Your Curriculum

[Jaeimseu]

Do you base your curriculum on an organization's guidelines, a book (example Kukkiwon Textbook or General Choi's Encyclopedia)?

Is your curriculum balanced around your own bias/preference? For example, do you focus on sparring because you like sparring, forms because you like forms? Do you avoid demonstration skills because they aren't "practical self defense?" Do you avoid teaching students skills that you may not be able to perform well, or that in your opinion are not "useful?"

What percentage of class time is dedicated to each different aspect of Taekwondo? Why is it set up that way?

 

[Earl Weiss]

Lots of good quaestions.

The org. USTF provides minimum core requirements for rank. Instructors do those plus whatever we like. For me, having been in Ju Jitsu Since 1975, my curriculum has a good dose of that.

I try to teach in 10 - 20 minute Blocks. These blocks include : Fundamental movements, Patterns, Kicking, Hand Techniques, Sparring, Sparring techniques and Theory, Ho Sin Sul / Ju Jitsu, General Knowledge. Every item is not covered in every class.

 

[Dirty Dog]

As with Earl, we follow the basic requirements of our org (the Moo Duk Kwan) as the core teachings, plus.

 

[Kong Soo Do]

Do you base your curriculum on an organization's guidelines, a book (example Kukkiwon Textbook or General Choi's Encyclopedia)?

Is your curriculum balanced around your own bias/preference? For example, do you focus on sparring because you like sparring, forms because you like forms? Do you avoid demonstration skills because they aren't "practical self defense?" Do you avoid teaching students skills that you may not be able to perform well, or that in your opinion are not "useful?"

What percentage of class time is dedicated to each different aspect of Taekwondo? Why is it set up that way?

Our curriculum has a foundational base from the IKSDA. Members of the IKSDA share in common a form simply called the 'Basic 20'. There will be an additional form (kata) added to the IKSDA curriculum called Mu Shin once I am able to provide in-depth information and teaching on it to the various member schools. Mu Shin is a form (kata) that comprises 25 movement sequences that form the basis of Mu Shin Kwan Kong Soo Do. The form (kata), as far as movement conclusions are tailored individually to each student. Thus this form (kata) will differ slightly from person to person as it is based upon their individual strengths while taking into account their limitations.

I would say that my particular curriculum, outside of the standard IKSDA material, is definitely based upon my personal bias. If I would not use it, in a real altercation, against a determined, violent attacker then I don't teach it. I would estimate that 95% of a class is spent on one of the aspects, principles, strategies of the Mu Shin form (kata). The reason the class is set up this way is due to the needs of our students i.e. self-defense. The rest of the time on warm up and strength and conditioning.

 

[ralphmcpherson]

our school has a set of guidelines and a curriculum, but we have 40 or 50 instructors and each puts their own flavour to what they teach. I have trained under three separate instructors and each were vastly different while still adhering to the club's curriculum. My first instructor was obsessed with form and technique and it shows in his students. My second instructor was driven by hard sparring and its easy to tell his students at gradings, they are very aggressive and if someone gets knocked out its always by one of his students. My current instructor teaches "fighting" with a heavy emphasis on self defence and we therefore have quite a few police officers and bouncers in the class.

 

[Kong Soo Do]

our school has a set of guidelines and a curriculum, but we have 40 or 50 instructors and each puts their own flavour to what they teach. I have trained under three separate instructors and each were vastly different while still adhering to the club's curriculum. My first instructor was obsessed with form and technique and it shows in his students. My second instructor was driven by hard sparring and its easy to tell his students at gradings, they are very aggressive and if someone gets knocked out its always by one of his students. My current instructor teaches "fighting" with a heavy emphasis on self defence and we therefore have quite a few police officers and bouncers in the class.

Diversity brings experience. Sounds like a great place to train.

 

[Egon]

Do you base your curriculum on an organization's guidelines, a book (example Kukkiwon Textbook or General Choi's Encyclopedia)?

Is your curriculum balanced around your own bias/preference? For example, do you focus on sparring because you like sparring, forms because you like forms? Do you avoid demonstration skills because they aren't "practical self defense?" Do you avoid teaching students skills that you may not be able to perform well, or that in your opinion are not "useful?"

What percentage of class time is dedicated to each different aspect of Taekwondo? Why is it set up that way?

I don't know does this questions counts for ITF practicioners too.

Curriculum

We are doing all 5 aspects of Taekwondo: tuls, sparring, breaking, self defense, and special techniques. Of course, not everybody are required to be good at all of this; neither everybody can be good in everything.

In practical, it looks like this: everybody is required to do forms and sparring (at least at gradings), and students that wish to train other three disciplines are able to; however not obligate.

In black belt grading they are required to perform all tuls from Chon Ji to Chong Moo, full contact sparring (with one and two opponents), multiple boards breaking, undefined self defense, and special techniques. So many of them have problems grading because they focus mainly on tuls and sparring.

Classes

Classes are divided like this: two days a week tuls, two days a week sparring/kicking sessions, one day a week self defense. About 4 time a month somewhere in between we do breaking. It changes a bit before competition, when we focus on competition requirements.

Core context of the class depends on instructor / assistant who is holding the class. When I teach them; sparring is very hard, kyokoshin like (sometimes semi contact without protectives), I teach them to use kicks and punches in real life, to know and understand every possible movement in tuls, and to perform self defense with resistance. They don't like me to much and I don't work with children

Some other assistants are not so hard, for example while I focus on understanding movements in tuls some other focuses on improving performance (power, speed, stability..). We are rotated weekly and there is four of us + instructor.

*

We are one of the rare ITF schools practicing this way (at least in Croatia). Our best competitors compete in ITF, kickboxing, and muay thai competition, and many of them was graded 1st dan in Hapkido.

We are very close to original Gen. Choi teaching because we, through seminars, train often with his son Choi Jung Hwa, and his assitants. Many friends and grandmaster assistants of the club are from same circles.

I must express dissapointment because majority of people want to train only sport focused, and many of them want to avoid hard trainings and traditional disciplines.

*

Last year we wanted to open section fighter's school, where we would teach hard - traditional ITF Taekwondo, and guest instructor (BJJ black belt) would teach students jiu jitsu, but not many people were interested so we didn't.

 

[Kong Soo Do]

We are one of the rare ITF schools practicing this way (at least in Croatia). Our best competitors compete in ITF, kickboxing, and muay thai competition, and many of them was graded 1st dan in Hapkido.

We are very close to original Gen. Choi teaching because we, through seminars, train often with his son Choi Jung Hwa, and his assitants. Many friends and grandmaster assistants of the club are from same circles.

I must express dissapointment because majority of people want to train only sport focused, and many of them want to avoid hard trainings and traditional disciplines.

Last year we wanted to open section fighter's school, where we would teach hard - traditional ITF Taekwondo, and guest instructor (BJJ black belt) would teach students jiu jitsu, but not many people were interested so we didn't.

Why do you feel the sport-focused training is so popular in your country?

 

[Egon]

I can't tell for sure why it's so popular.

To be clear, I think there is nothing wrong with popularity of sport focused training, but there is with unpopularity of non sport focused training. It's degenerative for art.

 

[Kong Soo Do]

I can't tell for sure why it's so popular.

To be clear, I think there is nothing wrong with popularity of sport focused training, but there is with unpopularity of non sport focused training. It's degenerative for art.

Well put

 

[bluewaveschool]

We have base requirements for the tests, beyond that it's pretty much anything that strikes me as a good idea to work on that night.

 

[bluewaveschool]

I suppose I should expand a bit. A long time ago (in a galaxy far far away) my school was part of an org, before I started. AKA I think, or old (early 80s) ATA when they still did the Chang Hon set. We still follow the Chang Hon form set. We do one step sparring, free sparring, self defense, and on a rare night board breaking. We try and cover it all.

I'd say that kicks/punches are worked every class, stances every class... forms and one steps at least once a week. Self defense perhaps once a week, depends on who is teaching. Sparring, maybe 2x a month. We should spar more, but we've only got 2 hours/week for the advanced class. Breaking... umm... maybe once every 6-8 weeks. We have a few rebreakable boards, but we don't current do demos, and no one is close to having breaking as a requirement on their test.

I TRY to make it well rounded. I don't teach many of the fancy kicks. Jumping and spinning at the same time? Get back to me when I drop another 25lbs. I do have an instructor that does that stuff, so the students are exposed to it. The luxury of having 6 instructors, if one of us is bad at something, there is someone else that is good at it.

 

[Fusion Taekwondo LLC]

We try to cover forms, sparring, self-defense, and techniques equally during regular classes. We also offer specialty classes to students who are interested in going beyond. These classes include conditioning, weapons, tournament team, and leadership team. They are optional and are not required to know for belt promotions. As mentioned above, we try to train a well-balanced student.

 

[Kong Soo Do]

We try to cover forms, sparring, self-defense, and techniques equally during regular classes. We also offer specialty classes to students who are interested in going beyond. These classes include conditioning, weapons, tournament team, and leadership team. They are optional and are not required to know for belt promotions. As mentioned above, we try to train a well-balanced student.

I'd like to hear about your self-defense classes.

 

[Fusion Taekwondo LLC]

I'd like to hear about your self-defense classes.

What would you like to know about them?

 

[Kong Soo Do]

What would you like to know about them?

Your website describes the SD classes as; Learn self-defense techniques that are applicable to real-life situations. Taught by a master-level instructor.

Sounds good. What makes the techniques your school teaches applicable to real-life situations? What is the litmus test so-to-speak? What are these techniques, what is the experience level of the instructor teaching them? Are these techniques from sparring, forms or other? At what age to you start teach self-defense classes? This sort of information.

Thank you.

 

[Fusion Taekwondo LLC]

Your website describes the SD classes as; Learn self-defense techniques that are applicable to real-life situations. Taught by a master-level instructor.

Sounds good. What makes the techniques your school teaches applicable to real-life situations? What is the litmus test so-to-speak? What are these techniques, what is the experience level of the instructor teaching them? Are these techniques from sparring, forms or other? At what age to you start teach self-defense classes? This sort of information.

Thank you.

Our specialty self-defense classes are taught by a 5th Dan ITF Taekwondo master. He draws from a variety of martial arts (wing chun, jiu-jitsu, akido, etc...).
Some of the real life situation he teaches us to defend against include:
- Being in a crowded or tight place (bar, cornered against a wall, etc..)
- Defending against various punches
- Hair grabs
- tackles
- headlocks
- being attacked from behind
- multiple attackers
- etc...

He is huge on simple basic techniques that work well such as perry (sp?) blocks, various wrist/shoulder locks, distractions, attacking vital organs, etc...
We start teaching self-defense as young as age 4 but what we teach 4 years olds compared to what we teach adults is completely different. With younger students we teach them to yell stop, run for help, call an adult, etc... As they get older we teach them how to get away from common grabs and more.

We also teach more traditional self-defense drawing from forms. We practice 3 steps, 2, and traditional 1 steps.

I hope this gives you a little bit more insight.

 

[chrispillertkd]

Our specialty self-defense classes are taught by a 5th Dan ITF Taekwondo master.

Out of curiosity, is your school actually affiliated with the ITF? A 5 dan in the ITF isn't a "master." You aren't considered a Master in ITF Taekwon-Do until you're a 7th dan. I'm just curious because I've run into a lot of people who say they're an ITF school but aren't actual members of the ITF (any of them!) but teach "ITF style" Taekwon-Do.

Pax,

Chris

 

[Kong Soo Do]

Our specialty self-defense classes are taught by a 5th Dan ITF Taekwondo master. He draws from a variety of martial arts (wing chun, jiu-jitsu, akido, etc...).
Some of the real life situation he teaches us to defend against include:
- Being in a crowded or tight place (bar, cornered against a wall, etc..)
- Defending against various punches
- Hair grabs
- tackles
- headlocks
- being attacked from behind
- multiple attackers
- etc...

He is huge on simple basic techniques that work well such as perry (sp?) blocks, various wrist/shoulder locks, distractions, attacking vital organs, etc...
We start teaching self-defense as young as age 4 but what we teach 4 years olds compared to what we teach adults is completely different. With younger students we teach them to yell stop, run for help, call an adult, etc... As they get older we teach them how to get away from common grabs and more.

We also teach more traditional self-defense drawing from forms. We practice 3 steps, 2, and traditional 1 steps.

I hope this gives you a little bit more insight.

Thank you. This sounds like a very solid program of self-defense, particularly 'simply, basic techniques'. That is an absolute necessity. I look forward to discussing this in more detail with you

 

[Fusion Taekwondo LLC]

Thank you. This sounds like a very solid program of self-defense, particularly 'simply, basic techniques'. That is an absolute necessity. I look forward to discussing this in more detail with you

Please feel free to PM me with any further questions you may have. I would be glad to discuss more.

Out of curiosity, is your school actually affiliated with the ITF? A 5 dan in the ITF isn't a "master." You aren't considered a Master in ITF Taekwon-Do until you're a 7th dan. I'm just curious because I've run into a lot of people who say they're an ITF school but aren't actual members of the ITF (any of them!) but teach "ITF style" Taekwon-Do.

Pax,

Chris

Chris,

I would have to check in with him. He has been an instructor at the school for the past 10-15 years. The business has exchanged hands few times in the last 20 years with us being only a year old. I may be using the wrong language. Could you link me to site that has information regarding rank? I am always learning and would love to learn more.

Thanks