Where is Cedar Park in relation to Austin?
It's a suburb of Austin, about 30 minutes from downtown. If there's an official school there that's news to me. The only site I found quickly with google is this one:
http://www.hk-tkd.com/Site/Welcome_to.html, and they seem to be aligned with the WTF. Within the Austin metro area, there's probably at least 20 tae kwon do studios, over half are ATA or ITA, a couple are Jhoon Rhee tae kwon do, and only two KKW/WTF I know of, one run by a KKW 6th dan. There's a couple of clubs at the University of Texas also, one that seems to train for Olympic comps.
First you need to accept that any orean that is Kicking and punching, or any of their progeny are doing TKD.
Second you need to accept that anyone can create their own standards and thats OK no matter how isolated it makes the student. As I quoted, Opinions vary.
That's precisely my point. There is a plethora of fighting styles and even systems that use the "tae kwon do" name. The ITF does not have a monopoly on it, probably hence why your group prefers the term "Taekwon-Do". Heck, there's people still doing the Japanese forms using the tae kwon do name. ITF = 1 style of tae kwon do. NOT all of it.
Next, just because Kukkiwon has issues with variations which they acknowledge as a problem needing correction as shown by a recent testing in the USA where not everyone passed an was told to work some more and try again does not mean they accept the second premise outlined above.
Yes, they are working on standards for KKW members. I would hope they recognize likewise that different interpretations exist of tae kwon do that do not fall under their purvey.
I have no issues with people who simply say "I do what my instructor says". The issue is when they so so blindly or sadly unaware that what their instructor says may simply be an error or misinterpretation of what their instructor learned from their instructor.
In fact if the theory is "Do what your instructor teaches" then a logical extension would be that the instructor should be doing what their instructor teaches.
By that logic, if you do the Chang Hon patterns you should do what General Choi teaches since the instructional lineage is traced back to him for those patterns.
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2. Interesting. General Choi not in your family tree? When it comes to the Chang Hon patterns, your instructors learned from Allen Steen who learned them from Jhoon Rhee who learned them from .....
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Sorry, Aanlogy fails or you would need to go to the Shorin and Shorei systems to learn Funakoshi's stuff, or perhaps even Shaolin to learn the Shorin stuff.
Each person, Funikoshi, Kano and General Choi codified systems based on other systems. To perform their system you follow their parameters.
If you perform the Chang Hon patterns and think you did not fall from the General Choi tree at least for thos epatterns, than whose tree did you fall from?
General Choi's inspiration from the beginning Shotokan forms are clear. In understanding anything, it's useful to go back to the roots, and it's a reasonable line of inquiry to consult Funakoshi's work since it is 1) documented and 2) the immediate predecessor with clear linkage. Going back to the shorin-ryu grandfather would be difficult since the art drift is much greater given the many modifications Funakoshi and his students made. (By the way, it's doubtful that Shotokan as explained in books like the Karate Kyohan or Dynamic Karate) contains much if any Naha-te influence, and Funakoshi even misclassifies a few kata in his writing.) This is a really a side discussion however.
To address your claim that my line of tae kwon do flows from General Choi: Only organizationally and only for a time as Jhoon Rhee eventually left the ITF. As I understand it, Mr. Jhoon Rhee does not consider General Choi to be his instructor. I was taught that his instructor was the Chung Do Kwan kwang jang nim. While Mr. Rhee was convinced by General Choi to adopt his patterns, and he may(?) even have learned the patterns from General Choi, it doesn't necessarily follow that General Choi should be considered his instructor.
What makes someone your teacher? How many hours in the dojang did Mr. Rhee toil under General Choi's tutelage? I believe the number is probably low to non-existant.
I don't think there is any need for numbers about ITF vs. KKW. ITF memebership, even all 3 combined is a small percentage of Kukkiwon.
Don't misunderstand me.
Lets not mix apples and oranges. If you compare the number of people accepting either the ITF or KKW standard versus all independant factions who are clueless as to those standards and doing any number of different things, the multitude of factions probably outweigh the unified standards group. However the multitude of factions all do different stuff.
So lets compare groups that adhere to a single standard. There are those who properly follow The KKW whether formal members or not, Those who follow the ITF whether still formal members of the big 3 or not, The ATA may be anoter large one, and then a huge number of tiny factions all happily doing their own stuff.
Well, I think you're puffing up your numbers too much when you claim that there is largely accepted standard, hence my point about ITF membership... define 'those who follow the ITF where still formal members of the big 3 or not'. If your qualifier is simply that they practice the Chang Hon patterns, I'll argue you can't count them. My point is that more people exist that DON'T follow ITF guidelines (key point: sine wave) than do, all while studying the Chang Hon forms. So it follows that there are NO "largely accepted standards".
Accepting your argument would be like saying it's OK to screw up the way you play Mozart because most people do, and they do it in any number of ways. So what if Mozart would say it's wrong. Heck, your teacher likes it better and that's OK. If your happy, blissfully ignorant or not, thats all that matters. heck, sometimes it might sound even better than Mozart intended, according to some people. No need to worry about how it was intended to sound. Most people don't do it that way.
Nope. You seem to be arguing that General Choi always taught the same way throughout his career, and that might be the case from where you stand as probably a close associate of the General and the ITF. To those of us in the hinterlands, we see it as the ITF increasingly diverged and changed from its previous body of knowledge under the General's guidance in his later years.
To use your Mozart analogy (not a great one, since the design of the forms was made by several people), we learned and practice the "Marriage of Figaro" in one fashion and we were pleased with it. A few years later, the piece now changes with odd, unaesthetically pleasing syncopation super-imposed throughout.
Is it any wonder that those of us not longer part of ITF simply said, "No thanks?"
At this point, there are multiple ways of executing the Chang Hon forms, depending on which era you or your instructors learned them in. I fully concede that ITF members received the last word on how they should be done from General Choi. At the same time are any of the other interpretations wrong? No way. General Choi's place in tae kwon do history is secure, but his Encyclopedia is hardly the authoritative source of knowledge for EVERYONE in tae kwon do. There's nothing wrong with using or consulting a book or dvd from someone not named Choi Hong Hi.
