This is tricky, for me, because I never learned the 'sport' side of TKD at all. My instructor's constant call to us, from Day 1, his signature line, so to speak, has always been, 'Keep your hands up!!'. It's been SD ever since I started (which is exactly what I was looking for when I first thought about starting MAs). So for me, TKD has been a kind of endless gallery of striking-based SD techs, incorporating insights from shrewd analysts of other, related arts—insights that have helped me 'read' TKD methods better and convert them into practical, street-ready tactics.
I think this is one reason why I sometimes find that I have a hard time understanding what other TKDists are saying—they're coming at things from a more standard, 'mainstream' approach to the art. I often find that I have a perspective more in common with maunakumu and his vision of Tang Soo Do than with a lot of my fellow TKDists, who are assuming much more of a KKW point of view. The difference is really night and day.
It strikes me that for someone with the latter perspective, SD is an 'external' desideratum, an add-on, that has to be grafted onto the rootstock of what they know, making for a possibly awkward fit. For me, it is the rootstock, so it's very hard to know what to say to those for whom it's much more distant.
LOL!
