Rex Kwon Do and all alike.

[StuartA]

Who has the experience and qualifications to change them?

It seems most people become "qualified" after the fact, largely due to having been successful instructors who's students go off and open schools and a generation or two later, they have their qualifications inflated.

Have a look at some of the great masters, and exactly what experience they had when they started changing things and teaching things different then what they had been taught. In most cases there are quite a few people here with far more experience then they had.

So I doubt it's background or experience that gave them that right.

Jigoro Kano had about 5 years training and was in his very early 20's when he broke Jujitsu training and went his own way.

Most of TKD's founders where fairly low ranking black belts in Karate, and deviated from that to make a korean martial art.

I'd be surprise if you could find a style founder that made there changes after 20+ years training, most seem to have done it with 5-10 years training and when they where still fairly young.

The above, is like I said earlier in the thread.. in that most of the revered founders were relatively young and reasonably junior in grade.

However, times back then were very different from today, a 2nd Dan was much harder to obtain and thus held in more regard, making a break and creating your own style was not as acceptable back then, especially in oriental cultures. So all things considered... it was a much bigger and much harder deal back in the 30s/40s & 50s etc... whereas today, any tom, dick or harry can do it without much come back, but most do it without the vision or grounding of the men of yesteryear and simply do it for selfish reasons or to make a buck!

I do TKD, I dont follow the main stream trends, but I wouldnt change the patterns just for the sake of it... if I ever had a 'vision' of relevance.. then I may do if I felt I could produce a better way, but I doubt that will ever happen and if it did, then it would probibly mean a total change of patterns relevant to what my 'vision' entailed - as well as a system overhaul in that regards, so as it goes, Ill just keep going against the grain and trying to make the ones I learnt (patterns) have more relevance than they do in most associations today!

Stuart