martial sport not art?

[Twin Fist]

true enough, I was referring to sport tournaments, not WTF style tho. In that type of tourny, there is no face contact below the rank of brown, and I dont have nay browns yet

Actually, I believe that the face is a valid target, provided you kick.

Daniel

 

[matt.m]

Whoa there pal,

It's the practitioner of the art not the art itself. We have a guy in our dojang that will test for his black belt in the near future. Well he is a pizza delivery guy in the not so great part of town. He had an attempted mugging late night/early morning. Multiple attackers, no good. Well he closed the distance and side kicked the biggest one and took off.

He was fine, problem solved. Now, in our school we do one and three steps, self-defense techniques, sparring (point and olympic), WTF and ITF poomsea/hyung. If it takes six or more years to test and attain the dan belt then so be it.

TKD gets a bad rap like karate did back in the 80's etc. See what a lot of people looking in at tae kwon do don't understand is the fact that it takes incredible flexibility and core strength to look flashy.

its burns many people to hear that tkd considers it self a application to the need of self defense . all i know that tkd focuses on kicks and moving in a forward and back way of fighting, well this is all i know. and from what i gathered from other people from other martial arts , they all dislike for the style.
if you were attacked on the street, my thoughts you could defend your self as well as the other main stream arts , tell me what you think