Saturday afternoon Malaya and I drove over to an area college that was hosting a Tae Kwan Do tournament in the gynmasium. It was free, and we were curious, so off we went, before driving down to Lafayette and their annual wine and music and crafts festival.
As for the Tae Kwan Do... it was interesting to see a pure sport form of martial arts, in comparison to the "this will kill someone" stuff we mostly concentrate on in Kali class. They had 6 rings (well, squares) set up around the gym, with matches going on in every ring all the time. All different age groups and skill classes were represented, though by the afternoon when we got there, most of the little kids seemed to be done. That was our goal anyway, since while they're very cute all smothered in pads and such, we didn't have much desire to watch 7 y/o's take turns frantically kicking each other in the chest guard. The older students weren't a great deal more impressive, but we saw a few good moves, and one guy got sort of knocked out by a decent spinningg heel kick that got him in the mouth.
I have no idea how the tournament style TKD compares to other forms, but it was very energetic, but not in any way practical for actual self defense. There don't seem to be very many moves allowed; maybe 75% of the kicks we saw were basic side kicks to the stomach area, which is how they mostly score points, I guess. They weren't kicks to hurt though; they were just to score points, so they bounced off the heavy stomach padding like a bug against a windshield. Another 20% of the attacks were spinning heel kicks that hardly anyone had enough control over to actually aim, 4% were straight armed punches to the chest, and maybe 1% were leaping kicks, or kicks that went low, or double kicks, etc.
There was one skinny Asian guy who looked to be about 17 who could do it well enough to be a stunt man in a movie. He wasn't very accurate, but he had kicks that were fast enough to do some damage, and he could string three or four in a row, he could kick to the head with power, and he even did a couple of leaping double kicks. He won his fight by a mile, but even he never hit the other guy hard enough to do more than slightly stagger him.
All of the fighting was open hand; there weren't any weapons used at all, and everyone wore a ton of pads. I mean kicking foot pads, shin guards, knee pads, chest/shoulder pads, huge helmets with face shields, and heavy boxing gloves that went up over the wrists. If not for one guy getting a heel kick to the chin (he did a side kick and his opponent did one of the very few parry moves we saw all day; spinning away with a heel kick that happened to find the chin) and going wobbily with some mouth bleeding, we wouldn't have seen a single solid hit the whole time.
I don't know the rules of TKD tournament style, but it was very odd to watch. They've got so many rules to make it safe that it's sort of kabuki dance-like, in some ways. They never grab or do any throws or even shoves, and they hardly ever punch, only throwing a few straight shoulder punches that looked more like one-armed pushes. They never kick low or do any sort of sweeps, even though those were open all day with the awkward high kicks most people were throwing. They never catch the opponent's slow kick and throw him down, or pull him in for a kill, or hit him/her while they're off balance. They never circle away and get in a hit by side stepping an out of control charge. The never block and step inside an attack to hit in the opening their defense creates, and really, they never block at all. At least 95% of the matches we saw were basically two people taking turns hitting each other, with an occasional leap back dodge.
It reminded me a bit of Olympic fencing, where no one defends or parries anything; they just stab frantically, since they're padded up to be invulnerable, and since the first hit to land wins, and they've got electronic scoring to tell you who landed it, the whole goal is just to dive at your opponent and hit them 1/1000th of a second before they hit you. The fact that you both died in real life is irrelevant, in their sport.
The TKD wasn't that fake, and everyone got in lots of kicks and hits, and we could usually tell who was winning (they fought two rounds of about one minute each, before getting a decision), but it's been so ritualized into a competition form that it's lost any real connection to actual martial arts. It's like touch boxing would be, where the fighters go through all the motions but no one actually gets hurt so no one actually worries about defense or hitting hard; they just score their points and move on.
On the drive home, Malaya and I were arguing about the uses of it for our future hypothetical children. I didn't think it would be a bad thing for a kid to learn, since their young knees could take it, they'd enjoy dressing up in the pads and outfits and such, and it would let them burn off a lot of energy. I see it like a sort of light-contact gymnastics. She is more of a Kali snob than me, and was horrified at the notion. Why would we want our child wasting time on a sport martial art like that, it would teach him/her bad combat habits he/she would have to erase once he/she started doing kali later on, etc. And I agree with her, if the kid were over the age of 13 or 14 or something. By then I'd want the kid to learn something that could actually be used effectively in a fight. But for younger kids, I think the sport TKD would be fine, and probably less wear and tear on their knees than the soccer I played was, if not a whole long more useful in an actual street fight.
We did heartily admire the cash cow aspects of TKD, though. Everyone there must have had
$300 worth of padded equipment on, plus their $70-100 ghi, plus a $50 bag to carry it in. And you know those kids are outgrowing their gear every year, needing new colored belts every few months, wearing out the shoes like mad, needing extra uniforms if you can't do the laundry three times a week, etc. You know those TKD dojos are making more money on their equipment sales than they are on the classes themselves. And speaking strictly on a business level, I admire that. Great revenue stream concept, especially with the art being easy to learn for kids, who go through the equipment the fastest.
