A choice to be made: opinions please.

[WaterCircleHarmony]

I am currently ITF at uni and would like to know if doing both WTF and ITF at the same time is a good idea or a bad idea because there is a WTF club in the uni too.

The only thing worrying me is when do i have time to study my uni work cos i would have a lot of patterns to learn!!

 

[kickyou]

The WTF and the ITF is as different as night and day.the way they do there kicks(WTF) is different than the ITF, and my personal opinion is that they are not as good as the "Original" which is the ITF.As a student you should stay with one form of TKD.If later on you choose that you want to learn the other form of TKD then talk to your instructor before doing so.

And finally remember what General Choi says about learning 2 different forms "you can't ride 2 horses at one time"

 

[MartinHarvey]

The problem you will experience is called negative transfer. Whilst the two styles are dissimilar enough to be different, they are not different enough for your muscle memory to be trained to work for both easily.

An example of negative transfer is to play tennis followed by badminton, they both have similar movements but they are different. The body gets confused.

If you were to study TKD and Aikido, these styles are totally dissimilar and you would not confuse your body. Sort of like playing tennis followed by golf.

I am not saying it is impossible to learn both at the same time, it’s just more difficult to train your body to produce automatic responses when both styles are similar, but have differences.

I hope this is clear

Cheers!

Martin

 

[Bagatha]

Originally posted by kickyou

And finally remember what General Choi says about learning 2 different forms "you can't ride 2 horses at one time"

Or as Master Choi says: " jack of all trades master of nothing" lol.

I think you can gain from doing both, but wait until you are profiecient at 1 first. Of course proficiency is different for everyone, but loosly speaking I would think not before 2nd Dan. JMHO.

 

[Klondike93]

I say try it! The biggest difference will be in the forms and you might get mixed up there. Other than that, kicking is kicking and I believe you should take what you can get, as far as instruction goes. You might end up prefering one over the other, so why just restrict yourself to just one style when you can try both.



:asian:

 

[WaterCircleHarmony]

I better work on the splits then i might be able to ride both horses at the same time! heh heh.

Thanks for the response guys!

Anyways the kicking i did in the past was in Hapkido,
so how would you describe that? i found it a "more formal" way
of doing WTF kicks. Less formal than ITF though and i found it
really difficult to transfer to ITF when i first started.

In light of this (see my profile) then do you still think that it is so bad to do both types of TKD? After all it is a kinda intermediate kicking style in Hapkido. I could be completely wrong so feel free to comment!
:asian:

 

[deadhand31]

Oh geez.... again some ITF/WTF bickering..............

:soapbox:

ok, as i've said before, you can't say "ITF is better than WTF" or vice versa. it depends on the school. the ITF schools in my area teach the "hands-down" fighting method, and focus on the sport area. Now, I've also seen some ITF spar with their hands up. My school, which is WTF, does hands up. You can't judge a school by it's organization, but how it teaches. My advice, take a look at it, and see if it's something you want to be a part of.
:asian:

 

[Klondike93]

I didn't see who was ITF/WTF bickering, did I miss something?

You know to me kicking is kicking regardless of which organization your in. you started in Hapkido so I would think you picked up the basics there. It might take a little modifying to get it right, but still a kick is a kick. I don't kick anything like I did when I went through the ITF, I kick in what's called an open hip style now. It took a little work but I like it much better, it's easier on my knees and you get a little extra reach out of it.

:asian:

 

[Damian Mavis]

Do both, if you were a beginner I'd say wait but your not so go ahead and do both.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

 

[ThuNder_FoOt]

I say both both as well. Although they may have different forms, they are still forms of Taekwondo. If you believe you can handle it, then by all means, go for it!!! Both styles have great things to offer, and you learning them at the same time might actually prevent you from getting used to "one way of doing things".

And while General Choi's "you can't ride two horses at one time" statement may be true, i believe he is speaking in terms of different arts. It would be a bit more difficult in my eyes to learn, parsay capoeira and Goju-ryu at the same time, because the way of movement is so different... (to each his own, of course). But in this case, I don't think there will be any problem.

Besides, you can always enroll in both, and if it seems to be too much to handle, you can always stop one right? No harm in that. I don't see any negative aspect of learning both.... try it and see for yourself. (you can check out my profile too!). :asian: