Improving TKD's Image

[terryl965]

I think what Miles says here is key. The best thing we can do (perhaps the only thing we can do) is to promote only competent students.

Sure so 100 instructor does this and another 10,000 don't we just do not have enough great instructors out there to make this happen. We must ban together and from a line of defense, wait I was thinking military for a moment sorry. Just keep doing what we do and hope for the best.

 

[IcemanSK]

Sure so 100 instructor does this and another 10,000 don't we just do not have enough great instructors out there to make this happen. We must ban together and from a line of defense, wait I was thinking military for a moment sorry. Just keep doing what we do and hope for the best.

There's a story about a boy on the beach where 1000's of star fish washed up. They were dying! The boy would pick up one at a time & throw them back. A man came by & said, "Son, there are just too many of them for you to make a difference!" The boy smiled as he tossed another one back into the ocean & said, "I made a difference to that one."

The way I look at it, I have the chance to make a difference in the lives of these kids in my class. (Not just as a TKD student, but in their lives). I don't care that 1 of my kids was given a rushed BB at 8 years old. He's my student, now. In the dojang, he's less concerned with the belt around his waist than he was when he came. He's more focused on getting the techniques right. Outside the dojang, he's a polite young man. I'll take being one of the 100, Terry. I'm bettin' you will, too.

 

[terryl965]

There's a story about a boy on the beach where 1000's of star fish washed up. They were dying! The boy would pick up one at a time & throw them back. A man came by & said, "Son, there are just too many of them for you to make a difference!" The boy smiled as he tossed another one back into the ocean & said, "I made a difference to that one."

The way I look at it, I have the chance to make a difference in the lives of these kids in my class. (Not just as a TKD student, but in their lives). I don't care that 1 of my kids was given a rushed BB at 8 years old. He's my student, now. In the dojang, he's less concerned with the belt around his waist than he was when he came. He's more focused on getting the techniques right. Outside the dojang, he's a polite young man. I'll take being one of the 100, Terry. I'm bettin' you will, too.

Excellent post Iceman

 

[howard]

To answer the question is to agree to the premis of the question.
I do not agree with the premis therefore no answer.

What? It is not.

A premise is simply the basis for an argument. If you disagree with the premise, why don't you argue your position?

As for the original question: IMO one of the biggest issues is Olympic TKD. Just my subjective opinion, of course, but every time I see it, I shake my head and cringe. It looks utterly foreign to the way people used to spar in the old "kwans" (e.g., Ji Do Kwan) that were around before TKD came into existence.

What ever happened to keeping your hands up? What ever happened to the reverse punch?

 

[DArnold]

What? It is not.

A premise is simply the basis for an argument. If you disagree with the premise, why don't you argue your position?

As for the original question: IMO one of the biggest issues is Olympic TKD. Just my subjective opinion, of course, but every time I see it, I shake my head and cringe. It looks utterly foreign to the way people used to spar in the old "kwans" (e.g., Ji Do Kwan) that were around before TKD came into existence.

What ever happened to keeping your hands up? What ever happened to the reverse punch?

Look at your original posting... as an effective martial art.
It already is?
Who do you wish to bolster it against, the nay sayers?
How many people in the old kwans have you seen spar?
To what end would this banter be for?
Do you want someone to change your mind?
I would suggest you go work out with some of these that you think are degrading your art.

 

[howard]

Who do you wish to bolster it against, the nay sayers?

Sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about here.

How many people in the old kwans have you seen spar?

Quite a few. Are you familiar with Master S. Henry Cho in New York? I've sparred with people in his Ji Do Kwan dojang. And with others from the "kwan" days.

How many have you seen spar?

To what end would this banter be for?

Once again, I have no idea what your point is.

Do you want someone to change your mind?

Assuming you're referring to the premise of the original poster, no... I think Olympic TKD is pretty far from an effective martial art. Do you think Olympic TKD represents an effective martial art? As in a true fighting art?

] I would suggest you go work out with some of these that you think are degrading your art.

Man, what are you on about? Nobody's degrading my art... I don't train in TKD. Never have.

I would suggest you read people's posts a bit more carefully.

 

[keri-waza]

I think all of the threads hit the nail on the head. I was in TKD for around 12 years and have since switched to Isshinryu. The org. i was in turned into a joke . Promoting people every two months whether they deserved it or not. Lots of kids running around with high dan ranks. It was all about money . There are probably 20 TKD schools around the knoxville area where i train and teach. None of them has any talent. We have respectfully mind you invited them to the dojo to cowork out and have not had one acceptance.

 

[cali_tkdbruin]

See, that's the thing, here in the States, like in many other places, a large number of TKD dojangs are commercial enterprises. These dojangs make a good portion of their money by charging testing fees. So, if they can keep promoting students on a regular schedule, and keep collecting those testing fees, then it makes sense to keep doing it that way because it keeps the school out of the red.

The unfortunate part is that unprepared or undeserving students are easily promoted thus furthering the impression in the MA world that Taekwondo is a weak art full of Mc Dojangs. I've seen it, and heard it from practitioners of other arts, and to a certain degree I agree with them because I've trained with teenage and adult TKD blackbelts who aren't worth a crap. They couldn't even hold a well trained, devoted and dedicated Taekwondoist's jock strap... :tantrum:

 

[cali_tkdbruin]

BTW, I'm no Chuck Norris or a Steven Lopez worthy black belt. But I do train on a regular basis, and whenever I do go into the dojang I train my *** off and I hit it all out, which is what I want from my training partners. I know I'm no way as good as those two practitioners I mentioned, but I do make a strong effort and I'm always trying to make my TKD skills and techniques better. One thing I can say is that I never go at my TKD training half-assed, just ask the people I train with.

 

[Bumblebee]

One thing we can do is keep our guard up during sparring. I've seen it everywhere and I've heard it everywhere that most Taekwondo practitioners drop their guard. Steven Lopez who won like what? Four Taekwondo World Championships, even he's guilty of this. I mean I don't see a real reason why you'd want to drop your guard. Some people say that it's easier to counter when you drop your guard, but then you drop your guard and what if your opponent is faster than you are and smacks you across the face with a left step-forward roundhouse kick/fast kick/Baranbay Duiro Chagi(sp?).

 

[Drunken_Boxer]

I agree with David- stop showcasing 6yr old black belts, stop pushing out black belts, period (IMHO)- sure, they increase schools popularity for a time, but they really aren't for those that are truly in MA's for more than just the rank. Try showing more of what TKD has to offer in a class, not just sparring competitions- especially as far as the Olympics goes. Stop worrying so much about trying to prove the validity of the art by saying it's been around for 1,000 years. Every art had to have it's start!

Damn tkd girl, i agree with you.Real talk!!

 

[FieldDiscipline]

Originally Posted by tkdgirl
I agree with David- stop showcasing 6yr old black belts, stop pushing out black belts, period (IMHO)- sure, they increase schools popularity for a time, but they really aren't for those that are truly in MA's for more than just the rank. Try showing more of what TKD has to offer in a class, not just sparring competitions- especially as far as the Olympics goes. Stop worrying so much about trying to prove the validity of the art by saying it's been around for 1,000 years. Every art had to have it's start!

Damn tkd girl, i agree with you.Real talk!!

Its all about standards. I've been quite lucky in that the most of what I have seen when training around GB hasnt been bad, and in some cases exceptionally good. IMHO the image of TKD isnt bad over here. I do see this kind of bad thing becoming more prevalent though, driven largely by the olympic sport aspect.

 

[009abz]

good question but let me tell you this we might never change tkd's image for their are to many weak tkd fighters out and who are these ppl? their the ones that are doing tkd as only a sport their the ones who are affraid of getting in to fights their the ones who came late traning because they dont wanna run or warm up.

but their are strong tkd fighters to they are who dnt make around at tranning they never run away from a fight also. ill be an example i go to da toughest most violent skool in australia {punchbowl boys} and they all know i do tkd but they dnt get scared of me but they never wanna fight me coz ill never be scared to fight them.

finally ill rap it up u can do any martial art and still be weak even in tkd for its all up to u do u run away when everything gets hard or do u stay and show everyone who u are.

 

[Dave Leverich]

009abz, it would really help if you used capitalization and non-'texting' type. The instant that someone says 'Hey ru lookin' etc, I stop reading and the credibility of the author goes down for me. Aka, 'u' is you, da for the etc.

I'm not even touching on TKD's image, as there are countless threads on countless forums debating for and against the art and the sport aspects of it. I know the artform I do, I know how I do it, and I know how well I do it.

We'll always find 'keyboard warriors' out there who'll say they can kick so-in-so's butt, or their <insert mad butt kicking style here> would own my TKD etc. I laugh and say 'yep, sure would' and go off and do my thing.

As far as people improving the image; I think those fighters out there who acknowledge their TKD training, and are good role models, will help the public perception of the art.

 

[Dave Leverich]

Heh, so much for not even touching on TKD's image. That will teach me to type while waking up .

 

[Brad Dunne]

As has been stated, TKD's image is beyond repair, due to everything that has been mentioned. So what to do?................... My personal opinion is to seek a new discipline name, for those that wish to seperate themselves from the McDojo/DoJang label. How many will avail themselves of this position.............not many if any, for the threat of losing students will surely deter this movement. The vast majority of folks offing to take part in the arts are there for many reasons, but only a very, very small percentage (.5% - a guess) will be there for life. There's not enough of these folks to keep a school doors open, so sports takes center stage and little Mary and Billy can win a shinny medal and Mom and Dad can puff out their chests and say "My Billy is a 5th degree Black Belt and he's just turned 10". :erg:

I'll finish with a statement that I'm sure most if not everyone has heard........... "The journey starts with the first step". It takes courage to take that first step and that includes starting anew within or leaving your old ways for a new beginning.

 

[FieldDiscipline]

Hi Brad,

I've gotta ask, is that what Taekido is?

I understand where you are coming from, but abandoning the name Taekwondo is abandoning all those who went before us and disrespecting our teachers. Whilst cutting loose the bad, you are also cutting loose all the great stuff too. This is what makes us what we are!

I understand standards to be a large part of why GM Kim Bok Man has founded Chun Khun Do. This however fully acknowledges itself as almost an extension of TKD (as you'd expect from one of the founders!).

I certainly dont think (although I admit I'm not in the US) TKD's image is beyond repair. I think the efforts of those practioners who continue to exercise integrity will prevail, even if the final achievement is that people realise the barrel has both good, and bad apples.

 

[exile]

My own sense is, worrying about TKD's image is both futile and, if you're really devoted to it, unnecessary. The futility is evident: look at the number of threads on MT, let alone other, let's say more belligerent boards, where someone gets on and starts badmouthing TKD for all the usual reasons, and we all send in these detailed posts about TKD's military record and effective technical repertoire and so on, with full citations of sources, and they spout back a lot of misinformation and narrow understanding based on what they know of sport TKD, and back and forth it goes, until finally you either get a kind of grudging acknowledgement that there might be more to it, or else a stubborn `don't confuse me with facts, I've made up my mind' sort of response, and basically the thread dies. Now that's with one person. When you talk about `image', you're talking about hundreds of thousands or millions of MA practitioners who are little different from the guy on the thread. And it's probably also true that any changes you might make on a worldwide basis that would `improve the image' of TKD would take a decade or more to sink into mass consciousness. So at best, at this point, it's an uphill battle. It took a couple of generations for TKD to reach its current low level of public esteem, and it would probably take at least as long, no matter what you did, to change that situation. (Karate is, so far as I can see, in the same boat with TKD in this respect, so it's not as though we're all alone here).

But the more important point, I think, is in the question, why should anyone care what the public estimate of TKD is? What difference does it make to what you do? This is what I've been thinking for a long time about that question: it's not something you have to ask people about their taste in ice cream, say. If your favorite flavor is burgundy cherry, you couldn't care less that most people prefer vanilla or butter pecan. That's totally, completely irrelevant to what you buy at the store. If you like Baroque music, you couldn't care less that more bubble-gum music CDs are sold in a single day than 18th century music CDs sell in a whole year. And so on: the point is, your taste in anything doesn't require you to believe something about whatever it is in order to feel good about it. The pleaure comes from the taste of the ice cream or the sound of the music; they themselves are all the justification we need. But it's not like that about the MAs we do, at least not if we're worrying about image. So to me, that says that we aren't doing the MAs we do simply for the pleasure of doing them—not if we worry about what people think of them. That anxiety about other people's perception seems to me to say that we may ourselves harbor some doubts about what we're doing—in a way we simply do not harbor doubts about our favorite ice cream or music—and we don't like the fact that we're not getting external support, in the form of others' good opinions, that might reassure us that our art is really the effective fighting system we'd like to think it is.

If the real problem of TKD's image—or Karate's, or Gung Fu's—is that its practitioners are too concerned with other people's views because of their own latent doubts, then real remedy is for people to eliminate those doubts by shifting their training to a format which will allow the intrinsic effectiveness of the art to emerge. If we could magically bring the RoK White Tiger commandos from the Vietnam War era into the present with their battlefield combat skills intact, I somehow doubt that they's be particularly worried about how people viewed their fighting system; after all, no other MA has ever been pressure tested under the real `ultimate fighting championship' conditions—survival on free-fire front line or behind-the-lines battlefields when you're out of ammo or separated from your weapon—on the mass scale, over two decades. Those Korean soldiers would probably have been just as happy, in fact, to have their fighting arts dismissed by the enemy; nothing like having the opposition fatally underestimate you, eh? It's not a mistake that either the North Koreans or the Viet Cong made, in fact, but the point is, what the guys in the White Tiger units were likely concerned with, and solely concerned with, was the effectiveness of their training for killing the enemy in empty-hand CQ fighting. If it worked for that, what difference would it make what anyone else thought?

My feeling is that we would do better to adopt that attitude ourselves, rather than worry excessively about the media-created image that TKD suffers from. It doesn't really affect our training on an individual level, or our ability to defend ourselves from a violent street attack, does it? If those things are OK, and we know it, why would we worry about what anyone else thinks?

 

[FieldDiscipline]

My feeling is that we would do better to adopt that attitude ourselves, rather than worry excessively about the media-created image that TKD suffers from. It doesn't really affect our training on an individual level, or our ability to defend ourselves from a violent street attack, does it? If those things are OK, and we know it, why would we worry about what anyone else thinks?

Less time worrying and arguing, more time training. I'm with you there Exile.

 

[Andrew Green]

From a outside perspective:

Focus on what you do, not what you don't do. TKD is a fun sport, it has its own rules and it is designed to work within those rules. Boxers don't go on and on about there kicking, Judo doesn't insist that it has kicks that are just as good too. Yet some TKD practitioners / schools insist they have everything, and everything they have is the best available.

Stop promoting symbols. Really young black belts are only one of those, inflated ranks and titles are also there. You don't need a longer belt to fit more stripes and embroidery on it, a plain black one is just fine. You don't have to write "Master" or "Grandmaster" on everything either, your name is fine. If you need a title, go with "Instructor", under your name. Same as in other professions.

Truth. At the end of the day most TKD people know that there style came from Shotokan, at least any of them that cared enough to do any looking. Yet we still see adds and documentries proclaiming it as a 2000 year old art. Yes, there is a continous trail backwards in any style to the beginning of time, but that doesn't make the current practices 2000 years old.

What kills TKD's image is, IMO, nothing to do with the art, but all the crap surrounding it. Funky histories, inflated ranks, promoting of inflated ranks and titles, and the insistance that it has what it does not.