Where are we

[Yeti]

Really it comes down to each individual instructor and organization and how they wish to teach and prosper. Many Tae Kwon Do instructors are teaching the traditional aspect with an emphasis on self defense rather than sport. Of course there are quite a few that are teaching in more of pure sporting manner. There are also some that try to balance both. So what I always advise people is to figure out what they want when they are looking for a Training Hall and then to find one that seems to suit this. quote]
Though I agree with you completely, that has also become part of the problem. There simply aren't many "non-sport" oriented schools anymore. The vast marjority - again from my localized experience at schools in two states- are your tournament based McDojangs. They appeal to the masses, as I mentione earlier, because that's where there is demand or they simply don't realize that TKD can and is so much more.

 

[Flying Crane]

There seems to be a pattern here.

Increasingly in North American culture, the participant role has been replaced by the audience member role. The sociologist Max Lerner, writing in the 1950s and 60s, characterized America as the place where what he called the `art of vicarious living'—living life at second hand, through the activities of others—had been perfected. In the MAs, a new wrinkle has been added: MAs, originally fighting arts, have been become first entertainment sports, as in competitive TKD/karate/Copeira/etc, and now entertainment spectacles, as per XMA—martial arts to martial sports to martial acrobatics. Now, completing the cycle, everyone and his brother wants to reenter as participants, but not participants in the art—instead, participants in the spectacle. It's all about being famous, after all, no?

Bingo. Sad to say, but I think this hits the bullseye

 

[zDom]

One option, I'm thinking, is to offer "combat" or "traditional" TKD as a special class. Maybe a "by invitation only" sort of class.

So you still get the dependable, maybe critically important, revenue from kids classes and from those interested in "leadership/fitness/sport" TKDs, while being able to sleep at night knowing you are still passing along the REAL stuff to those who are up for the challenge.

 

[terryl965]

One option, I'm thinking, is to offer "combat" or "traditional" TKD as a special class. Maybe a "by invitation only" sort of class.

So you still get the dependable, maybe critically important, revenue from kids classes and from those interested in "leadership/fitness/sport" TKDs, while being able to sleep at night knowing you are still passing along the REAL stuff to those who are up for the challenge.

This is dueable, we have are kids classes and then our fight team or competition team and then we have a more SD oriantated class for the juniors and adults.

 

[Flying Crane]

`art of vicarious living'—living life at second hand, through the activities of others—

and now entertainment spectacles, as per XMA—martial arts to martial sports to martial acrobatics.

Now, completing the cycle, everyone and his brother wants to reenter as participants, but not participants in the art—instead, participants in the spectacle. It's all about being famous, after all, no?

The more I think about it, I think these three portions of Exile's post really express the point very clearly for me. As a capoeirista, I have done a lot of demonstration/performances. In the early days, it was always kind of low-key, spur of the moment, and fun. Later, they became bigger affairs, more pressure, and more of a "performance", and i started getting more uneasy about it.

As a kung fu guy, I have done a number of tournaments, and some demonstration/performances as well for Chinese New Year, and some cultural expression venues that my sifu gets involved in. It's been fun in a way, but I find myself drifting away from these more and more.

Overall, I think my training is becoming more and more personal and private for me, and what I dread is the thought of it becoming a SPECTACLE. A mere performance visual, for the entertainment of others. That thought just sends chills up and down my spine.

I had a recent incident that really hammered this home for me.

I work in an office building in downtown San Francisco. Attached to my building is a small shopping area with an open courtyard. My sifu was hired a couple weeks ago by the building management to put on a small performance for Chinese New Year. He asked me to help, and I try to support him when I can so I did, esp. since the location was so convenient. So he had lion dancing, and some of us students did some kung fu forms.

OK, no big deal, I dont' really LIKE to do these things, but like I said, I try to support him so I put on a happy face and help out. I've done enough of these that they certainly hold no fear for me.

But in my office, I sort of keep a low profile about it. I just don't like to make a big deal about it. If my coworkers come by and see it, that's cool, but I don't really shout it out and advertise it.

Well, my boss got wind of it, and she sort of announced it to the rest of my group. Suddenly, there were all kinds of jokes (I work with a bunch of jokers) being made and whatnot.

Now just guess how many times in the last 23 years I have silently endured the BS karate jokes and crap that your friends always make, you know, the "hi-YAHs" and the waving of "karate chops" around and crap. So that's kind of what I was enduring yet again. My coworkers are great people, they didn't mean it in a mean-spirited way, and I am sure they had not idea how I felt about all this, but there they are, shooting off their mouths and making stupid karate jokes.

I sort of laughed it off, but the truth is, i had a deep, broiling rage inside me that lasted the better part of a week. Part of it could probably be attributed to some other, unrelated frustrations at the office, like we just got our pathetic, disappointing annual raises and stuff, and that just puts us all in a foul mood 'cause it's been the same year after year.

But I think I felt like my arts, which I hold very very personally and dear and close to my heart, that I have trained for most of my life, were being flippantly turned into a spectacle, and fodder for jokes. Again, I know it was thru ignorance that my coworkers were doing what they were doing, but that is how it affected me.

So I think the SPECTACLE is a huge detriment to the arts. I hate to talk about the arts with anyone but other martial artists. I hate to show any of it to anyone, unless they are in a position to understand and appreciate what I am showing, not as a spectacle, but as an interested martial artist. In some ways, I wish we could take the arts underground, and just stop laying them all out in the open. I know this is unrealistic, but sometimes I just wish we could do it. Eliminate all the commercialization, the performance, the SPECTACLE of it all. But you can't un-ring a bell. It just makes my teeth itch.

 

[Flying Crane]

Sorry to sort of hijack this away from TKD. Just wanted to add my thoughts, I hope it's all related close enough to make sense.

 

[Touch Of Death]

I've taken TKD classes and I cringe when I see a bunch of kids kicking at eachother with there arms at there side. I know its just a way to get them used to using thier feet but it screams "sport". I think the answer is to do like the other traditional arts and teach two arts at the same time: traditional and practical.
sean

 

[exile]

Sorry to sort of hijack this away from TKD. Just wanted to add my thoughts, I hope it's all related close enough to make sense.

Nothing to worry about in the least, Michael, these reflections of yours based on your own experience are very germane to the spirit of Terry's OP, I'd say. I think it's very important, if we want to understand what's happening in our own little TKD corner of the world, to see the bigger context and realize that it's not a TKD-specific thing, that there are forces now driving the career of the MAs generally which are very different from what drove them in the past. So in a sense, your comments about Capoiera and CMA really are parts of the answer to Terry's query, I think....

 

[Shaderon]

I agree it's very relevant and thank you for your input, I found it interesting.

 

[zDom]

I agree it's very relevant and thank you for your input, I found it interesting.

Me too. I knowhatchamean.

 

[terryl965]

Sorry to sort of hijack this away from TKD. Just wanted to add my thoughts, I hope it's all related close enough to make sense.

It is withen the context of the thread and has alot of insight

 

[flashlock]

I think we kind of have two false choices here: "traditional" or "sport". Personally, I wouldn't take either--I'd just be interested in what works. As for a mix, you can't practice sports 50% of your time and expect the other 50% of "traditional TKD" is enough to save your life--because you will do what you practice. You'll drop your hands and throw high kicks.

Traditional TKD practioners of the past had almost superhuman abilities due to their training. THEY could get away with high kicks, and jump spinning kicks, and reverse punches because they bloody trained 15 hours a day, EVERY day--and in their sleep, they dreampt taekwondo. And it still took them 20 years to earn a first dan! (Do keep in mind, they were pretty isolated from other arts). You, as a modern day person who does not have such time (or such teachers) can follow in their footsteps, but only as a dim shadow--like cartoonists tracing Michelangelo drawings. This isn't a criticism on modern TKD traditionalists, but a bow to the old guard, so unapproachable now--I just think the time for those drawn-out modes of training is over--and it should be! Different times, different enemies (and look at all the new choices form the other arts the traditionalist was simply ignorant of that you now have before you!)

Some TKD leader has to appear and make a real stand. "We're not going to do sports. No 'kids' classes either! This is dangerous stuff, adults only. We're going to prove it by fighting all the other arts--especially the most popular--and we're going to alter our techniques to become the best fighting system in the world. We'll have answers for everything, or TKD should die."

I see very low, snappy kicks; tricky, angled footwork; I see practical answers to the clinch and groundwork; I see more elbows and knee strikes; I see double knife hands becoming tight and fast; I see no more forms practice (once and for all); I see knife and stick fighting.

Will it be TKD? If you brought back one of those old-time TKD guys from 80 years ago, what would he think of TKD today? Go with the spirit, drop the form.

Sorry for the rant! That's just what I always wished TKD would do. It didn't, but I did find what I was looking for elsewhere. It COULD go in that direction; I doubt anyone sees the art moving in this direction, unfortunately.

Thanks: great thread, great posts!

 

[keri-waza]

i can tell you that where i live TKD is seen as a day care for kids. I was in TKD for 6 years and got my Black Belt. It got to be that it was all about the money. I can't pick up our local paper without weekly seeing some 6 or 7 year old kid promoted to black belt. you go by a dojang and it is full of kid black belts. That is why I switched to a traditional hard hitting , hard discipline Isshinryu school. I have met some good TKD practicioners but in East Tn. I don't see them.

 

[exile]

Traditional TKD practioners of the past had almost superhuman abilities due to their training. THEY could get away with high kicks, and jump spinning kicks, and reverse punches because they bloody trained 15 hours a day, EVERY day--and in their sleep, they dreampt taekwondo.

`Traditional TKD practitioners' were practicing Shotokan/Shudokan Karate in Korea. They learned their MA from Gichin Funakoshi or Toyama Kanken. Every—single—kwan founder studied Karate under expat Okinawan masters in Japan. That was traditional TKD. Who are you thinking of in this passage? And that's still what `traditional' TKD is.

The kicks were never high originally. TKD kicks were low, like Shotokan and Goju-ryu kicks. Those high kicks didn't come in until TKD became a sport contest and demo activity. Jump spinning kicks... they didn't do that stuff in the Kwan era!

Want some documentation for this? The first master textbook on TKD technique was Sihak Henry Cho's Tae Kwon Do: Secrets of Korean Karate, published in 1968, the `state of the art' of TKD at the time. The title of the book presupposes the equivalence of TKD with the Korean variant of the art practiced in Okinawa and Japan as Kara Te. But there's more: Cho's book devotes 33 pages to the front snap kick and its variants; 53 pages to the side kick, 17 pages to the roundhouse, 4 pages to knee techs, and 15 pages to stamping and crescent kicks. Most of the kicks shown are depicted at low or middle height. The assumption was, you are going with the same bread-and-butter kicks as in Shotokan. By far the greatest emphasis is on the two basic kicks that the Kwan founders learned in Japan, the front snap kick and variants of the side kick. Go ahead, try to find a spinning kick in Cho's encyclopaedic treatment of TKD kicks! The spinning, jumping kicks didn't come in until the relatively late, sport-oriented phase of TKD, after Choi had been in effect banished in disgrace for his North Korean expeditions and the Korean government determined that TKD was more valuable to the Korean nationalist program as a competitive sport than as the CQ combat system of the military. I don't want to be disrespectful or anything, but why should North American and European practitioners of TKD, or anyone else, give a damn about what the Korean government decides is the correct profile of TKD?

And it still took them 20 years to earn a first dan! (Do keep in mind, they were pretty isolated from other arts).

From which other arts were they isolated? They were absolutely on the same page as the Shotokan teachers they learned the karate from which they taught in their Kwans. And they had practitioners of Jiu-Jutsu all around them; that had been taught in Korea in the early years of the Occupation, and there were still plenty of people around during the Kwan era who had been exposed to it. Hapkido was founded on an Aikido base...Do you really want to argue that the KMA masters were any more isolated than anyone else?

You, as a modern day person who does not have such time (or such teachers) can follow in their footsteps, but only as a dim shadow--like cartoonists tracing Michelangelo drawings. This isn't a criticism on modern TKD traditionalists, but a bow to the old guard, so unapproachable now--I just think the time for those drawn-out modes of training is over--and it should be! Different times, different enemies (and look at all the new choices form the other arts the traditionalist was simply ignorant of that you now have before you!)

The guy trying to defend himself in some suburb on the outskirts of Seoul in the early 1950s is very likely facing the same kinds of violent attacks that the guy getting hassled in some bar in Chicago, or North London, is. The techs that worked then work now. The current shiny new toys are no more complete SD systems than anything else is; if you acquire a good hard working knowledge of any of them, you're going to do more than well, as long as you train it hard. Someone doesn't want to do that kind of training? Fine, it's not for everyone. But if someone is lucky enough to find an instructor who does train TKD—or any of the other variants of karate, or any of the CMAs, or whatever—for the purpose of damaging an attacker as badly as you think necessary, you're going to be able to do it and do it well.

Some TKD leader has to appear and make a real stand. "We're not going to do sports. No 'kids' classes either! This is dangerous stuff, adults only. We're going to prove it by fighting all the other arts--especially the most popular--and we're going to alter our techniques to become the best fighting system in the world. We'll have answers for everything, or TKD should die."

I see very low, snappy kicks; tricky, angled footwork; I see practical answers to the clinch and groundwork; I see more elbows and knee strikes; I see double knife hands becoming tight and fast;

All of those are part of the core technical repertoire of TKD, and of Shotokan, and of Tang Soo Do, and of all the other arts that spring from Okinawan karate. They were there in the system from the beginning and they're still there, whatever the WTF scoring system says. If some people, or a lot of people, don't train them that way, well, tough. A .45 pistol will put a hole in your attacker the size of a half-dollar coming out his back, but only if you hit him. Target practice is your lookout, not the gun's, eh?

I see no more forms practice (once and for all); I see knife and stick fighting.

The forms contain brilliant fighting techs, if you learn how to read them as they were intended to be read. I agree with you to this extent: if you treat them as dances where a `block' motion is literally a block and a `punch' is only a punch, and you focus on the performance of the patterns rather than on practicing the applications that follow from a shrew and realistic analysis of the the patterns— well, that's your failing. Karateka from Itosu on have told us repeatedly to learn how to interpret the forms as realistic guides to fighting tactics guided by effective principles. People can ignore their advice, and all the work that people have been doing during the past decade to decode those kata, but if you that, you can't blame the art for the fact that you ignore its technical content.

Will it be TKD? If you brought back one of those old-time TKD guys from 80 years ago, what would he think of TKD today? Go with the spirit, drop the form.

I suspect that if you brought Itosu or Motobu back and showed him the way most people interpret the immediate Korean offspring of their art, they'd say, `why are you so blind to the obvious?? Look at the bloody poomsae, don't you see that this is a wristlock leveraged into an armlock? This is an elbow to the face followed by a forearm strike to the exposed throat? Why are all you people so illiterate that you can't read the simple instructions these forms are trying to give you?'

Sorry for the rant! That's just what I always wished TKD would do. It didn't, but I did find what I was looking for elsewhere. It COULD go in that direction; I doubt anyone sees the art moving in this direction, unfortunately.

I'm afraid this will fall on deaf ears, Flashlock, but I really wish you would take a look at Anslow's book on ITF tuls or—especially—Simon O'Neil's e-book on how to devise street-effective bunkai for TKD hyungs. O'Neil's book you have to subscribe to his newsletter to get, but in the interest of promoting the flow of ideas in the MA community, I'd be willing to make you a hard copy and send it to whatever address you gave me. Can't expect to get a better offer than that, now, can you?

 

[flashlock]

Exile, thank you for your post--it is obvious you feel passionate about TKD, and I applaud that.

My information regarding old-time TKD training was from Grandmaster Byong Yu's book, "Inside U" (the training just after the Japanese invasion of Korea).

Exile, I'm not going to comment on your comments because I see them as being more about the origins of TKD and its combat effectiveness, not the real subject of this thread (don't want to get spanked again by Big Brother), and, well, I think the subject is boring because my little mind is already made up. Also, thank you for the kind offer of the book, but I live in Australia, the postage is a killer!

So, most peoople, at least judging by this thread, belive the perception of TKD is that it is crap because it's been watered down to be child and Olympic-friendly.

Not to be harsh, but you have no answer, Exile--you just want to wait it out and hope something implodes. You offered me a book to share your take on MA--I would be much more appreciative of a video clip of you, or perhaps your teacher, testing out your skills in a MMA event. If you want to change your art's perceptions, take some action and do it in the most public, perception-raising promotional tool for MA in the world--Ultimate Fighting. People want to see results. Results will change perceptions; unless TKD doesn't work as well as your history books suggest (please spare me the, "Oh, then I'm not allowed to rip a guys eyes out, tear his head off, and slam dunk it into a basket!" cop-out.)

(Disclaimer: I'm not saying UFC is a true test of any art, only that if a few TKD guys won a few belts, perceptions would change so fast, and the money would be there so quick, TKD would be re-born.)

 

[terryl965]

I know plenty of MMA guys that can't take a punch or a kick so how is MMA a true test of real TKD> Flahlock, you are on this kick about MMA being the all in mighty you do relize it is a sport like TKD you are not allowed to knee the back of the head and all sort of stuff so to me this proves nothing.

 

[flashlock]

I know plenty of MMA guys that can't take a punch or a kick so how is MMA a true test of real TKD> Flahlock, you are on this kick about MMA being the all in mighty you do relize it is a sport like TKD you are not allowed to knee the back of the head and all sort of stuff so to me this proves nothing.

Excuse me, but did you read my entire post? I wrote "(Disclaimer: I'm not saying UFC is a true test of any art, only that if a few TKD guys won a few belts, perceptions would change so fast, and the money would be there so quick, TKD would be re-born.)"

Now, please don't next say I'm "off topic" (the usual next attack). I am absolutely on topic because the subject is the perception of where TKD is, and where it is going. UFC and similiar competitions, in my opinion, could add to TKD cred. If TKD guys rolled over everyone in TKD, you wouldn't be complaining about "knees to the back of the head"--please.

 

[exile]

If you want to change your art's perceptions, take some action and do it in the most public, perception-raising promotional tool for MA in the world--Ultimate Fighting. People want to see results. Results will change perceptions; unless TKD doesn't work as well as your history books suggest (please spare me the, "Oh, then I'm not allowed to rip a guys eyes out, tear his head off, and slam dunk it into a basket!" cop-out.)

(Disclaimer: I'm not saying UFC is a true test of any art, only that if a few TKD guys won a few belts, perceptions would change so fast, and the money would be there so quick, TKD would be re-born.)

But that's the point, flashlock: I don't see the future of TKD as related to increasing its revenue stream. In fact, I believe the opposite is true, to this extent: I would love to see some Chinese MA get the Olympic nod, and have TKD be de-Olympicized. I think that would be the best thing for the art, because it would change the focus of people who do TKD—which is the part of Terry's OP that is my sole concern:

...I'm asking to see where we are heading in twenty years and why are we choosen to go down that path. ... So what do we do as student of TKD do, to help preserve all that is holy within the Art, I know the sport will be here forever but will the art?

I interpret Terry's query as being what TKD practitioners should to, as he puts it, `help preserve all that is holy within the Art'. I see what is holy in TKD as its karate-tech core, and training that core for the street. I don't actually care what happens in the ring; when I train TKD, I'm envisaging defending myself against someone possibly a good deal larger than me who is very aggressive, is used to throwing a few hard punches at his victim's head and maybe getting in close to grab them, and who may pull out a weapon if the fight lasts long enough for him to get hurt in a way he didn't expect but leaves him still standing and able to move. That situation is the one that the karate which became TKD/TSD was developed for, and so far as I can see, preserving `all that is holy' in TKD means preserving those skills and methods of training their application that will let me be the one still standing at the end of that fight.

the subject is the perception of where TKD is, and where it is going.

I'm concerned with the where-is-it-going and why part. If TKD people start training it the way it used to be trained, in the Kwan era, for the street—not for the ring, not for sport, but for best survival chances in an unsought violent conflict—and start exploiting the technical possibilities that are locked up within hyungs, including training those possibilities in a realistic way, along the lines of Abernethy's British Combat Association projects—then that's all I think the art needs to stay viable. The one single perception of TKD I'm really concerned about it the before and after perception of it by that imaginary attacker I described above. If I and other TKD people train so that he spends some of his time in hospital after the fight wondering what happened to him and how he can afford all that surgery... that's the only change in perception that matters to me; if that's how it plays out for TKD practitioners subject to similar attacks two, three, four generations down the line, then all that's holy in the art—its capability, if applied right, for putting that guy in hospital and maybe on disability afterwards—will have been preserved, at least as far as I'm concerned. Terry was asking for our takes on that queston; well, that's mine.

 

[terryl965]

Excuse me, but did you read my entire post? I wrote "(Disclaimer: I'm not saying UFC is a true test of any art, only that if a few TKD guys won a few belts, perceptions would change so fast, and the money would be there so quick, TKD would be re-born.)"

Now, please don't next say I'm "off topic" (the usual next attack). I am absolutely on topic because the subject is the perception of where TKD is, and where it is going. UFC and similiar competitions, in my opinion, could add to TKD cred. If TKD guys rolled over everyone in TKD, you wouldn't be complaining about "knees to the back of the head"--please.

I saw your disclaimer but you still have this fascination with the MMA fights to hold some sort of respect for any Art. See I do not see MMA as anything except what it is a sport base on rules and guidelines just like OLympic TKD or point sparring or contiuous sparring when rules apply it is a game.

In the streets or in the Service there are really no ruls of engegement one will win and one shall lose, hopefully I will be on the winning side more often with my training and such.


UFC and similiar competitions, in my opinion, could add to TKD cred. If TKD guys rolled over everyone in TKD, you wouldn't be complaining about "knees to the back of the head"--please

Flashlock you and the MMA group made the rules not me I really don't care if I got kneed inthe back of the head, if I was stupid enought o give someone that position then I deserve that knee.

But I will say you have your way about you and you are withen topic so carry on with your words of wisdom for all of us TKD'ers and how we can use MMA to preserve our ARt, sorry I mean sport because if we use MMA it will be for the sport not for real SD.

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

I have to agree with Terry and Exile as they have both made great posts. Old style TKD is not about sport and therefore it was built first and foremost to be able to survive in a combative situation. For that it has been very successful based on the feared reputation of the ROK in Vietnam and other conflicts.

When you merge a self defense form into a sport you get a rule based driven competition that takes the martial out of it. That does not mean that it is not useful or effective for what it is intended to do but that it simply is no longer geared towards personal protection but instead is geared towards competition in a ring. Two very, very different animals.