Again, it depends on the tkd - then the school - then the teacher.
Do you not have elbow and knee strikes (combined with grabs/clinches) in your patterns?
Do you not do patterns against pad holders?
Do you not have elbows and knees (and grabs) in your set step sparring?
Oh, and I googled "muay thai clinch" - video results previews all showed wrap the neck, optionally trap one arm, go in with knee, optionally turn for sweep/takedown. Almost exactly like a move sequence in the Toi Gye pattern...
The bit I will freely agree with is it's certainly not taken to the same level as in MT.
WT TKD sparring rules are very similar to NFL holding rules. You can't grab, you can't wrap your arms around the person. Think of anything you can do in Judo or Wrestling - can't do in TKD. The "clinch" is more like an NFL block, with your hands square to the opponent on their chest to block their movement.
So there IS a clinch...but it's not the clinch, if that makes sense.
We use knees and elbows in our step sparring. We don't practice defense against them and we don't generally drill them on a moving target.
@skribs this is mainly for you, but other kukkiwon tkdists are free to answer me.
Reading your posts recently, I can't tell if this is your school or kukkiwon TKD in general...but the style doesn't seem to mesh with itself. You have kata and one-steps and techniques that focus on handwork, which is actively under-rewarded in the official style, so the style, and particularly the sparring format, doesn't seem to allow for the transition from form and drill to application. Instead, you are learning application for things (various kicks) that are not officially part of the forms/curriculum. To me that form-drill-application part is the most important, so it's an issue if the style has a disconnect between what it chooses to apply and what it chooses to teach...
Or am I just totally off base and getting implications from your posts that are not there?
I think it's accurate, to some degree at least. The way I see it, there's the art and demonstration (forms and tricking kicks), the self defense (which comes from forms, but also one-step drills), and sparring (sparring drills and tournaments).
Each of these are almost their own style. The combat style is very similar to Shotokan Karate, with some of our stuff reminding me of Krav Maga, and some of our more advanced drills a little bit of Wing Chun. The sparring style is unique to TKD as it is almost entirely kicks and focused on points, but any art that has a lot of kicks (kickboxing comes to mind) might be similar. Then there's the trick kicks which are more like Capoiera or Wushu.
So if you were to take away "Taekwondo", then we would do Karate forms and defense drills, kickboxing sparring, and Wushu demonstration kicks. There is definitely some incongruence there. Most TKD schools, to my knowledge, focus primarily on forms and sparring. (Most TKD people on this site probably go to a school which teaches more, so this site might not give a good demographic representation of TKD schools). While they are more focused than my school, they are still incongruent with each other.
You can probably see evidence of this in a post I recently made in the TKD forum about how the forms don't teach sparring tactics, and what would a form look like if it taught the techniques and tactics used in TKD sparring? I also have expressed similar thoughts about the new competition forms, which include sparring moves, more traditional punching techniques, and some trick kicks. It's like the form can't decide what it is.
If you look at the history of Taekwondo (you can get a summary of these from the stickies in the TKD forum) you'll see why this all has happened. Taekwondo's roots in Tang Soo Do and Karate are where the base combat system comes from. TKD's decision to focus on kicks in sparring (since anyone can throw a punch to the head) and the R&D that's gone into that game is why the sparring is the way it is. And the trick kicks are an extension of that focus on kicks, with a different idea in mind - to look cool.
So I understand why it's branched out the way it has. But you're right, it's gotten to a point where you're learning different things, and for the most part can feel like 2 different arts that you fit into one class, and it can be hard for the students to figure out what type of technique they need for what application.
