I was under the impression, cant remember where, that TKD was originally developed for military combat, not defense. Do you have anywhere you could point me that suggests TKD was made with the philosophy of defense in mind?I don't mean the full 60 minutes. I just mean the first few minutes of class the focus is on blocking and striking.
There's a difference between having students go into horse stance and teaching them horse stance. My old school taught you the way the stances look from the start. When you learned a front stance, you learned exactly what it was. When you learned a back stance, same thing, and you also learned why you would use each stance.
The school I'm at now teaches the stances very loosely at the white and yellow belt level, and gets more detail as you get to green belt. You learn a lot more details about the punches and kicks than you do the stances.
Because half the kids if we tell them to pivot their foot while they punch, they will step forward. Some of them step forward and then back, and others will walk forward until they're hitting the person in front of them. So we work on the arm motion first and work on the rest of the body later.
I'm not talking about being passive or defensive. I'm talking about morally the art is for defense, and to symbolize that you could teach defense first.