Taekwondoan & Open tournaments

[IcemanSK]

I'm curious as to how many of you Taekwondo folks go to open tournaments. If you do, do they seem fair to you? Are you treated well? Do your people do well in forms competition?

It seems to me that Taekwondo folks tend to stay with Taekwondo circles & not venture out too often to outside experiences.

Tell about your experiences.

 

[terryl965]

Iceman my family and I have done all types of tournament and have always done well at them. I feel we have always had a great time, maybe because we cross train with Karate and Kun Fu gut alot ,aybe that helps. Then again maybe because I also teach Okinawa Karate.
Any how we have always done well.
Terry

 

[SFC JeffJ]

Around here, lots of TKD practitioners at open tournaments. They almost always take the sparring while the Japanese/Okinawan people take the forms.

Jeff

 

[Brother John]

I did the majority of my tournaments while I was a Tae Kwan Do Moo Duk Kwan practitioner.

We LOVED open tournaments and around these parts, we always did very very well. But then....we didn't train like the type of dojang that do what's commonly considered (now) TKD type fighting... the flippity foot slaps over and over and over. In our dojang we trained pretty darn hard, but we focused on trying to keep a balance between our hand work and our kicks. I think that's why we did so well in tournaments, we were generally more versatile.
ALSO: every night we'd fight for four minutes at a time (Three rings at a time) and we'd not break for points, ONLY to let the person who fell or who fled the ring to get back up on that horse. Then...it was ON again. SO really, by the time we got to most tournaments, we'd think: "Gee, this is easy. They keep stopping the fight." Plus going with continuous sparring really UPs the cardio effect of sparring.

GOOD memories!!
thanks


Your Brother
John

 

[IcemanSK]

I've always known that TKD folks do well in sparring at open tournaments. But with forms, I often wonder if we get marked down because judges don't know our forms. Then there's the opportunity for poomsae to be a bigger deal among TKD folks w/ the advent of the poomsae World's. Did you think that will give our forms more credibility among "open" competitions?

Am I overstating things, or have you noticed these things, too?

 

[karatekid1975]

I've always did well at tournies, but most of them were closed or style only type, except for one, and I only did forms (got third).

I want to venture out to open tournies to see if I can hold my own. But now that I do ITF, I'm kinda scared, because we don't do the sine wave, and I'm wondering if they take points off for that. But in breaking, it wouldn't matter, so I'd definitely go for that.

I guess I would have to try it and see.

 

[searcher]

My Wife and I do compete in open tourneys. We have both studied other styles, but we tend to use our TKD more in the NBL and NASKA curcuits as they don't allow groin contact. IN some of the local tourneys it is a bit different. There tends to be some groups that don't care for TKD people and they will do their very best to stomp your guts out. For the most part if you stick it out and take it to them they tend to give a little bit of respect, though it is not much. So I guess my answer is that it depends on where we are as to how we are treated.

 

[FredQ]

Most of the tournaments I have competeted in were open tournaments,I did very well in sparring and forms.I helped judge and referee both at open Martial Arts Tournaments.I like them the best because you can see all the different Arts in action.I have met many new friends at open tournaments.So the experience I had at open tournaments was very good.



Fred

 

[Alec Genge]

Hi there,
I'm new too the area and have been involved the martials arts for a long time and hold a 3rd degree black belt. I was wondering if you knew of any tournaments in the area. I live in the city. I have been out of it for a little while and would like to get back in to competing again. Love open tournaments as well as traditional tournaments. Hope to here from you.

 

[ajs1976]

What city?

 

[phlaw]

My TKD instructor actually hosts an open tournament every year. www.fargoopen.com which has grown into a wonderful tournament. This year we had grappling competition (gi & no gi) Kumdo (sword) competition. Sparring, Forms, Weapons and breaking. I think we had over 250 competitors.

 

[TraditionalTKD]

We don't go to open tournaments. We either sponsor our own TKD tournament according to WTF rules, or send our students to high class TKD tournaments run by reputable Instructors with standardized rules. You get into open tournaments and you start getting into very murky areas regarding rules and fairness.
Anyway, how is an Okinawan/Japanese karate Instructor qualified to judge a Korean stylist? Or vice versa?

 

[Miles]

I trained at dojang that did point sparring and we always did fine at open tournaments both in poomsae and in sparring.

But, when I became an instructor, I started doing just Olympic style tournaments as I thought it was easier to teach people to hit than to pull their attacks.

There are great people on both sides of the sparring fenceoint and Olympic. The only differences are the rules.

Miles

 

[Kwan Jang]

I think it really depends on what region of the country you are in. When I was growing up in the SF Bay Area (Ca.), there was multitudes of styles and while there was some style bias, no one group really had a dominant position. Since I moved to the Nashville area, I've discovered most of the open tournaments in this area are very heavily Japanese-style oriented, especially wado ryu. Many of the judges are taught by their instructors and orgs. that if it is not their style's way, it is either wrong or at the very least, inferior.

You mainly encounter this in the lower belt divisions (y'know, the ones where the bias is most damaging to a student) though because many of the judges there only venture out from their closed tournaments (once again mostly wado ryu) only once in a while and are not as familiar with (or possibly don't care about) the rules of the open tournaments they are judging at. I have had my students not only not being awarded their points, but actually reprimanded for using round kicks and other circular movements because these are not allowed in the closed wado events. But these are the open events that these are perfectly legal.

You usually don't see it as much in the black belt divisions though. In spite of this, my wife was the top BB female forms competitor in the region and one of my (now) 4th dan students was the top male BB forms and weapons competitor a few years ago when they were actively out on the circuit. The main disadvantage ANY of us would have in sparring was getting DQ'ed for excessive contact, since how we normally spar in the adult black belt classes is a lot rougher than what they allow. At the bigger NASKA events, it usually goes back to what I grew up with in Ca., you may have some bias in individual rings, but there is enough diversity in styles that no one group has any real advantage.