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In short Olympic TKD in a way represents all the problems in the art. The deeper aspects have been largely lost in the rush to unify and popularize it and flashy useless stuff fills the void.
This is one of the reasons that I don't advocate separating the two. In fact, I think that severing the link between taekwondo as a martial art and taekwondo as a sport would be detrimental to the sport. The art would suffer nothing.
Daniel
Absolutely right regarding the sport suffering due to a weak link between the art and the sport, which is why I disagree with Mango's wish to see the two separated entirely.The link is already weak enough that sport TKD HAS suffered.
I think the Cuban fighter indicident illustrates this: how far has his school fallen from the character-building aspects of TKD, the tenets of taekwondo, that not only is sportsmanship completely out of the picture, but he actually ASSAULTS an official?
And the art HAS suffered: nobody respects TKD anymore as a martial art. TKD should be THE "go-to" art for MMA stylists who want to learn how to kick. Instead, they laugh at TKD and hunt down a Muay Thai school.
Unfortunately, the traditional schools steer clear of the Olympic sport by and large. But if more traditional schools were to involve themselves in the sport, then they'd be the ones with the best athletes. Then they'd be the ones that everyone would want to emulate.
Sure if traditional schools had all the same tools and technology at their disposal that sport-centric "We build olympians" type places have. Things like access to the best sports medicine in the country, nutritionists, use of technology like dartfish, a staff of people that go around to all the competitons solely to scout and put together notebooks on fighters, and of course staff and athletes who devote themselves to training 2-3 time per day for 2-3 hours at a time so that they achieve a major accomplishment like making their kick just .001 second faster.
But once you do all of that, you have crossed the line from traditional to sport. Because once you are doing all of the above and so much more that I did not include above, there is no time in the day left for anything "traditional".
Very, very few of the schools that use the Olympics to promote themselves have anything close to what you describe.
Olympic TKD will have its day, it will probably always be around in one form or another. Anyone who is convinced that they can get a black belt in 2 years or with no sweating can do to those schools, traditional TKD would not be for them anyway.
And that is why very few schools produce olympians. Schools can advertise themselves as olympic style schools but they will likely never produce an olympian.
There is a reason that people like Jean Lopez, Juan Moreno, Jimmy Kim, Patrice Remark, Jin Suh and a small number of others consistently end up with their players on the National Teams and why people travel from all over the country to train at these schools for a week or two during the summer or over winter break from school etc. It is because those people have those types of resources and consistently use those resources to develop the best olympic TKDists in the country.
To use Charlotte as an example. Her parents drive her roughly 60 miles each way to train at Jimmy Kims, 3-4 times a week. I am sure there are Olympic style schools much closer to her home than that. But if she went to those schools she would not have been on this years olympic team. Because their olympic sparring program probably consists of sparring evey friday from 6:00-6:45
And on those days that she is not training at Jimmy Kims she trains at home for hours on end. Also several time a year, you will find her traveling to Texas to train with the Lopezes and Colorado Springs to train at the Olympic Training Center. Her parents spend 10s of thousands of dollars a year on her training. She has no life outside of TKD. Everytime I speak with the parents and students that train with her at Jimmy Kims I ask what it is like to train with her and if seeing her success motivates the others to want the same thing. 9 out of 10 say they would not want Charlotte's life, because she has no life. She is 100% dedicated to being the best and nothing is allowed to interfere.
200% agree with you, and I'd rep you twice if I could! You sum up my thoughts perfectly.I'll second that notion. Our competition team kids put in the MOST work out of anybody in our dojang. They also do best in the traditional curriculum as well as doing pretty well in the Olympic style sport aspect. We're not cranking out olympians (nore are we trying to), but for what it's worth...we work hard to train good martial artyists who are also good ocmpetitiors.
The two sides aren't mutually exclusive, nor should one side disrespect or belittle the other. THAT'S what makes TKD look bad in my opinion...all the factionist in-fighting, bickering and politics.
Just get on the mat and train.
Peace,
Erik
So why is it that WTF/Olympic style sparring is often such a hot button? Is there some reason that it isn't looked upon in a similar fashion without the animosity I sometimes see towards it? I have seen it called everything from silly to garbage, which I personally find a bit extreme, when a simple, 'it's not for me' would do just fine.