tang soo do vs tae kwan do

[Deaf Smith]

I always thought it must have been a MDK TKD style, but now I'm not positively sure. My instructor was the late Master Kim Chang-soo, older brother of GM Kim Pyung-soo of Chayonryu TKD (whom I also trained with later in college) at the University of Houston.

When I got older I was trying to go back and find more information about him but haven't been able to find out any information. I've tried writing Kim Soo but never heard back from him. There is one person that I know of I'd like to talk to that I remember was there when I was and may have the answers, as he was one of the black belt instructors training there. I think he did teach Song Moo Kwan and I'd like to know if that was what my instructor was teaching.

Mine was TKD MDK and yes I can say for a fadt they are alot alike. Same forms. Basai included. Belts went White, Yellow, Green, Red, Black. 9th white to 1st Red then from 1 to 9 dan.

Deaf

 

[Montecarlodrag]

TSD and TKD (like any MA) can vary a lot from one dojang to another, even in the same city. It depends on the lineage of the dojang and style of the Instructor. So, you can find a TSD style which is almost identical to TKD. In another city, you may find the very opposite.

I have seen TSD students which I'd swear they were TKD or any MA but TSD.
Training methods are very different between dojangs too. Some are hard and some are softer.

In my Dojang, we have the OLD method. It is very hard, traditional and authentic.
But, the problem is the people, they are lazy. The majority of students don't like hard training. They think a martial artist can be made in a single week, like a Holywood movie.

We ran out of students 6 times in 15 years. Had to close dojang and start over because people doesn't like hard work.

Because of this, many schools go to the easy side of MA: Soft trainings, easy Black Belts in 3 years, fraudulent tournaments, soft sparring, no sweat at all.
Its the easy way to have many students and make profit. As a matter of fact, many dojang owners only care about money.

We discussed this many times when we closed a dojang. We were faced with the decision of going soft and have many students, or continue the same way and have few.
We decided to continue hard, even if we are alone. Is better to have 1 good BB each 5 years rather than 50 bad.

I have had 6 year old kids crying in anger trying to break a wood or doing a difficult thing in a gup test. They know the just have to do it or keep the same belt. It's Martial Art, period.
We even lower the rank to students who don't keep the hard work and get lazy.

Many people say to us this is archaic, but we think this is the real TSD.
Some parents take their child away cause they think we are torturing them. No single student has been injured since I remember.

We train at sub-zero temperatures at morning, no shoes. We train outdoors under the sun with hot floor, or raining, again no shoes.
We do sparring with no protection, only gloves. A Sa Bom Nim once told me "If there is no blood and bruises, it isn't sparring"
Few students withstand this. Some parents have told me we're crazy. I said: It's the Tang way, for crying out loud! accept it or take your kid to the boy scouts. (Some of them did )



Tang Soo!

 

[SageGhost83]

TSD and TKD (like any MA) can vary a lot from one dojang to another, even in the same city. It depends on the lineage of the dojang and style of the Instructor. So, you can find a TSD style which is almost identical to TKD. In another city, you may find the very opposite.

I have seen TSD students which I'd swear they were TKD or any MA but TSD.
Training methods are very different between dojangs too. Some are hard and some are softer.

In my Dojang, we have the OLD method. It is very hard, traditional and authentic.
But, the problem is the people, they are lazy. The majority of students don't like hard training. They think a martial artist can be made in a single week, like a Holywood movie.

We ran out of students 6 times in 15 years. Had to close dojang and start over because people doesn't like hard work.

Because of this, many schools go to the easy side of MA: Soft trainings, easy Black Belts in 3 years, fraudulent tournaments, soft sparring, no sweat at all.
Its the easy way to have many students and make profit. As a matter of fact, many dojang owners only care about money.

We discussed this many times when we closed a dojang. We were faced with the decision of going soft and have many students, or continue the same way and have few.
We decided to continue hard, even if we are alone. Is better to have 1 good BB each 5 years rather than 50 bad.

I have had 6 year old kids crying in anger trying to break a wood or doing a difficult thing in a gup test. They know the just have to do it or keep the same belt. It's Martial Art, period.
We even lower the rank to students who don't keep the hard work and get lazy.

Many people say to us this is archaic, but we think this is the real TSD.
Some parents take their child away cause they think we are torturing them. No single student has been injured since I remember.

We train at sub-zero temperatures at morning, no shoes. We train outdoors under the sun with hot floor, or raining, again no shoes.
We do sparring with no protection, only gloves. A Sa Bom Nim once told me "If there is no blood and bruises, it isn't sparring"
Few students withstand this. Some parents have told me we're crazy. I said: It's the Tang way, for crying out loud! accept it or take your kid to the boy scouts. (Some of them did )



Tang Soo!

If only there were more people like you in the KMA, and if only there were more schools like yours around in general. The problems these days is that students, people in general, are waaay tooo lazyyy! It is reflected throughout society at large, too. TKD and TSD share common roots from what I understand, there is going to be a commonality in technique. They both used the original forms from O/J Karate in their infancy, too. One remained a traditional art, and the other became mostly an olympic sport with traditional elements. Now the latter is slowly recovering its traditional side by and large.

 

[terryl965]

If only there were more people like you in the KMA, and if only there were more schools like yours around in general. The problems these days is that students, people in general, are waaay tooo lazyyy! It is reflected throughout society at large, too. TKD and TSD share common roots from what I understand, there is going to be a commonality in technique. They both used the original forms from O/J Karate in their infancy, too. One remained a traditional art, and the other became mostly an olympic sport with traditional elements. Now the latter is slowly recovering its traditional side by and large.

This is soo true.

 

[exile]

T

In my Dojang, we have the OLD method. It is very hard, traditional and authentic.
But, the problem is the people, they are lazy. The majority of students don't like hard training. They think a martial artist can be made in a single week, like a Holywood movie.... We discussed this many times when we closed a dojang. We were faced with the decision of going soft and have many students, or continue the same way and have few.
We decided to continue hard, even if we are alone. Is better to have 1 good BB each 5 years rather than 50 bad.

I have had 6 year old kids crying in anger trying to break a wood or doing a difficult thing in a gup test. They know the just have to do it or keep the same belt. It's Martial Art, period.
We even lower the rank to students who don't keep the hard work and get lazy.

Many people say to us this is archaic, but we think this is the real TSD.

There is nothing, nothing at all, that does not become diluted and 'grade-inflated' when it reaches a certain degree of poplular interest. A lot of people who were previously happy to make a very modest living, or teach their skill purely as a labor of love, start seeing dollars signs. They get the message from our promo-crazed commercial culture that they're being stupid if they don't try to cash in on the boom. It's happened to everything I've ever done that was a special, personal quest at one time and became a mass trend later on. Grade inflation isn't something that happens just at univiersities.

The comparison with college education is informative, though, because you see many of the same attitudes there and in MA training—especially the attitude that education, knowledge and credentials are a commodity, and therefore you, the teacher, have no right to deny students a passing, or even a high grade, as long as they've paid their tuition. I'm here, I'm paying, you owe me a degree. Try to find one university instructor who hasn't heard that line at least once or twice in his or her career—you'll have a long, long wait before you turn one up! It's exactly the same syndrome as with the belt mills: I'm paying you for this credential, and I expect my dan ranking no later than two years after I signed my first contract, not a minute more!

The difference is that in the university, you can look them coldly in the eye and tell them, 'I don't know who you think you'r talking to, but you get the grade you've earned, and you haven't earned an A. Or a B. Don't like it? Sue the university.' And the university backs its instructors up on this point. But with commercially oriented MA schools, that's a luxury that they can't afford. You guys have the right idea... but you have to face it: you're a relic of an earlier age, a genuine Kwan.

My hope is, one day that's going to be the way it is again.

 

[Montecarlodrag]

You guys have the right idea... but you have to face it: you're a relic of an earlier age, a genuine Kwan.

My hope is, one day that's going to be the way it is again.

Yes, you are right. We are only 3 remaining, we were many, but we always lose people. Many BB left, many students also leave to easier styles (to receive higher ranks). Too sad.

But I'd hate the idea of letting the authentic MA die.

I have given MA instruction on private Schools or gyms where you HAVE to give degrees to students, just because the owner wants the customers to be happy. But in your Dojang you can make a difference.

Many people don't believe us when we say how we train.
The ones who saw us training, with no shoes at morning on the snow, they called us crazy and archaic.
I don't think we are archaic or crazy. I don't remember a gup student being injured or sick because this training. Not even a flu.

When I was younger, I was used to catch a cold at least twice a year. After I started training TSD with this hard method, I forgot what a cold is. Im healtier than when I was 15.

I hope the true MA won't die.

Regards.

 

[YoungMan]

Keep in mind, there is a difference between hard training and foolish. To me, hard training means doing forms until your muscles ache, basic kicking until your legs can barely move, and pounding the sandbag.
Foolish training is trainng without shoes in subzero temperatures. That is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Keep in mind, the health and safety of the students must be number one, and any instructor who insists that dangerous=traditional is treading a slippery slope.

 

[MBuzzy]

While I whole haeartedly agree that people in general are lazy, most training is too easy, ranks are inflated, etc (the standard complaints that any serious Martial Artist has); I also must agree with Youngman here. Something that I ask (internally) of just about everything we do in a class is: What is the value added here?

Historically, making your students as physically tough as humanly possible including all kind of physical and mental abuse and torture was not only necessary, but it was accepted - both legally and within society. Today, in the US, it is not. There are things that you can get away with, but let's be realistic, if you are having your students spar on rocks with no pads...eventually that will catch up with you in the form of a lawsuit - and you have to ask yourself, does it help? There is value to taking a hit and learning to take a hit and making yourself tough, but to me, there is a line.

There is something I'm wondering here, maybe we have just strayed off topic, but is there some perception that there is a "difficulty" and toughness difference between TKD and TSD? Most of the harsh training comments seem to be directed at TSD training, but I can tell you that TODAY that training is going on FOR REAL in TKD in the Korean Army. I think that every style had some historical basis of harsh and hard training.

 

[terryl965]

Yes, you are right. We are only 3 remaining, we were many, but we always lose people. Many BB left, many students also leave to easier styles (to receive higher ranks). Too sad.

But I'd hate the idea of letting the authentic MA die.

I have given MA instruction on private Schools or gyms where you HAVE to give degrees to students, just because the owner wants the customers to be happy. But in your Dojang you can make a difference.

Many people don't believe us when we say how we train.
The ones who saw us training, with no shoes at morning on the snow, they called us crazy and archaic.
I don't think we are archaic or crazy. I don't remember a gup student being injured or sick because this training. Not even a flu.

When I was younger, I was used to catch a cold at least twice a year. After I started training TSD with this hard method, I forgot what a cold is. Im healtier than when I was 15.

I hope the true MA won't die.

Regards.

I know the feeling I loose people all the time to these so call belt factories. It is a crying shame.

 

[SageGhost83]

When I was younger, I was used to catch a cold at least twice a year. After I started training TSD with this hard method, I forgot what a cold is. Im healtier than when I was 15.

I hope the true MA won't die.

Regards.

Oh man, you too!? I used to catch a cold every year, now I can count the number of times on one hand that I have been under the weather in the last five years combined! I hope that the true MA won't die, either. We can take solace in the fact that there will always be somebody preserving the real thing even though the function in obscurity.

 

[Montecarlodrag]

Keep in mind, there is a difference between hard training and foolish. To me, hard training means doing forms until your muscles ache, basic kicking until your legs can barely move, and pounding the sandbag.
Foolish training is trainng without shoes in subzero temperatures. That is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Keep in mind, the health and safety of the students must be number one, and any instructor who insists that dangerous=traditional is treading a slippery slope.

Your definition of hard training and mine are very different, but I respect your opinion.
For me hard training is like I described above, and punch or kick wood till you bleed (and you are almost crying ), or sparring till you are almost knocked out. 99% of people will never withstand this.

Fortunately, we don't have to worry about lawsuits here in Mexico. If a student does not want to, we don't force him and he's free to leave anytime.

So this is only for Black belts and students who ask us to receive this training. Anybody who feels he/she is in danger is free to quit. We don't enforce anything, and we don't allow anybody to train like us untill we see he/she is capable of doing it.
-Many ask, but they are not capable
-A few are accepted, but won't return after first class

As I said, it is beautiful when somebody watches you doing hyungs on snow barefooted, and think you are going to die of pneumonia, but on the contrary, you are making yourself stonger.

I promise to upload a picture of myself doing that. It's cool.

 

[terryl965]

Your definition of hard training and mine are very different, but I respect your opinion.
For me hard training is like I described above, and punch or kick wood till you bleed (and you are almost crying ), or sparring till you are almost knocked out. 99% of people will never withstand this.

Fortunately, we don't have to worry about lawsuits here in Mexico. If a student does not want to, we don't force him and he's free to leave anytime.

So this is only for Black belts and students who ask us to receive this training. Anybody who feels he/she is in danger is free to quit. We don't enforce anything, and we don't allow anybody to train like us untill we see he/she is capable of doing it.
-Many ask, but they are not capable
-A few are accepted, but won't return after first class

As I said, it is beautiful when somebody watches you doing hyungs on snow barefooted, and think you are going to die of pneumonia, but on the contrary, you are making yourself stonger.

I promise to upload a picture of myself doing that. It's cool.

Everybody does what they consider hard training and if you are kicking wood until you bleed than that is, I can remember being over sea and doing some of this exact things that you mention.

 

[DMcHenry]

I know this is a very old thread but I do have an update. I finally thought to try contacting GM Kim Pyung-Soo again (GM Kim Soo) and he responded, twice.

I was trying to discover exactly what my TKD liniage was, and GM Kim Soo did let me know that the style of TKD I first began in that was extremly close to what I still do in TSD was Chang Moo KWan TKD under his elder brother, Master Kim Chang-Soo. Master Kim didn't begin training unitl after he left the Korean Marines where he was a Captain and Grandmaster Kim Soo was already a 2nd Dan in TKD.

GM Kim Soo did remember me training with him (amazing as it was about 30 years ago) while I was attending the University of Houston. He accepted me as a black belt because what I did was so similar to what he was teaching and I had trained under his brother. He remembered my dobak as it had the KimUk's Dojang logo on it. Not sure why Master Kim Chang-Soo went by "Kimuk Soo". I remember having the old "Kim-Soo Karate" black bumper sticker on my '67 Camaro.

 

[KarateMomUSA]

I know this is a very old thread but I do have an update. I finally thought to try contacting GM Kim Pyung-Soo again (GM Kim Soo) and he responded, twice.
I was trying to discover exactly what my TKD liniage was, and GM Kim Soo did let me know that the style of TKD I first began in that was extremly close to what I still do in TSD was Chang Moo KWan TKD under his elder brother, Master Kim Chang-Soo. Master Kim didn't begin training unitl after he left the Korean Marines where he was a Captain and Grandmaster Kim Soo was already a 2nd Dan in TKD.
GM Kim Soo did remember me training with him (amazing as it was about 30 years ago) while I was attending the University of Houston. He accepted me as a black belt because what I did was so similar to what he was teaching and I had trained under his brother. He remembered my dobak as it had the KimUk's Dojang logo on it. Not sure why Master Kim Chang-Soo went by "Kimuk Soo". I remember having the old "Kim-Soo Karate" black bumper sticker on my '67 Camaro.

Great story & thank you for the update.
Did you email him& was that how he responded?

 

[DMcHenry]

he's my "friend" on Facebook, which is what got me to think of sending him a private message (basically an email) and he responded fairly quickly. I had sent emails some years ago but didn't get a response.

 

[smhall89]

It's just really as you stated. They are very closely related. They have the same principles, hand and foot techniques and even self defense teachings. The big difference is the fact TKD is seen as more of a modern art (meaning sport-like) where TSD sticks to the traditional roots that it is formed from. Personally I prefer TSD just for the fact it is more traditional.

 

[195]

Actually theyre pretty different. Both stemmed off of the ancient art of tae kyun which has been around since around 57 BC. Tae kyun became soo bahk and eventually soo bahk do. Tae kwon do and tang soo do both are heavily influenced by soo bahk do and can be seen as modern versions of it. Tradtitional tae kwon do did employ hand techniques but when the government united the korean arts in 1960 tae kwon do became more of a sport than the traditional self defense style it was originally. This lead to the virtual exclusion of hand techniques in sport tae kwon do. Tang soo do on the other hand literally translates as "Ancient china hand way" and has many more hand techniques than tae kwon do. This is in part due to the fact that it is a fusion between shaolin gung fu (hence the form so rim jang kwan...so rim literally means shaolin), soo bahk do (hence the thirteen principles of the sam sip seh and the moo yei do bo tong ji), and japanese/okinawan shotokan karate (hence the pyung ahns and naihanjis). Both are usually taught together to get a good balance. You learn the hand techniques from tang soo do and the more sophisticated kicking techniques from tae kwon do.

 

[195]

If you want more info and dates of events on all of this just let me know.