Honest question

[Baytor]

I'm thinking of doing something that I really never saw myself doing again. I am thinking of training in TKD this fall. My hapkido instructor is going to start teaching it again (he hasn't for quite some time). I am thinking of starting it because 1. My instructor is very good. 2. Extra workout. 3. Sparring. 4. I am always willing to learn something new.

I have one major resorvation though. I have heard that TKD can be very hard on a person's knees. Have you found that to be true?

Thanks

 

[terryl965]

Absolutely, but with the right workout and conditioning the knee's will last a long time God Willing!!!!!!!!

 

[Tkang_TKD]

I have a bad knee, and after 4 years of TKD, I haven't had too many problems. The problems I have had are no different really than if I were to go jogging a couple days a week.

 

[Disco]

TKD this fall. My hapkido instructor is going to start teaching it again.

That's different, it's usually the other way around. If you don't mind me asking, what is prompting him to go into TKD teaching again? As far as hurting your knee(s) during training, terry1965 touched on something. In addition, just pull back on the amount of force with air kicks and reps when kicking.

 

[Xequat]

Also, one knee trick is to always keep your knee above your foot if possible. If you bend it too far too many times, you can overextend things. Remember that knees are not meant to bear weight; they are only a joint.

 

[Baytor]

Thanks for the replies so far.

He and his wife own a fitness center, which is where he teaches Combat Hapkido. He sent out a questionare to all the members asking what excersise programs and martial arts they were interested in. I guess that TKD generated the most interest.

 

[MichiganTKD]

As long as your Instructor understands how to execute techniques to minimize strain on the knee, there should not be any problems. There are several things that you need to be careful about:
1. Kicking without pivoting.
2. Kicking that emphasizes knee snapping.
3. Not practicing to land softly after kicking, or stepping.
4. Improper knee conditioning.

Any one of those is a recipe for serious knee problems down the road. Just for the record, I've been practicing Tae Kwon Do for 20+ years and have never had knee problems. So it is possible to avoid knee injuries with the right training.

 

[TigerWoman]

IamBaytor,
What condition are your knees in right now? You are fairly young, if your knees are in good shape, go for it. I was an avid jogger on mainly asphalt streets for 25 years with 8 years high impact aerobics in addition to that. Not too bright and not too good for knees.

Taekwondo is mostly jumping. The aim is to jump, get you to jump. I really love the jumping, but I pay dearly for it now. It can be done on the floor but the belts would not be passed, least not in most schools. A yellow belt taking the orange test has to do a hopping side kick/1 bd. So, the hopping, jumping starts practically right away to get the conditioning in. It is very cardiovascular in our school. It is also difficult to condition breathing with doing continuous jumping kicks down the line, length of the dojang, but it gets you in great shape. Doing that kind of a workout, gives me stamina and endurance. It is alot harder than running since it is partly anerobic.

Best dojang floor: A puzzle mat floor or similar is needed for knees. Not as good: wood floors, hopefully with carpeting which has some give. Terrible: cement with thin carpeting. We have puzzle mat on top of thick carpet on a wood floor, probably the best but really hard to balance on for form.

Glucosamine Sulfate taken religiously for cartilage renewal in the knee and less pain because it is helping the problem, not masking it like ibuprofen. My orthopedist recommended it to me but I had already been on it for six years and that is why I have stayed in TKD. Be good to your knees, repair as you go. Read up about it, it is I believe, safe to take and a natural element. Some though that are allergic to shellfish cannot take Glucosamine Sulfate but can take Glucosamine Chondroitin instead.

If you have any ligament problems wear a neoprene brace or knee strap-I wear one on my better knee like a V strap also called a jumpers strap, better safe than sorry. I tore cartilage trying to put my left knee back into joint after it came out doing a tornado round kick toward the end of an exhausting many repetition class (as a blue belt) I have weak ligaments due to sitting wrong on the floor as a youth.

Build up on repetitions slowly. The quadriceps is the main muscle group worked on with jumping but the hamstrings back of the knee have to be 90% of the strength of the quads in Taekwondo otherwise the hamstrings will suffer. I am doing different exercises for that because I don't do enough in class. But others, younger, are having those problems too.

Snapping kicks are a part of Taekwondo. We snap front kicks, round, and spin heels in training. Those are basic kicks we do all the time. If I were you, read the TKD threads about all these kicks. But MichTKD does have point that it might be injurious to snap on a hard surface. We snap kick on focus paddles which have give but we don't snap on targets like standup bags.

I also agree with landing softly. I find that a common mistake of newbies doing form too, coming down so hard in trying to keep balance or power their way through. Building up muscles, balance and coordination helps this.

Pivoting unfortunately hurts me if it involves any twisting of my standing knee but it may just be me and old knees. Pivoting and kicking in the right line is crucial to doing technique correctly and is easier on the kicking leg.

I can only say, I wished I had started it in my twenties but all knees wear out whether it is from continuous running or continuous jumping. Just take care of them. TW

 

[Baytor]

Thank you all for the good advice:asian:.

 

[bignick]

as someone already said...be very careful with the dry firings, kicking into the air..i've noticed that all beginners students like to kick as hard as they can...trying to show how high they can kick and so on...whereas anyone who's been in it a while understands the point of these drills is to develop better form...which doesn't necessarily require great power...hope you have fun...

 

[Sin]

Tae Kwon Do...Points...politics...Mcdojo........thats all i am gonna say

 

[Tkang_TKD]

Tae Kwon Do...Points...politics...Mcdojo........thats all i am gonna say

Not everyone is into the sport aspect of TKD. Nor is every Dojang a McDojo. Don't judge the art by a limited exposure to it.

 

[Marginal]

Tae Kwon Do...Points...politics...Mcdojo........thats all i am gonna say

All the more impressive because you said absolutely nothing.

 

[Baytor]

Sin,
Thank you for your concern. Don't worry though, if it were a mcdojo I wouldn't be training there in the first place. If I do choose to train in TKD, my focus won't be for tournaments.

 

[MichiganTKD]

Point I should have mentioned about the kicking:
Do not emphasize the knee snap at the expense of the waist action. The hips, being much stronger, are in a better position to absorb the action of kicking. Still use the knee as a lever, but put about 75% of the action into the hip. Aside from the danger of hyperextending the knee if you snap it repetitively. This is one of the reasons why I have never had knee problems-I emphasize the waist instead of the knee during kicking.
And Tae Kwon Do is NOT mostly jumping. I know some BB who like and can do jump techniques, and I also know BB who couldn't do jump kicks if their lives depended on it and don't bother. It just depends on what you prefer.

 

[TigerWoman]

Point I should have mentioned about the kicking:
Do not emphasize the knee snap at the expense of the waist action. The hips, being much stronger, are in a better position to absorb the action of kicking. Still use the knee as a lever, but put about 75% of the action into the hip. Aside from the danger of hyperextending the knee if you snap it repetitively. This is one of the reasons why I have never had knee problems-I emphasize the waist instead of the knee during kicking.
And Tae Kwon Do is NOT mostly jumping. I know some BB who like and can do jump techniques, and I also know BB who couldn't do jump kicks if their lives depended on it and don't bother. It just depends on what you prefer.

Michigan TKD, the wheel kick that you prefer is from the hip. It is easily seen, coming as it is this big arc around to the target, is slower, and uses little or no snap from the knee. I have no hyperextension from kicking repetitively jump spin heel, snapping with the knee on a focus paddle. My knee injury is from landing, twisting repetitively on cartilage-worn knees. Michigan TKD, you have stated before that you don't test on boards until BB and even then do not test on all the jumping technique so how do you know if your students have the technique, power and speed for jumping kicks? Taekwondo has front, round, side, ax, hook, crescents, spin side, 360° side, 360° round, spin heel, twist. All of those are also done jumping. Plus flying side, double front, triple kick, split kick and many variations. Jumping makes it more powerful, faster, harder to see coming. They remain an important part of Taekwondo. TW

 

[Marginal]

I think MTKD's point was more that not all TKD focuses strongly on jumping. His description certainly fits my dojang fairly well. We have a lot of folks 50+, and it's perfectly fine if they don't jump. (They are usually encouraged not to, right along with people with knee problems, hamstring troubles etc.) Doesn't mean that jump kicks aren't powerful techniques, just that TKD doesn't absolutely have to focus on them as it has plenty to offer outside of the jumping category as well.

We have a lot of hip action in any kick we throw. Can't break squat with a turning kick if you're not turning your hips over for example. At least from my experience, without the hip action, you simply bounce off the boards and get a bruised foot for your trouble. Even in the jumping kicks, my instructors strongly advocate getting one's hips into the motion of a jump turning, jumping side kick etc. Better for the joints, and generates more power.

IMO, you're arguing extent more than you're arguing against using the hips TW. Using the hips doesn't mean that you can't chamber. Just turning the hips over alone's not appreciably slower, and it's no more telegraphed than not. (And it's certainly harder to ignore 'cause of that extra power)

To take another tack on it, you said you beleive in Ki in antoher thread if I remember correctly. The foundational principle behind that is that power's centered in the danjon. (Apologies if I butcher this explanation I'm not a big Ki devotee personally) This concept appears in boxing as COM (or center of mass) both of which more or less state that power's derived from the body's center point. Foncentrating on your belly, or just getting your hips into the motion ups the power. Compare a punch done with no other muscles except your arm vs a punch using the hips. Employing the hips'll produce a far more effective strike. Even the boxer's jab uses the hips, and that's usually considered a speedy move.

Either way TW, I'm not trying to say or prove that you're wrong, I'm just suggesting that there might be more than one way to look at this.

 

[TigerWoman]

We have a lot of hip action in any kick we throw. Can't break squat with a turning kick if you're not turning your hips over for example. At least from my experience, without the hip action, you simply bounce off the boards and get a bruised foot for your trouble. Even in the jumping kicks, my instructors strongly advocate getting one's hips into the motion of a jump turning, jumping side kick etc. Better for the joints, and generates more power.

IMO, you're arguing extent more than you're arguing against using the hips TW. Using the hips doesn't mean that you can't chamber. Just turning the hips over alone's not appreciably slower, and it's no more telegraphed than not. (And it's certainly harder to ignore 'cause of that extra power)

I'm 55 nearly. I realize the over 50 crowd not jumping so well. While I'm not nearly as physical as a twenty-something because of my knee history-I can still jump. But that is not the point. Taekwondo's power remains in its jumping and particularly spinning jumping kicks. I don't execute a round kick from the hip. I chamber it up for the correct angle, yes turning my hip and pivoting too, and snap. But I was talking about a jump spin heel vs a telegraphed slower jump wheel kick. I've seen too many of those from beginners to change my mind about that. It is brought up and swung around like a bat and the leg is out there long enough to know its coming. Hips are used in all kicks, but the power doesn't come from the hips in a jump spin heel using a snap. It comes from quads, hamstrings and finally calves. If I was twenty-something, this would still be the kick to learn, as it is a lot faster. Have you ever tried to break a board held with 2 fingers doing a jump wheel kick? TW

 

[Marginal]

Some can jump and some can't. It's not a question of 50+ being unable to jump, it's a question of whether or not it's going to be productive for that particular invidual to do so. If you're 65 or 70, and you're trying to do a TKD that's centered on jumping, how exactly does one do that short of a miracle? Rather than forcing those practitioners into needless early retirement, the instructors simply tell them to do what they can rather than imposing unrealistic expecations on them due to their perception of the primacy of a given tool in the TKD toolkit.

Aside from the in class jumping bit, (which was only intended to show that not all TKD classes/schools operate on the same tactical considerations that yours does, not that 50+ people should never jump etc) the fact that you're spinning is already bringing the hips into play. Hips certainly help accelerate a flying 360 degree reverse hook kick. (Or the grounded version for that matter.) Getting them over accelerates the closing hooking motion considerably on top of that. Divorce the hips from that action, and you get a slower, less powerful kick.

I still think you're arguing over semantics (what hip action means) more than that hip action is not used. In my mind, executing a round kick without the hip'd imply that you chamber and fire without changing your body's facing and that you also managed not to pivot on your supporting leg so that your hips remained more or less in the same place as when you began the kick. It's possible, but the kick's uselessly weak, slower because it's using weaker muscle groups to propel the kick, and it's painful to execute because the body really wasn't designed to bend that way. What you described was a round kick from the hip. The use of the hip's still there, it's just been refined and made subtle through practice.

 

[TigerWoman]

And for a round, I do pivot and said that and just use the angle of the hip. A joint does not generate power-it is a hinge. Muscle and movement does when it is done is synchrony.

I was not comparing a flying 360 reverse hook because I don't know that terminology but do not go flying. I don't think you understand the mechanics of the jump spin heel that is snapped. So without demonstration in person, I think we are at a standstill because we can't debate semantics.

Besides this is getting way beyond the intent of the thread when we debate kicks, hips and power. The point was snapping does not hurt knees unless you are hitting hard targets all the time. We hit focus paddles which give.

I understand about the over 50's group, they have had to notch it down. I will have to notch it down very soon too. But do we need to talk only about the limited capabilities of the over 50's set? That is not the best Taekwondo has to offer for say a 20-30 yr. old. Taekwondo still remains very much a jumping martial art and I believe everybody can learn to jump. It just takes education, practice and maybe weight loss. My master, in his younger days did a flying side kick to end a street fight which he didn't start-but from a out of range position, he jumps and lands two feet, one on the chest and one on the head and that kick is snapped. It ended the fight. At 44, he can still do that jump and just photographed it and I witnessed it. Hiis knees are fine too after 23 years of practice. That is Taekwondo. TW