Patterns with high kicks that students can't do

[Acronym]

OMG, too many to list. Some of my "favourite" common mistakes people perform when they don't know what the correct standards are:

1. Performing a bow with their eyes up (too much listening to Bruce Lee, not enough learning about Korean culture)
   
2. Lifting up on the balls of their feet during ready position (joonbi)
3. Jerking in to the final position during a slow motion (for example joonbi, but movements in poomsae too), i.e. a snap at the end - this shouldn't be there
4. Low block starting from the crease of the elbow or a X by the side of the head, rather than the crease of the shoulder
5. Long stance being one shoulder width wide, rather than one fist-width wide
6. Pronouncing it as "Thai-kwondo" instead of "Teh-kwondo".

There are lots of others, but those would be the top 6. There have been so many people I've seen do a pattern on the Kukkiwon master courses they're proud of and you can just think "great, but every movement had a mistake - you need to REALLY listen during the poomsae lessons". There are others who are well standardised of course, but I'd say 75%+ of international candidates aren't.

 

[Acronym]

Some surprisingly sloppy deliveries in that highlight reel.

look at the gentleman on the left in the first clip. His toes are pointing up in the side kick. I thought pattern competitors were way more precise than that to even fill a competitor spot.

 

[Acronym]

I always pronounce it: "ThaiKwanDo".' It's a great name General Choi submitted.

"Tae Soo Do" is terrible... Glad that never caught on.

 

[dvcochran]

The Kukkiwon instructor course has been going on for maybe 20 years, but it's not mandatory. That's what's holding standardisation back. If we required it to reach master rank (for us, 4th Dan and above) then the KKW world would be much more unified. Thanks for the insight in to what worked for ITF.

That is where globally it becomes a political nightmare.

 

[Earl Weiss]

That is where globally it becomes a political nightmare.

I do not understand. I always wondered why an organization the size of Kukki TKD did not put together a staff of traveling instructors who would conduct classes in various locations throughout the world. I seem to recall that there my have been a course in Las Vegas. Did that happen?

 

[dvcochran]

I do not understand. I always wondered why an organization the size of Kukki TKD did not put together a staff of traveling instructors who would conduct classes in various locations throughout the world. I seem to recall that there my have been a course in Las Vegas. Did that happen?

It is the perfect example of Korean political structure. Everyone can get a piece of the pie as long as you meet 'this set of conditions' and follow the pecking order. To me it got out of hand in the 80's got better in the 90' & early 2000's and has floundered for a while. In the last five years some good effort has been made but not too much has been 'finalized into real change or a standard model. And the WT or sport side of the equation has too much power/control over the whole KKW/WT model. So anything resembling the foundation of KKW is waning. Another Korean 'ism' is their hands off approach to 'save face'. It is where a lot of the variation and inconsistency comes in around the globe.
I have been through the KKW master course stateside. I cannot say whether it is identical to the Korean hosted courses but I believe it is very close.
Being an older practitioner and competitor I cannot fully agree with andyjefferies opinion but I fully get where it is coming from. It does seem to be a KKW initiative to break as far away from the past as possible. A very sad thing to an older guy like me who has a pretty rich history in WT(F)/KKW TKD. I will take my type of TKD experience every time.

FWIW, critiquing people on the inflection of pronouncing Tae is...odd. If you have been around Koreas you know the emphasis is on the 'e'. In the America's (north & south) the emphasis is on the 'a' (often pronounced as an 'i'). It is just a cultural/regional/vocal thing that really isn't all that important.
Hell, I am pretty redneck so who knows which I will use next time.

On where the classes have been stateside, I believe, Vegas, Chicago and New York so far.

 

[KOKarate]

Simply there are things some of us will never be able to do. Personally what I look for in grading isn’t perfection but in the lower ranks at least. I want improvement. So if when a guy starts and he’s awful and can’t throw a punch at all by his grading I want to see him punching better not better but by seeing an improvement it shows me he’s worked hard to improve. When it gets to higher ranks like black belt and someone can’t do something yes it will go against them but I will ask them about it and if they can explain what they’re meant to do to me then that’ll give them points because they KNOW how to do and how to teach it to students but just struggle with it themselves. None of us are perfect and no one ever will be

 

[dvcochran]

Some surprisingly sloppy deliveries in that highlight reel.

look at the gentleman on the left in the first clip. His toes are pointing up in the side kick. I thought pattern competitors were way more precise than that to even fill a competitor spot.

You have confirmed by your own explanation of MA your experience and the comments you have made that you have no ground or quality to judge this video.

 

[andyjeffries]

If memory serves the KKW course was held only in Korea for a while. I think I may have heard of a couple of others outside of Korea but not a lot. Have there been many outside Korea? Starting in the 1980's Park Jung Tae and Later General Choi traveled the world teaching the courses which made them more accessible. Sr. GM Sereff also taught a couple one of the very few others authorized to do so. From 1990 to 2002 there were about 100 courses held throughout the world plus various other seminars.

They tend to try to hold one each year now in each region (Europe, USA at least), but it depends on people's appetite to attend (therefore if they will cover the costs).

 

[andyjeffries]

1. Performing a bow with their eyes up (too much listening to Bruce Lee, not enough learning about Korean culture)

Interesting - The ITF Bow is 15 degrees with the eyes looking ahead.

The reason it as explained to me on the Kukkiwon course is that the bow is 15% from the waist and 30% at the neck. The eyes are down because it's a respectful and friendly gesture and it doesn't look respectful or friendly if you don't trust the other person enough to take your eyes off them. I agree with that and always say to my students "if ever you're facing someone and don't trust them not to kick you in the face so don't feel safe, don't bow to them - in competition the referee will ensure they don't kick you, so you're safe"

 

[andyjeffries]

I always pronounce it: "ThaiKwanDo".' It's a great name General Choi submitted.

"Tae Soo Do" is terrible... Glad that never caught on.

There's no "Thai" sound in Korean. If you listen even to interviews of General Choi in Korean, he pronounces it correctly as "Teh kwon do".

 

[serietah]

OMG, too many to list. Some of my "favourite" common mistakes people perform when they don't know what the correct standards are:

1. Performing a bow with their eyes up (too much listening to Bruce Lee, not enough learning about Korean culture)
   
2. Lifting up on the balls of their feet during ready position (joonbi)
3. Jerking in to the final position during a slow motion (for example joonbi, but movements in poomsae too), i.e. a snap at the end - this shouldn't be there
4. Low block starting from the crease of the elbow or a X by the side of the head, rather than the crease of the shoulder
5. Long stance being one shoulder width wide, rather than one fist-width wide
6. Pronouncing it as "Thai-kwondo" instead of "Teh-kwondo".

There are lots of others, but those would be the top 6. There have been so many people I've seen do a pattern on the Kukkiwon master courses they're proud of and you can just think "great, but every movement had a mistake - you need to REALLY listen during the poomsae lessons". There are others who are well standardised of course, but I'd say 75%+ of international candidates aren't.

....Oh dear. #1, no, oh goodness no. #6 I didn't know until I started learning Korean. Now people don't understand me when I say it correctly because they think it's thai-kwondo lol. #4 is good. I see a lot of the X by the head in videos but we do the chambered hand on your shoulder, below the ear, and other hand straight out.

But #2 is pretty inconsistent. Our school owner doesn't teach it that way, but one master does and visiting masters we've had have done it as well. I don't teach students to go up on their toes, but I do it slightly when I do my own joonbi as its just a habit I've picked up from various masters who have taught me.

#3 We do teach joonbi as slow then sharp at the end, but when I trained with a master specifically for poomsae for a tournament, he taught me to do the entire thing slowly. I know that there are "old ways" and "new ways" and "tournament ways" of doing some things so I really have no problem switching between techniques depending on what I'm doing. Even our double knife hand block is chambered and executed differently as a color belt vs black belt and switching between them when I'm teaching and practicing isn't an issue. I think I may ask my master about the joonbi thing just because I'm a TKD nerd and like to know the WHY for everything.

#5 we teach forward stance as being shoulder wide. This is the first I've heard of fist-width. I find that fascinating!


****

On the topic of the thread, I can't imagine the majority of people wanting to continue to train if they could never progress until they could do things perfectly. I cannot personally do a sidekick to head height. I'm flexible enough but lack the strength to actually bring my leg up that high. I can physically do it if I use a wall to balance but I can't do that during poomsae! My master knows I can't and he knows I've worked on it for the past nearly 5 years. So we've worked on the details of my kick so that it is technically correct, just lower than it "should" be. This cost me points in a virtual tournament this summer, but the commentators mentioned the details of my kick and that it was just low but good. If I was still a blue stripe because I can't do head level side kicks in Taegeuk 4, I probably would have quit years ago. I tested for blue in December 2016. My sidekicks were atrocious by my standards today, but for the level I was at the time, it's fine.

Color belts don't need to be perfect and I can't even justify taking points off because someone can't do something. If they do their best, that should be "good enough". At black belt, we do Taegeuk forms again and make them better, but even then no one is perfect. That's just not realistic.

 

[dvcochran]

Color belts don't need to be perfect and I can't even justify taking points off because someone can't do something. If they do their best, that should be "good enough".

I really wanted to 'like' you comments but this part made me hesitate. I get not being overly critical But, and this is a big but for me, there has to be minimum standards outside subjective opinion. Perfection is a somewhat non-PC word these days But it should be strived for from day one. That should never be done in a condemning way but has to be stressed and expected. A very tough thing to do without turning people away or turning them off from training.

 

[andyjeffries]

....Oh dear. #1, no, oh goodness no. #6 I didn't know until I started learning Korean. Now people don't understand me when I say it correctly because they think it's thai-kwondo lol. #4 is good. I see a lot of the X by the head in videos but we do the chambered hand on your shoulder, below the ear, and other hand straight out.

I brought this up with an announcer for the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) once because he kept saying it wrong and he said "it's in the official BBC pronunciation guide that way, maybe you're wrong?". I showed him videos of the Kukkiwon and WT president talking, both said it correctly, then I replied "oh well, maybe they're wrong...". Still he had a job to do, so I understand.

But #2 is pretty inconsistent. Our school owner doesn't teach it that way, but one master does and visiting masters we've had have done it as well. I don't teach students to go up on their toes, but I do it slightly when I do my own joonbi as its just a habit I've picked up from various masters who have taught me.

Just so you know, this is consistent in Korea. It's only outside that people have their own weird ways.

#3 We do teach joonbi as slow then sharp at the end, but when I trained with a master specifically for poomsae for a tournament, he taught me to do the entire thing slowly. I know that there are "old ways" and "new ways" and "tournament ways" of doing some things so I really have no problem switching between techniques depending on what I'm doing. Even our double knife hand block is chambered and executed differently as a color belt vs black belt and switching between them when I'm teaching and practicing isn't an issue. I think I may ask my master about the joonbi thing just because I'm a TKD nerd and like to know the WHY for everything.

I'd do the same. Feel free to share his answer if you don't mind. I'd also be interested if he does a final jerk in the slow movements in Taegeuk 6, 7 and 8. The punches in T8 I can understand because it's a strike (although it's still incorrect to do so, according to Kukkiwon standards), but I'd be interested if there's a jerk/snap in the slow movements in 6 and 7.

#5 we teach forward stance as being shoulder wide. This is the first I've heard of fist-width. I find that fascinating!

The reason is that you want the weight to be biased forwards, for maximum power delivery. Lateral stability doesn't matter (during a fight/combat you aren't expected to stay in long stance position). The way it was demonstrated on the course was that the instructor had a guy in a long stance (think his was slightly wider than shoulder width, but not by a lot and I've done the same demo myself on shoulder width), then the guy puts out a punch with the same foot as hand (e.g. both left foot/hand out). The instructor then literally puts his palm on the fist and pushes towards the guy.

When the stance is wider, they always go off balance. When one fist between the inner edges of the feet, you'll have to push hard enough to lift their front foot off the floor to move them. So if you're aiming for maximum forward power delivery, why form your stance for lateral stability. Anyway, it resonated with me (aside from it just being "correct").

If you look in either the Kukkiwon Textbook or Grandmaster Kang Ik Pil's poomsae books, you'll see feet diagrams of the stances.

Color belts don't need to be perfect and I can't even justify taking points off because someone can't do something. If they do their best, that should be "good enough". At black belt, we do Taegeuk forms again and make them better, but even then no one is perfect. That's just not realistic.

I get your overall point, but disagree with not taking points off. You should take off points for things not done well/correctly. However, the pass mark shouldn't be 100%!

I can't remember if I've shared it in this thread or not (and too busy to hunt back through), but I wrote a blog post about how we score tests and I still stand by that now. How to do a Taekwondo promotion test objectively

 

[WaterGal]

I do not understand. I always wondered why an organization the size of Kukki TKD did not put together a staff of traveling instructors who would conduct classes in various locations throughout the world. I seem to recall that there my have been a course in Las Vegas. Did that happen?

My other half took it in Denver a few years ago. It sounds like it was a huge mess organizationally; i.e. they ended up pulling basically an all-nighter at one point because they didn't actually schedule enough days to finish the class. (I stayed behind and ran the school by myself, which was also a mess and super stressful lol.) I know there have been at least a few other master's courses offered in the US as well... I think they did one in Chicago and another in LA maybe?

Anyway, the impression I got is that KKW will work with a national/local TKD organization to put on a master's course, but the locals are expected to actually organize the thing and then KKW sends the teachers.

 

[WaterGal]

The Kukkiwon instructor course has been going on for maybe 20 years, but it's not mandatory. That's what's holding standardisation back. If we required it to reach master rank (for us, 4th Dan and above) then the KKW world would be much more unified. Thanks for the insight in to what worked for ITF.

Do you think that requiring the course to to promote students in KMS will be enough to change this?

 

[dvcochran]

My other half took it in Denver a few years ago. It sounds like it was a huge mess organizationally; i.e. they ended up pulling basically an all-nighter at one point because they didn't actually schedule enough days to finish the class. (I stayed behind and ran the school by myself, which was also a mess and super stressful lol.) I know there have been at least a few other master's courses offered in the US as well... I think they did one in Chicago and another in LA maybe?

Anyway, the impression I got is that KKW will work with a national/local TKD organization to put on a master's course, but the locals are expected to actually organize the thing and then KKW sends the teachers.

You are correct with Chicago but I think the other course was in Las Vegas not LA, I could be wrong. I took the course in Chicago.
KKW puts a Lot of stock in the Korean GM's statewide who have kept strong ties. I think this is a reason for so few Master courses here.

 

[andyjeffries]

Do you think that requiring the course to to promote students in KMS will be enough to change this?

I certainly think it's a good step in the right direction. We'll see

 

[Acronym]

[

....Oh dear. #1, no, oh goodness no. #6 I didn't know until I started learning Korean. Now people don't understand me when I say it correctly because they think it's thai-kwondo lol. #4 is good. I see a lot of the X by the head in videos but we do the chambered hand on your shoulder, below the ear, and other hand straight out.

But #2 is pretty inconsistent. Our school owner doesn't teach it that way, but one master does and visiting masters we've had have done it as well. I don't teach students to go up on their toes, but I do it slightly when I do my own joonbi as its just a habit I've picked up from various masters who have taught me.

#3 We do teach joonbi as slow then sharp at the end, but when I trained with a master specifically for poomsae for a tournament, he taught me to do the entire thing slowly. I know that there are "old ways" and "new ways" and "tournament ways" of doing some things so I really have no problem switching between techniques depending on what I'm doing. Even our double knife hand block is chambered and executed differently as a color belt vs black belt and switching between them when I'm teaching and practicing isn't an issue. I think I may ask my master about the joonbi thing just because I'm a TKD nerd and like to know the WHY for everything.

#5 we teach forward stance as being shoulder wide. This is the first I've heard of fist-width. I find that fascinating!


****

On the topic of the thread, I can't imagine the majority of people wanting to continue to train if they could never progress until they could do things perfectly. I cannot personally do a sidekick to head height. I'm flexible enough but lack the strength to actually bring my leg up that high. I can physically do it if I use a wall to balance but I can't do that during poomsae! My master knows I can't and he knows I've worked on it for the past nearly 5 years. So we've worked on the details of my kick so that it is technically correct, just lower than it "should" be. This cost me points in a virtual tournament this summer, but the commentators mentioned the details of my kick and that it was just low but good. If I was still a blue stripe because I can't do head level side kicks in Taegeuk 4, I probably would have quit years ago. I tested for blue in December 2016. My sidekicks were atrocious by my standards today, but for the level I was at the time, it's fine.

.

I don’t understand this... From what I've been told, flexibility and strength go hand in hand. You can't have strength without flexibility and you can't have flexibility without strength.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

[


I don’t understand this... From what I've been told, flexibility and strength go hand in hand. You can't have strength without flexibility and you can't have flexibility without strength.

It’s entirely possible to do either of those. They are both more effective when they are both present.