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terryl965

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Where are we in the scope of Martial Artist, are we seen as a valuable source for self defense, are we seen as a vauable source of fitness, are we seen as heckler and jeckler of the MA world.

I'm not asking to be mean about my choosen art I'm asking to see where we are heading in twenty years and why are we choosen to go down that path. I mean my tkd is solid in my opinion does this means it is the end all of martial arts no. So what do we do as student of TKD do, to help preserve all that is holly within the Art, I know the sport will be here forever but will the art?
 

TKDmel

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I know the sport will be here forever but will the art?

I just logged on to the USAT website and read where they are forming a committee to address that very issue. They want to preserve the "Traditional ways" yet one of the commitee members is, (just my opinion) the last person to talk about traditional ways. TKD as a martial art will only survive if instructors pass on the "old ways". More emphasis on the tenets, honor, and how bettering oneself through the arts is acheived. JMHO
 

zDom

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Where are we in the scope of Martial Artist, are we seen as a valuable source for self defense, are we seen as a vauable source of fitness, are we seen as heckler and jeckler of the MA world.

I'm not asking to be mean about my choosen art I'm asking to see where we are heading in twenty years and why are we choosen to go down that path. I mean my tkd is solid in my opinion does this means it is the end all of martial arts no. So what do we do as student of TKD do, to help preserve all that is holly within the Art, I know the sport will be here forever but will the art?

I really don't know.

It seems we are being seen as a foot-tag sport and fitness activity for children.

I find, more and more often, I find myself referring to my TKD as "traditional TKD" to distance myself from the sport/fitness activity varieties.

It is likely if I stay in THIS area, preserving traditional TKD, as far as I'm concerned, will remain someone else's responsibility; I've got to work on preserving MSK hapkido for another generation.

If for whatever reason I move off somewhere, well in that case I might open a dojang of my own, teach traditional TKD and HKD.

Because if I ever teach TKD, it will be traditional, first and foremost. It's all I know :)
 

Flying Crane

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I find, more and more often, I find myself referring to my TKD as "traditional TKD" to distance myself from the sport/fitness activity varieties.

A similar thing is happening in the Chinese martial arts to differentiate between the performance/competition variety of Modern Wushu vs. the traditional fighting arts that still tend to go by the moniker "kung fu", but can also be called "traditional wushu". Those of us who practice the fighting arts don't generally want to be mistaken for the wushu kids...
 

exile

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It's happening in karate too. Reading the work of progressive combat-oriented karate theorists and practitioners like Rick Clark, Iain Abernethy and Bill Burgar, you find them them constantly juxtaposing sport karate with something else, something that always involves invocation of names like Itosu, Matsumura, Egami, Motobu and Chotoku Kyan, which I can't think of a better name for than `REALLY traditional karate'.

I think that it's probably happening in any martial art which has developed a significant sport competition/entertainment side. TKD is maybe unique, though, in being the only one of the lot where the official government agency responsible for defining the art's curriculum has used that perogative to essentially define away the combat aspect, leaving only the sport/entertainment side...
 

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We are even seeing competitions in Capoeira, and many of the flashy, capoeira-esque movements are finding a new home in the XMA stuff that I personally despise. It's gotten so bad I'm embarrassed to throw a beija-flor because I keep seeing them in the (very few) XMA demonstrations that I've been unfortunate enough to stumble across. In my opinion, it's a bizarre thing. Capoeira is being more and more mistaken for a dance, and written off as a viable fighting technique, and in the mainstream it's probably true. Very unfortunate...
 

exile

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We are even seeing competitions in Capoeira, and many of the flashy, capoeira-esque movements are finding a new home in the XMA stuff that I personally despise. It's gotten so bad I'm embarrassed to throw a beija-flor because I keep seeing them in the (very few) XMA demonstrations that I've been unfortunate enough to stumble across. In my opinion, it's a bizarre thing. Capoeira is being more and more mistaken for a dance, and written off as a viable fighting technique, and in the mainstream it's probably true. Very unfortunate...

There seems to be a pattern here.

Increasingly in North American culture, the participant role has been replaced by the audience member role. The sociologist Max Lerner, writing in the 1950s and 60s, characterized America as the place where what he called the `art of vicarious living'—living life at second hand, through the activities of others—had been perfected. In the MAs, a new wrinkle has been added: MAs, originally fighting arts, have been become first entertainment sports, as in competitive TKD/karate/Copeira/etc, and now entertainment spectacles, as per XMA—martial arts to martial sports to martial acrobatics. Now, completing the cycle, everyone and his brother wants to reenter as participants, but not participants in the art—instead, participants in the spectacle. It's all about being famous, after all, no?
 

flashlock

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I really don't know.

It seems we are being seen as a foot-tag sport and fitness activity for children.

I find, more and more often, I find myself referring to my TKD as "traditional TKD" to distance myself from the sport/fitness activity varieties.

Ah, such unhappy memories! I was in TKD for 5 years, one belt away from BB when our organization decided to move into the "sports" direction (this was early 1990's).

I remember my teacher told me of his experiences in Korea sparring these Olympic guys. They would hit him with 20 kicks in 5 seconds, then he'd hit them with one punch and they'd fall on the mat like children.

It's sad, but the present and future of TKD, from what I've seen, is sports fed by the dues of "Little Ninjas" or Little Dragons" classes.
 

Just4Kicks

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My form is ITF, which is more traditional than WTF. My instructor is pretty traditional and we are taught the moves, yet the 'do' is neglected. My aim is to be an instructor and teach both the physical and spiritual aspects.
 

exile

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Ah, such unhappy memories! I was in TKD for 5 years, one belt away from BB when our organization decided to move into the "sports" direction (this was early 1990's).

I remember my teacher told me of his experiences in Korea sparring these Olympic guys. They would hit him with 20 kicks in 5 seconds, then he'd hit them with one punch and they'd fall on the mat like children.

It's sad, but the present and future of TKD, from what I've seen, is sports fed by the dues of "Little Ninjas" or Little Dragons" classes.

It doesn't have to be that way. Stuart Anslow's book on combat-effective bunkai for the ITF tuls, and Simon O'Neil's published version of his Combat-TKD newsletter bunkai for the WTF (omitting, alas, the Palgwes), suggest that there's a serious clientele out there for military-style TKD built on hand/arm techs and low kicks, restoring its Kwan-era effectiveness with interest.

I can even see a real-life scenario which would bring about that outcome: the commercial success of MMA schools could well draw off the bulk of TKD's current clientele in the next decade, and the increasing clout of China could equally well lead to a Chinese MA supplanting TKD as the Olympic striking art (it was an issue during the past year, and it's not going to go away). Given the respective size of their populations, economy and influence, it's not hard to estimate realistically the relative impact of China and Korea on the invertebrate IOC, if the former decides to initiate a serious push to get some CMA style, under the rubric `Kung fu' or `Wushu', to replace TKD. This could well be the best thing to happen to TKD in the past half century. If TKD loses its Olympic cachet, it will probably revert to the same scale as Tang Soo Do, which it was once identical with (all the original kwans called their art either Tang Soo Do or Kong Soo Do, both transliterations of Okinawan and Japanese `karate) before the faction-fighting in the 1950s and '60s led to the split in the Moo Doo Kwan, leaving TSD as a minority KMA activity.

At that point, anyone who wants to do, or continue to do, TKD will be doing it for reasons having little to do with international sports glory. What better reason, in that case, than the chance to practice a literally battle-tested hard linear martial art which can, if trained effectively, let you be the last man standing in an unsought violent encounter?

I can hardly wait.... :EG:
 

flashlock

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It doesn't have to be that way. Stuart Anslow's book on combat-effective bunkai for the ITF tuls, and Simon O'Neil's published version of his Combat-TKD newsletter bunkai for the WTF (omitting, alas, the Palgwes), suggest that there's a serious clientele out there for military-style TKD built on hand/arm techs and low kicks, restoring its Kwan-era effectiveness with interest.

I can even see a real-life scenario which would bring about that outcome: the commercial success of MMA schools could well draw off the bulk of TKD's current clientele in the next decade, and the increasing clout of China could equally well lead to a Chinese MA supplanting TKD as the Olympic striking art (it was an issue during the past year, and it's not going to go away). Given the respective size of their populations, economy and influence, it's not hard to estimate realistically the relative impact of China and Korea on the invertebrate IOC, if the former decides to initiate a serious push to get some CMA style, under the rubric `Kung fu' or `Wushu', to replace TKD. This could well be the best thing to happen to TKD in the past half century. If TKD loses its Olympic cachet, it will probably revert to the same scale as Tang Soo Do, which it was once identical with (all the original kwans called their art either Tang Soo Do or Kong Soo Do, both transliterations of Okinawan and Japanese `karate) before the faction-fighting in the 1950s and '60s led to the split in the Moo Doo Kwan, leaving TSD as a minority KMA activity.

At that point, anyone who wants to do, or continue to do, TKD will be doing it for reasons having little to do with international sports glory. What better reason, in that case, than the chance to practice a literally battle-tested hard linear martial art which can, if trained effectively, let you be the last man standing in an unsought violent encounter?

I can hardly wait.... :EG:

You and your combat TKD! :) I agree with you, it doesn't have to turn into sport with champions of the traditional ways willing to take a dramatic pay cut to preserve the old guard--but how many organizations, how many TEACHERS, are willing to do that? It's hard to turn down all those parents with all that cash...
 

Carol

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You and your combat TKD! :) I agree with you, it doesn't have to turn into sport with champions of the traditional ways willing to take a dramatic pay cut to preserve the old guard--but how many organizations, how many TEACHERS, are willing to do that? It's hard to turn down all those parents with all that cash...

Not necessarily. It really depends on what motivates a teacher to teach in the first place. We've all had jobs that suck. ;) Teaching in a situation that isn't right for the instructor is just that...a job that sucks. :D Some folks that teach have an education and job skills that put them in a position where they are not totally dependent on Martial Arts for their career. Those are the folks that have the most creativity and have the most freedom to do whatever they want.
 

exile

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You and your combat TKD! :) I agree with you, it doesn't have to turn into sport with champions of the traditional ways willing to take a dramatic pay cut to preserve the old guard--but how many organizations, how many TEACHERS, are willing to do that? It's hard to turn down all those parents with all that cash...

That's the part that I see supplied by the attractiveness of MMA schools. Probably very few orgs and individual instructors are willing to do that voluntarily, no question—you're right about that. But it may not be voluntary. The popularity of MAs is pretty fragile. In the 1960s and 70s, it was karate—that was practically synonymous with `martial art'. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was TKD; and then all of a sudden, it's these grappling arts, BJJ and the mixed art scene... and to me it looks like that trend is only getting stronger as time goes on. This may simply be fantasy (or wishful thinking?) But if the MMA schools wind up supplanting the TKD dojangs for that parental $$ and the flash/glamor appeal, then anyone in the TKD business who wants to continue is going to have to offer something different... like a return to the fighting roots of the art. I might be imagining all this, but I notice that in karate, the hottest new development is just this street-credible interpretation of traditional karate techniques that people in the UK have been promoting for the last few years. Well, TKD is, for at least some of us, just Korean karate. Isn't it possible that that movement `back' to the realistic combat roots of the art, paralleling the same development in karate, could offer a way out for dojang owners if Olympic ambitions wind up failing?

It's just one scenario, I know. But your own anecdote about this chap punching out all those high-kicking Olympic TKD `stylists' is very much to the point. In the end, TKD organizations and their instructional staff may have no choice: bring back the fighting content of TKD or perish...

*hope hope hope*
 

Jonathan Randall

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You and your combat TKD! :) I agree with you, it doesn't have to turn into sport with champions of the traditional ways willing to take a dramatic pay cut to preserve the old guard--but how many organizations, how many TEACHERS, are willing to do that? It's hard to turn down all those parents with all that cash...

I understand your point, and there are several commercial TKD BB factories for children in my general area and only ONE traditional, hardcore TKD school still in operation - and the owner is now in his 70's and would retire if he had a successor ready.

However; don't underestimate the effectiveness of old school TKD. The one I'm speaking about was a Korean Army Officer during the Korean war, than served in the U.S. Air Force before coming to the U.S. permanently in the early 1960's. In the 1950's he was a Judo champion in the service. His TKD course had a much better rounded curriculum of grappling and hand techniques (with few flashy kicks), than you'll see popularly advertised as "Tae Kwon Do".
 

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I think zDOM hit on a good point...right, wrong or indifferent, I think we are seen more as a foot tag sport. Our style is seen as vastly inferior in a true "self defense" application based on what people see in the Olympics - fighters who don't use their hands, who don't block, who keep their hands down, etc. I can't count the number of times I've heard that one..."they don't keep their hands up..they'll be killed in a real fight".

From my personal experience, it seems, though terribly unfortunate, that that is the way the style is headed. THough I'm sure there are many schools out there that maintain traditional ways (if you're in one, count yourself blessed, hang on tight and don't let go!), I think the majority are glomming onto the tournament mentality. Probably - as many have stated, because that's where the majority of interest lies these days: competition. UFC, Pride, K-1...they are fueling a competition based MA society. The result is an instructor who either doesn't care to teach the traditional ways, or worse, one who doesn't even know the traditional ways (man have I been there).
 

Shaderon

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You and your combat TKD! :) I agree with you, it doesn't have to turn into sport with champions of the traditional ways willing to take a dramatic pay cut to preserve the old guard--but how many organizations, how many TEACHERS, are willing to do that? It's hard to turn down all those parents with all that cash...

Hey I'm with him on it! Combat style TKD all the way! :highfive:

I see so many instructors in GTUK make a face as if to spit when they say "sport style TKD" that I know it'll carry on, even in the small way, as long as there are these kind of teachers, and people like Exile who want to teach it. I certainly will when I get the grade. Even if there is a vast number of parents who want their kids to do the sport style, people usually don't know enough to differentiate between the styles before starting and will just enrol at the nearest class. I say teach em! Let them decide when they see how effective what they are learning is.
 

exile

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I see so many instructors in GTUK make a face as if to spit when they say "sport style TKD" that I know it'll carry on, even in the small way, as long as there are these kind of teachers, and people like Exile who want to teach it. I certainly will when I get the grade. Even if there is a vast number of parents who want their kids to do the sport style, people usually don't know enough to differentiate between the styles before starting and will just enrol at the nearest class. I say teach em! Let them decide when they see how effective what they are learning is.

I appreciate and find reassuring Carol's, Jonathan's and Shaderon's support for the idea that traditional combat-oriented TKD could be viable even if separated from the Olympic version (which it's possible some of the ITF schools will come to resemble more; there are some other threads which suggest that ITF fighters may be training in a way more associated with WTF sparring rules). But from what Flashlock says, it seems to me that his skepticism is more directed at the idea that TKD instructors would give up lucrative income from their sparring-oriented curriculum (given that that's what parents tend to want their kids to learn) than at the idea that there's an problem with teaching the hard-edged TKD that I've been referring to. And it's true, a lot of people are going to be influenced by the economics of the situation. I've suggested that there are some not-implausible scenarios which would lead to a major change in the economics which might lead to a revival of old-style, Kwan-era TKD as the best way of keeping dojang doors open.

There one other angle that I think is also worth considering. A lot of dojangs are small outfits, and the owner/operator/chief instructor is teaching as a labor of love; for these people, emphasis on the old-style curriculum, or even a `ramping up' of that curriculum using the new research and discoveries about the analysis/application of hyungs, is going to be far less problematic because the people in question aren't trying to make a killing, or even a profit&#8212;my own instructor directs several dojangs, but he also teaches in the Columbus rec center program for free, and I've heard of a number of other people who do this as well. There are more setups like this than we realize, I suspect. For these people, who don't have to run the extended drop baby-sitting services that a lot of big outfits do under the heading `Kid's Programs', a sharper-edged approach to TKD could well be an attractive option. And I also have hopes that in parts of the world, like the UK, where the approach to the MAs seems to involve less mass-market merchandising than what I see around here, there will be a positive influence in the same direction. So I do think there's hope... and not just for TKD, but for Japanese karate (Okinawan seems less affected) and the other striking arts that are facing the same dilemma...
 

Brian R. VanCise

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Really it comes down to each individual instructor and organization and how they wish to teach and prosper. Many Tae Kwon Do instructors are teaching the traditional aspect with an emphasis on self defense rather than sport. Of course there are quite a few that are teaching in more of pure sporting manner. There are also some that try to balance both. So what I always advise people is to figure out what they want when they are looking for a Training Hall and then to find one that seems to suit this.

Tae Kwon Do can be practiced for exercise, sport, tradition or purely for combat. It just depends on the focus in the Training Hall.
 

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Yea, our style is mainly combat, but we spar two ways, we spar for technique practice but we also learn "point sparring" too... e.g. using the top of the foot in a relatively light tap with a turning kick as opposed to the ball of the foot in a powered kick which is the usual drills and sparring for us. I think doing both is fun, it teaches us to think about what we are doing, how we are doing it and keeps us awake to the purpose of why we are striking out.
I don't see it as the instructors moving towards sport style though, I see it as an acceptance that it exists and people want to know how to do it.
 

stoneheart

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TKD was my first art. To this day, I owe my kicking skills to TKD, but I have moved on to Okinawan karate and aikido/aikijutsu.

It's getting difficult to find good TKD instruction if you are interested in it for self-defense. Most of the schools in my area are tournament oriented, and they lean too far into the self-esteem/leadership skills building camp in my opinion. It's hard for me as an adult to take most of these dojangs credibly.
 

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