I've been wondering lately at the direction that this art has been going. The way I teach now is very different then how TSD was taught in my lineage. It's even different from how my teacher teaches it. Looking around my schools forum, one can see threads dedicated to teaching methods that you probably won't see in many (or any) TSD dojangs out there.
I've always thought that the name Tang Soo Do fits us because it really implies a study of a more general type of karate that draws in from many traditions. In fact, the term Tang Soo really is vague in that the amount of traditions that could be drawn from that pile is enormous.
Thursdays class got me thinking though. One of my new students was an old student of a WTSD school that used to operate in this area. She hasn't trained in TSD for over 10 years, but she still remember what she learned up to about green belt. I noticed her punching in the way that they taught and I thought to myself...
"Self, you checked out their dojang before they closed their doors. You know how they trained because it wasn't so different from when you went to your teacher's teacher. They didn't have the barest inkling of what you understood back when you hardly understood what you know now."
So when does TSD cease to become TSD? When does what we know travel far enough away from what people normally associate with TSD that it becomes intellectually dishonest to call it TSD? Or is it perfectly fine to keep it vague and continue throwing mud in the kiddie pool?
I've always thought that the name Tang Soo Do fits us because it really implies a study of a more general type of karate that draws in from many traditions. In fact, the term Tang Soo really is vague in that the amount of traditions that could be drawn from that pile is enormous.
Thursdays class got me thinking though. One of my new students was an old student of a WTSD school that used to operate in this area. She hasn't trained in TSD for over 10 years, but she still remember what she learned up to about green belt. I noticed her punching in the way that they taught and I thought to myself...
"Self, you checked out their dojang before they closed their doors. You know how they trained because it wasn't so different from when you went to your teacher's teacher. They didn't have the barest inkling of what you understood back when you hardly understood what you know now."
So when does TSD cease to become TSD? When does what we know travel far enough away from what people normally associate with TSD that it becomes intellectually dishonest to call it TSD? Or is it perfectly fine to keep it vague and continue throwing mud in the kiddie pool?