TKD as self defense

[tshep1]

ok srr guys havent had time to respond. First off you are right every art does hevily depend on set stances and muscle memory. But tkd at least as of what i have seen stresses them more in sparring. Also what i meant by muscle memory in tkd was that as in and art form. tkd is more tournament geard than any other ma system. with it beang tag as you said you devlope you muscles to pull punches and kicks due to hevy tournament sparring. this hevaly takes away froum the selfdence aspect of it. as pulling punches and kicks in a fight can turn out bad. I am by no means saying all tkd students do this. Its just a fact most people have trouble going from light contact to real contact when there body is programed to pull back. as for the agr of and art it has everything to do with how afective it is. Bottom line the older the art the more time it has had to evolve. Just like a chiled. Lets put it like this tkd has had roughly what 60 years to define its self. and tang soo do my art is not much older than that there is no way eather arts have had anuf time. to even start taking out all negitive aspects that art. as oposed to and art thats 300 years old or older. the older arts have one advantage there more evloved and combat tested. thay have had the time to weed out pour tecniques that dont woork or are unpracticul. Now that does not mean thay arte more afective. But thay are mnore evolved and that does give them and advantge in the selfdefince aspect of martial arts. As for are there people in tkd that can take care of busness of coars there are. I am not bashing tkd or its students or instructos. but i will say most not all but most tkd is geard twords sport and not self defince that were the term sport karate comes in that you find in or arround most tkd schools. thats y i would go with something more tradishonal or at least something that trains in a more tradishoil manner with hard sparring and no light contact as you want to know what getting hit fills like. you dont want to be in a fight and just finding out what it means to be realy hit.

[isshinryu5toforever]

Please define traditional, and show me a modern martial art that has been codified for 300 years that isn't a form of boxing or wrestling. Kodokan Judo was codified in 1882, and that was one of the first modern martial arts from Japan to be codified. The farthest back codified Okinawan Karate can trace its history back is the early to mid-1800s, and even then, the history gets sketchy. Outside of Traditional Chinese Martial arts, you can't go much further back than that, and even then, the codified systems you see today are relatively new. Japanese budo especially.

You would be hard pressed to find people that would argue with the reputation Kyokushin Karate has garnered, and it is 100% competition focused at the highest levels. It may have roots in Goju-Ryu and Shotokan, but it was codified in the mid-1900s, around the SAME time as Taekwondo. If you have questions about how effective Kyokushin Karate is I would suggest you read up on Mas Oyama, Midori Kenji, Andy Hug, Francisco Fiho, the list could go on. The system they have in place consistently produces good fighters, some great fighters, and Kyokushin is a very young system with older roots. Still a young system however.

Muay Thai, which is very old, and has roots in Muay Boran, is also 100% competition focused. I doubt you would get a lot of argument about whether or not they could intelligently defend themselves in a self-defense situation. If you want to argue that, I suggest you get in the ring with a Thai boxer.

The ability to use what you've learned to defend yourself has more to do with training methods than which martial art you actually do. Live training is always better than punching air 100% of the time. You won't find much argument on that, unless they do something that is "too deadly." That's another argument.

All this, and WTF competition is full contact. You get knockouts, they don't pull kicks. If you're going to continue down this line, please define the following:

What do you mean by traditional? Are you talking about a martial art that is supposedly hundreds of years old? or a martial art with a definite history that can be verified?

How old does a martial art have to be before it can be considered "effective?"

Please name martial arts that are older than 300 years old with a verifiable lineage.

[bushido_man96]

I agree. There is no proof that leads an MA to being more effective because of how old it is. BJJ is another example...its younger than TKD, with roots in JJJ and Judo. And aruging with the effectiveness of BJJ is tough as well.

Older does not guarantee better. It just guarantees its older.

[ninjanurse]

isshinryu5toforever is spot on. TKD can be just as reliable as any other style. I know in my school we train to kick and punch hard, and when we spar at tourneys, some of them can be for KO. I've nearly KOed another classmate in class one night sparring. Any style can be good. Any stylist can be bad.

Agreed here! Judging a style on whether they are non-contact or full-contact seems rather superficial to me. We train to spar full contact at my school also-the harder the contact the better-but that is merely one small aspect of our art and hardly enough to base an opinion on.