gets the point.

Very few good tournament circuts still exist that require strong, spirited strikes with excellent technique.

When I first started, an ippon (full point) required a strike delivered in combination with others. The strike must have strong stance and retraction (either to the hip or chin) along with kiai. A single strike (not in a combination) was only worth a half point.

[Azmyth]

speaking of yelling.

that was another issue i had.

my friend was a judge on some of the upper belt divisions (he's 2nd degree black belt). He was getting annoyed because all of the shituryu guys there would yell everytime they "thought" they got a hit. The problem with that is, the judges were scoring points based on whether or not the guy yelled.. vs. him actually making contact with the person. I watched them score at least 7 points, where NO contact was made.. but it was based simply on the judges not paying attention and the "yelling" making them have the false impression contact was made.

I was actually surprised at the tournament. There were hardly any of those "US champion" sparrers there. If you youtube US karate championships you'll see what I mean. THAT really is a game of tag.

[bushido_man96]

It sounds like the tournament needed to do a better job of preparing the judges. If they are scoring points based off of yelling as opposed to seeing the points land, then they should not be judging. They need more time in training. At TKD tourneys, we hear yelling all of the time, but I never let a yell decide if a point landed or not.

It sounds like you gave it all your best, though, so congrats to you on a job well done!

[Azmyth]

yeah, the yelling wasn't a problem It was the poor judging. There was one judge there who was awesome..

he was dressed the part, he was loud and very easy to understand and if a point was made he demonstrated the maneuver that scored the point himself. The other judges were nowhere near as good.