Where are we

[flashlock]

I saw your disclaimer but you still have this fascination with the MMA fights to hold some sort of respect for any Art. See I do not see MMA as anything except what it is a sport base on rules and guidelines just like OLympic TKD or point sparring or contiuous sparring when rules apply it is a game.

In the streets or in the Service there are really no ruls of engegement one will win and one shall lose, hopefully I will be on the winning side more often with my training and such.


UFC and similiar competitions, in my opinion, could add to TKD cred. If TKD guys rolled over everyone in TKD, you wouldn't be complaining about "knees to the back of the head"--please

Flashlock you and the MMA group made the rules not me I really don't care if I got kneed inthe back of the head, if I was stupid enought o give someone that position then I deserve that knee.

But I will say you have your way about you and you are withen topic so carry on with your words of wisdom for all of us TKD'ers and how we can use MMA to preserve our ARt, sorry I mean sport because if we use MMA it will be for the sport not for real SD.

Hi, Terry:

I was wondering where you were coming from, then I clicked on the link to your website. The focus of your school, judging by your own website, seems to be Olympic TKD and childrens' classes--I think people should be aware of that in light of this thread. Since you have such experience in teaching sports TKD and children, perhaps you could let us know how, in the big scheme of things, that that is a good thing for TKD, considering the problems others have brought up on those very issues. Hypothetically, would you give up the revenue generated from childrens' classes and sports TKD for the traditional TKD? Could your business survive? Or is the website not totally representative of what you really do?

Thanks!

 

[terryl965]

Hi, Terry:

I was wondering where you were coming from, then I clicked on the link to your website. The focus of your school, judging by your own website, seems to be Olympic TKD and childrens' classes--I think people should be aware of that in light of this thread. Since you have such experience in teaching sports TKD and children, perhaps you could let us know how, in the big scheme of things, that that is a good thing for TKD, considering the problems others have brought up on those very issues. Hypothetically, would you give up the revenue generated from childrens' classes and sports TKD for the traditional TKD? Could your business survive? Or is the website not totally representative of what you really do?

Thanks!

For your information my experience is with traditional TKD and Okinawa Karate.
Here is my Background for you

Since the age of 4 I started Okinawa Karate under my father guideness he was a Master Drill Instructor for the Marines for 38 years he tought Karate and Judo and in1884 I switched over to TKD for the only hard core school I found tought this style been with it since then, I hold a 5th in Okinawa Karate and a 4th in TDK.

I started up Olympic style when my son had a desire to make the Olympic dream. We do both open and point sparring along with Olympic Style and if you really read my website it say Traditional and Olympic style.

Please know your facts before trying to dis-credit me in front of people that know me and my training. For the most part all of my training came from over sea's though my father and some of the great Instructor I have ever meet but you are entitle to your opinion.

Have fun trying to be-little me without proper knowledge.

Much respect

 

[terryl965]

Hypothetically, would you give up the revenue generated from childrens' classes and sports TKD for the traditional TKD? Could your business survive? Or is the website not totally representative of what you really do?


I must comment od this do you know how much my childern classes brings into my school lets just say this me my wif and three kids can barely go out to eat on it.

We have a trust set up from my other companys that put this kids as you call them into the school and keeps them off the streets. I said in my earlier post maybe you should know what you are talking about, go back in look into my history of Martial Arts and then make educated decussion about it I have more knowledge I would guess than you since you did the very thing in this section as you did in another section, Please try and be educated before making blank statements about me or my school.

 

[exile]

So I have been thinking a lot about the question Terry posed in his OP—how do we preserve the sound, effective core of TKD, the things that spoke to the problem which brought it into being—how are you going to defend yourself from an untrained, dangerous attacker in a conflict you did not seek out but cannot now avoid?—and this issue of sport/tradition. I'll say this much for Flashlock's distaste for the dichotomy: very often the `traditional' side is as empty from the combat perspective as the sport side. Emphasizing the mere performance of patterns, rather than their application (or rather the application of the subsequences they can be decomposed into) and training those application, along with the adoption holus-bolus of the kihon line training method the kwan founders learned when they studied their MAs in Japan in the 30s, isn't good enough; that's what I think of as blind allegiance to tradition, and it's not good enough precisely because it gives the practitioner no more of an effective, versatile combat system than learning sport TKD (or karate, or `demonstration' Wu Shu). This ties in directly with Brian's point:

Old style TKD is not about sport and therefore it was built first and foremost to be able to survive in a combative situation. For that it has been very successful based on the feared reputation of the ROK in Vietnam and other conflicts.

When you merge a self defense form into a sport you get a rule based driven competition that takes the martial out of it. That does not mean that it is not useful or effective for what it is intended to do but that it simply is no longer geared towards personal protection but instead is geared towards competition in a ring. Two very, very different animals.

The point of studying the history and the traditions of TKD (or karate or any other MA) isn't so you can get a warm fuzzy lineage about practicing some supposedly ancient combat systems that links you to the Old Stone Age. The true reason is because the conditions under which any MA grew and flourished in the past contain pointers to technical details that are relevant to how components of the art are best applied in contemporary practice. Knowing that Itosu, Matsumura and the other forefathers of modern TKD did not spend their own fighting careers blocking assailants' punches, but instead typically flattened them in the first few moves of the fight, is a crucial piece of information when looking at a down block and realizing that it's actually an upward elbow strike followed by a lateral `spearing' elbow strike followed by a knifehand or hammerfist strike to your choice of targets on the opponent's forcibly lowered upper body (which is what the `retraction chambering' hand is actually helping you to enforce). It's not a block primarily, or even secondarily. The forms are an entrée into the mind of the great Okinawan fighters and their best senior students showing us how they saw strikes, throws, locks and neck-twists flowing together in the course of a fight they wanted to end, like, right now. If tradition isn't studied from this point of view—for clues to actual combat practice—then yes, it's just so much fluff.

So from that general point of view, my best guess at a useful answer to Terry's question is, what TKD needs is a network—or system of networks—of dojangs, dojos and other MA schools committed to this idea of combat application under realistic, often very unpleasant and, almost certainly, way less than ideal conditions...the kind of thing that Brian has been building with his Instinctive Response Training program. The last thing we need is another organization with the greed, egomania and other-than-combat agendas we see in virtually every large MA association. What I'm thinking of is a kind of informal North American version of the British Combat Association and their constellation of seminars, special training programs and cross-fertilization of tactical resources. People in the BCA don't lose the separate identity of their `home' MAs; they learn from each other how best to train those MAs and how to better perfrom the tactical components—locks, for example, or the uses of chokes in a striking art, or technique `flow'—that their own arts shares with many others. If I had my own school, that's what I'd be looking to help get set up. Nothing institutionalized or bureaucratized; but a community of combat-oriented MA schools more interested in developing effective self-defense fighters than in empty emblems of rank, like fifteeenth Dan belts, or profits from teaching people lame cardio kickboxing routines and packaging them as effective self-defense and great character-builders for kids...

 

[Flying Crane]

But that's the point, flashlock: I don't see the future of TKD as related to increasing its revenue stream. In fact, I believe the opposite is true, to this extent: I would love to see some Chinese MA get the Olympic nod, and have TKD be de-Olympicized. I think that would be the best thing for the art, because it would change the focus of people who do TKD—which is the part of Terry's OP that is my sole concern:

Oh Exile man, now I gotta come out swingin', as these here are fightin' words!

What you are talking about here would be shifting the woes of Sport/Olympic TKD onto the Chinese arts, which already has enough woes of its own, and I gotsta draw a line in the sand. I don't want to see that happen to MY arts either, so don't you go pushing your dirty laundry onto the CMA world :rofl:. There's a push to try to get Chinese arts into the Olympics, and it's a push that I am opposed to. It's a good way to ruin any art, it's too bad it started with TKD, and others are trying to get on the bandwagon.

You are making some outstanding contributions to these discussions by the way. Apparently I don't pass around Rep enough to be able to rep you even half as much as I would if I could...:asian:

 

[Xue Sheng]

Oh Exile man, now I gotta come out swingin', as these here are fightin' words!

What you are talking about here would be shifting the woes of Sport/Olympic TKD onto the Chinese arts, which already has enough woes of its own, and I gotsta draw a line in the sand. I don't want to see that happen to MY arts either, so don't you go pushing your dirty laundry onto the CMA world :rofl:. There's a push to try to get Chinese arts into the Olympics, and it's a push that I am opposed to. It's a good way to ruin any art, it's too bad it started with TKD, and others are trying to get on the bandwagon.

You are making some outstanding contributions to these discussions by the way. Apparently I don't pass around Rep enough to be able to rep you even half as much as I would if I could...:asian:

HEY EXILE!!! WHAT HE SAID!!! ALL OF IT!!!


And could you PLEASE just leave CMA alone.... We have enough troubles already. :asian:

 

[flashlock]

Hypothetically, would you give up the revenue generated from childrens' classes and sports TKD for the traditional TKD? Could your business survive? Or is the website not totally representative of what you really do?


I must comment od this do you know how much my childern classes brings into my school lets just say this me my wif and three kids can barely go out to eat on it.

We have a trust set up from my other companys that put this kids as you call them into the school and keeps them off the streets. I said in my earlier post maybe you should know what you are talking about, go back in look into my history of Martial Arts and then make educated decussion about it I have more knowledge I would guess than you since you did the very thing in this section as you did in another section, Please try and be educated before making blank statements about me or my school.

Sir, I made no statements about your schools other than what scant information is provided on your website. I've read everything on your website, and there is no mention of sponsoring children to get them off the streets. There are a lot of posts on this thread concerning Olympic style TKD and catering to children--those are the foci of your school according to your website, so I thought I would ask you directly about it. Instead of sharing your thoughts with the patience and wisdom you extol to your own students, I receive hostile personal attacks. Good luck with your schools, especially with the charity work you do with the children (i.e. Katrina).

 

[terryl965]

Sir, I made no statements about your schools other than what scant information is provided on your website. I've read everything on your website, and there is no mention of sponsoring children to get them off the streets. There are a lot of posts on this thread concerning Olympic style TKD and catering to children--those are the foci of your school according to your website, so I thought I would ask you directly about it. Instead of sharing your thoughts with the patience and wisdom you extol to your own students, I receive hostile personal attacks. Good luck with your schools, especially with the charity work you do with the children (i.e. Katrina).

Please do not flatter yourself trying to be all and mighty, I do not make it that public what we give back to the community, my intention are to who I am and to try and give what I can.

So in your eyes you only see what you wish to see and believe me there is no personal attack I really do not care for your kind of person. I have seen them come and go over forty years in the Arts.
You may see a kiddie school as you put it but ask the adults that train with me and my website was built for the parent and the childern the adults do not need to see themself with glory doing something good. I know this may not make sense to you since all you care about is the MMA relm of fighting. Please go outside and take a few deep breaths and calm down about Arts that you personnalily have no Ideal about except what you have read.

And for anybody that condems TKD that is there opinion and I hope there eyes will eventually open to the real world.

Goodnight and God Bless

PS I find your your I.E. Katrina endawindow to be less the Honorable, to those people put out with that disaster.

 

[exile]

Oh Exile man, now I gotta come out swingin', as these here are fightin' words!

What you are talking about here would be shifting the woes of Sport/Olympic TKD onto the Chinese arts, which already has enough woes of its own, and I gotsta draw a line in the sand. I don't want to see that happen to MY arts either, so don't you go pushing your dirty laundry onto the CMA world :rofl:. There's a push to try to get Chinese arts into the Olympics, and it's a push that I am opposed to. It's a good way to ruin any art, it's too bad it started with TKD, and others are trying to get on the bandwagon.

Hey Michael, by now you know, I'm sure, that Olympic sports glory isn't a curse I would wish on anyone. In truth, I'd hate to see the embattled traditional CMAs—which have already been pushed and shoved in the direction of flash-Wushu by a Chinese government trying to do with showbiz what the ROK decided to try to do with artificial-rule sports competition—have to take on the additional horror of full-blown Olympomania. I didn't actually pick CMAs at random in my facetious comment about CMAs getting Olympic status; I'd actually heard something about this Olympic initiative. All CMAers in their right minds would do well to join you in opposing this worst-of-all-possible-ideas. And thank you for your kinds words and sharp input here and elsewhere on the board! :asian:

I think this has been a very useful thread, very productive with a lot of solid points made. I suspect that on the whole many of the participants are much closer in their view of things than it might appear from a quick inspection of the early posts. The thing I like best about MT as a board is the way the fora allow the participants to do a kind of thinking `aloud' in the context of a conversation, which often seems to allow the points of both convergence and divergence to surface. In something which as emotionally loaded as the MAs seems to be, that's a great help in getting one's own thinking clearer; at least, that's what I've been finding...