Tae Kwon Do

[The Xia]

I mostly see mcdojangs and a few sport oriented places. I have not seen any combat focused Tae Kwon Do. Has anyone seen combat Tae Kwon Do?

[golden arhat]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3nmjKvOADo

[The Xia]

Taekyon is a seperate and older art then Tae Kwon Do. It was a good video but that doesn't count. Anyone know how Choi Hong Hi taught Tae Kwon Do?

[golden arhat]

i dont really follow korean martial arts

[The Xia]

No need to be sorry. It was still an interesting video. :)

A brief crash course if you are interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_martial_arts

[BruceSteveRoy]

i think they tae kwan don't fight. ok it was a bad joke. but this guy i grew up with was a great fighter and he had learned TKD from his father. His father however was excommunicated from some association for being too hardcore with the fighting and his school closed. he was teaching neck breaking techniques or some such thing to kids. his dad wasn't much of a thinker and therefore had pretty poor judgement. very irresponsible. aside from that i have never seen a school that teaches it for fighting.

[BruceSteveRoy]

i have never heard of taekyon but it looks pretty interesting.

[The Xia]

Does anyone have any examples of Tae Kwan Do guys that are good fighters?

[The Xia]

ttt.......

[sunfist]

Fedor.

Beyond that, TKD breeds people of varying capability just like any other art. Fighting isnt rocket science, anybody with a bit of common sense and an open mind will pick it up. Most people sadly do not posess these features and so their potential is severely limited, regardless of their art. I guess there are obvious and extreme examples of arts that are flawed, but the well established martial arts are so for a reason. Even if what you get served as a mcdojo customer is on the whole unimpressive, its still only a few steps away from the art that did work, so in this regard id consider attitude to actually be more important.

If you want to see examples of karate/tkd working, look for the exponents who have gone into sport competition. Kickboxing, MMA.

[The Black Tiger]

Taekwondo is the least effective martial art known to man that is unless you can convince your opponent to take your shoes of first. To answer your question there are nun.:D

[bodhitree]

Taekwondo is the least effective martial art known to man that is unless you can convince your opponent to take your shoes of first. To answer your question there are nun.:D


I don't know about that, TKD is just as effective as karate or anything else. David Loussio (spelling?) and a lot of other fighters have tkd backgrounds. Not everything from the art is effective for sport fighting, but every "style" has to adapt to the particular sport. My vote for least effective martial art= Aikido.

[lonewolf]

i studied tae kwon do for five years. the flashy kicks are useless. but as for striking at a greater distance and learning to kick as fast as throwing a jab it is quit effective. they don't teaching much punching, grappling, knees and elbows are none existant in sparring but show up in forms. if your not learning it for sport and take what you can from it to incorperate in fighting it is great for lower body use. besides if you get flexible enough i have never known a heel kick to not break a clavicle.:)

[NJM]

A friend of mine is a blackbelt in TKD, but can't really spar with me worth jack because of the whole unstable kicking thing. They're not too bad at striking, though. Blocking, now that's another story. This person always trys to anticipate my attacks instead of reacting to them, which is just asking to get faint'd.

[lonewolf]

A friend of mine is a blackbelt in TKD, but can't really spar with me worth jack because of the whole unstable kicking thing. They're not too bad at striking, though. Blocking, now that's another story. This person always trys to anticipate my attacks instead of reacting to them, which is just asking to get faint'd.

i agree with the stiking and the blocking, but for me blocking i a wasit of time and energy. i found the countering the attack was move effective then blocking it and getting injured doing so. as for striking the kicks are nice but tae kwon do doesn't teach punching worth jack. wheni was in it i learned boxing at the same time. during our sparring in class i wound work my way in and while my opponant would want to touch chest pads to initiant a splint (like two boxers hugging) i would keep my hands up and land blows to the chest pad. punches landed earn points also. tkd stylist like to keep their distance and use their legs but if you are going to get close whynot use you other weapons available to you? that was what i learned and how i won the tournaments that i was in. instructors stay with the kicking to much and ignore the upper body potenial that the students have even in sparring.

[Dark Knight]

Not all TKD's are created equal.

TKD is an Olympic sport. Its a full contact sport. In order to get into the olympics it had to be in a certain amount of countries with an International Governing body and National Governing bodies in each country.

Korea sent instructors out to establish enough schools to accomplish this.

Now you have Black Belts created all over and then they open schools.

But not everyone is interested in full contact Olympic TKD. Many schools claim they train Olympic TKD, but its still light contact. Then the rest get into point sparring, trying to hold onto the kicking side of TKD.

In Olympic TKD you have rules that they train by. Very little hands, lots of kicks.

In TKD you become just like the instructor, not making the art fit you and your strengths.

There are TKD guys that can fight, are really fast and kick really hard. But they are far and few in between.