My terrible TKD experience.

[ninjanurse]

Maybe he sensed your intention to "see how I compared to them"....perhaps this contributed to what you experienced? On the other hand, I have have people come in to my school with a "silent agenda" and I have treated them just like any other new student that walks in. I don't even discuss their experience until I have seen them in white belt class several times....and if they "show their hand" I don't bite. Bad instructors are not exclusive to TKD-the are everywhere!

[Alpha One Four]

Maybe he sensed your intention to "see how I compared to them"....perhaps this contributed to what you experienced? On the other hand, I have have people come in to my school with a "silent agenda" and I have treated them just like any other new student that walks in. I don't even discuss their experience until I have seen them in white belt class several times....and if they "show their hand" I don't bite. Bad instructors are not exclusive to TKD-the are everywhere!

I think it was more of him trying to be a "tough guy."

[seikokaistudent]

Bit of a necro but I will post anyways

I actually happened to have a very similar experience with TKD, I went to a location (dojo?) that is in my area because I like kicking and wanted to give tae kwon do a try. I was open about my background and expressed genuine interest in the class, the first day was very good however the second day was terrible. We were sparring on the second day and I got put with a black belt, the instructor kept stressing that TKD was "full contact" unlike other martial arts, he also said it was free sparring. The sparring was okay until he dropped his guard after kicking and I hit him in the side with a decent roundhouse, he dropped to the ground holding his side and complaining about how I hit him too hard and he was not ready. The instructor came over and told me to do push-ups and sit-ups until I learned to fight honorably. Everyone in the class started glaring at me and saying things about how I used dirty tricks and stuff like that. I got angry, told the director in not so nice language what kind of operation he was running, and left and never went back.

[ninjanurse]

I hope you won't judge all TKD schools by your experience.

[kensei]

their are bad instructors in every martial art! However, as a child I went to a local Dojang and wanted to see if the style they taught was close to Shotokan that I was training in. I was young and knew nothing about TKD. The instructor, a middle aged man (keep in mind I was 12) was teaching. I asked a simple question about his hip when punching and he thought I was shoing him up and went NUTS on me.

He litterally grabbed me and threw me out of his club, down a flight of stairs and threw my gym bag, jacket and shoes after me. To say the experience was not good is a bit light.

Now, I also trained with a buddy from school who had keys to the TKD school he worked out at. His instructor came in and started showing me stuff, super nice guy...like really UBER nice, and he knew I was a Karate guy and not going to jump ship, just super nice.

Their are good and bad instructors and clubs out their and sometimes you have to chalk bad experiences up to meeting a jerk and learning who is a jerk and who is not...see we learn all the time.

[bushido_man96]

Yep, good and bad. I can't believe you got actually "tossed out" like that! Nuts! I'm glad you got a good experience to balance it out.

I'm the kind of guy that if I heard you did a different style, I'd be like, "cool, so we do this, how do you do it?" And just start learning....

[FighterForLife]

Bit of a necro but I will post anyways

I actually happened to have a very similar experience with TKD, I went to a location (dojo?) that is in my area because I like kicking and wanted to give tae kwon do a try. I was open about my background and expressed genuine interest in the class, the first day was very good however the second day was terrible. We were sparring on the second day and I got put with a black belt, the instructor kept stressing that TKD was "full contact" unlike other martial arts, he also said it was free sparring. The sparring was okay until he dropped his guard after kicking and I hit him in the side with a decent roundhouse, he dropped to the ground holding his side and complaining about how I hit him too hard and he was not ready. The instructor came over and told me to do push-ups and sit-ups until I learned to fight honorably. Everyone in the class started glaring at me and saying things about how I used dirty tricks and stuff like that. I got angry, told the director in not so nice language what kind of operation he was running, and left and never went back.

I'm still new on this forum, so let me first say that I am not going to try to sound like some tough guy by saying this, but if a shodan in my dojo got knocked down by new student (of any level of previous experience) then it would be something to congratulate the newbie about, not punish. The shodan, on the other hand, would be subject to some good natured ribbing.

Also, pushups as punishment for winning? Sounds like you showed them up and they got angry about it.

[Luther unleashed]

I am 36, I currently study a mixture of tang soo do shotokan, and boxing! Shotokan and tang soo do are almost identical but I enjoy the mix up of some of the stances and such... Anyways I practiced tae kwon do on and off for many years. Itf and wtf by the way but hold a 6th rank in wtf, main issue is I moved a lot, i was looking for a school and came across a little karate place in my area, I had been to a big we'll known tea kwon do place to talk with them and didn't care for the general attitude, but the karate place had a vibe that drew me in, the instructor was so interactive with his students, and seemed to show the techniques often, jumping kick or whatever.

Sorry to ramble on about me lol but my point is that I attend the karate school even though it is different then what I knew, and had to start from scratch, the point in that is it isn't the style it's the school/teacher that are important. There's good schools and bad schools, and same goes for instructors and general vibe and attitude of the student body! Hopefully you find a school that's right for you, no matter what the style! Take care.

[ShotokanGage]

There are some bad first time experiences posted in this thread. I cannot believe that a school would look at a presumed 'newbie' to martial arts and then treat them in such a way that could put them off martial arts for life! I suppose all you can gather from this is that there are just as many tossers in martial arts as there are in every day life.

I myself am lucky to train in a club with no egos whatsoever (in fact I sometimes worry that my ego is the biggest of the lot!), and it's such a great atmosphere where everybody listens and takes in the instructor's advice.

[jaypo]

Same here! Never had the bad experiences, but we have had a lot of people that come in and take a few classes. The last one was a TKD 2nd dan black belt from a local "school" that I call more of a cardio TKD operation. He was a humble guy. And my Sensei ran a class that played to his strong points. We focused on using a lot of leg techniques and did some free sparring. It was fun, but I noticed that when the guy missed an attack or counter, he immediately went into "survival" haymaker mode and forgot techniques! He would simply put his head down and start launching bombs. Which made it pretty easy for me, at 38 and with a bad knee to land on a 20 yr old 2nd dan. But my sensei was a little "biased" in the scoring and conviently missed most of the points that I landed so it didn't look like we were trying to show him up!

But he was very respectful, as were we. Sadly, he didn't come back and train with us. I wish he would have. He was fun to train with. He had beautiful kicks that I wasn't used to defending against, because not many that I train with can kick like that.