Much to my relief, a couple of readers wrote in with comments on Tae Kwon Do, rebutting many of the conclusions I arrived at after watching (
and blogging about) a TKD tournament on Saturday. First was Erik, who posted his thoughts in a comment. Quoting part of them:
..there are 2 styles, the WTF style, that you see at the olympics, and the ITF style. (that hopefully becomes olympic in 2012). In WTF style, full contact, it is allowed to kick someone knockout, but it is not allowed to punch someone in the face. Punches arent seen very much in this style, mostly kicks.
In ITF style, semi-contact, it is not allowed to knock someone out. It is allowed however to punch someone in the face. Here punches are seen quite often. I am not sure how it is with protection in the USA, but in Europe the WTF style use a chest protector and helmet, ITF style uses hand and foot-equipment. A helmet is allowed as well.
I'm glad to hear that there are (at least) two styles, since the tournament style we saw was not very impressive. I also like that one of them abbreviates as "WTF," since that was pretty much what Malaya and I thought after watching a pair of teenaged boys in heavy padding trade ineffective stomach kicks for an entire match. (
They are actually the initials of the two different governing bodies with differing rules; the World Taekwondo Federation and the International Taekwondo Federation.) The tournament we saw was apparently in the WTF style, since virtually no one punched, and those that did aimed them only at the chest.
I also heard from Marty, who had a lot to say. He's been taking TKD for 3 years:
Like most other martial arts, mainstream Tae Kwon Do teachings are divided into two categories: free-sparring and forms. The free-sparring that you saw is the most sport-like aspect of Tae Kwon Do, while the other area involves choreographed forms, fighting drills, throws, defence against weapons, and that sort of stuff. This other category includes the "this will kill someone" type of stuff; in one form, for example, a Tae Kwon Do student punches two impaginary "oppenents" in the solar plexus, breaks both of their legs at the knee, and crushes the second opponent's windpipe. This exact content of this category of TKD teachings varies depending on the school and the teacher one learns from.
The sparring as you described it is not typical of Tae Kwon Do, either. While Tae Kwon Do might not have as many fancy, elaborate moves as Kung Fu, a good sparrer will be able to use (and use quite often) a wider variety of kicks and strikes than you saw. TKD sparring mainly focuses on kicks, but sparrers can still use hand strikes in ways besides scoring points.
Also, good TKD sparrers always take advantage the energy of their opponents. The key to success is figuring out how your opponent will react to your advances before they even have the chance to do it themselves. A free, open tournament like the one you went to probably didn't have the highest level of sparring.
The point of my rather long-winded lecture is that in Tae Kwon Do, sparring is seen as just another exercise to improve a student's control, confidence, and physical endurance. It is much different than the style of fighting that a TKD student would use in a real fight. We practice THAT type of stuff as realistically as we can without mortally injuring anyone, but it is not something that is done
competitively.
Sparring is only one aspect of Tae Kwon Do teachings.
With all of this in mind, Tae Kwon Do is actually just as good (better, of course, in my opinion) as any other martial art for kids to learn. The important part of learning martial arts is not which one you do, but how you learn it. In my experience, many commercial youth martial arts schools focus on earning belts, because parents want their kids to have something to show for all the money that is being spent. Groups like the one you go to, and the one I go to at the local YMCA focus more on each student achieving as much as they can, because the teacher isn't paid for each belt test.
So good news there all around. I especially agree with his comments about how it's not the martial art, it's the teacher. Malaya and I train in Kali, but we're in a very small school, headed by a master who trained under some famous traditional Kali teachers, but then went his own way when he wanted to advance the art beyond the traditional forms, and didn't have the freedom to do that without starting his own school. In other words, Kali as done anywhere else in the world is likely to be quite different in approach and style from the Kali we're doing. The same is true of other forms, and taking TKD from some strip mall, belt-factory dojo is going to be an entirely different experience than learning it from a true master, or at least from serious experts, like Marty mentions.
(True masters are prodigies, and are extremely rare in any discipline; the head of our Kali school is one, and while he knows thousands of other martial artists, he only considers one of them a master, a man who does Kung Fu, and who isn't even teaching it now, largely because he could not find any students he thought worthy of passing his knowledge onto. Fortunately for our edification, our Kali master isn't quite so choosy.)
And yeah, as both commenters say, sparring or tournament fighting in TKD is a very specialized style, with very limited rules and styles. Comparing real martial arts, TKD or Kali or anything else, to the tournament stuff we saw is like comparing
ultimate fighting to junior boxing, if junior boxing only allowed jabs. (And even ultimate fighting is far more limited than true martial arts or street fighting, since in that sport they aren't allowed to do neck or joint breaks, they don't know pressure points, and they can't do anything really dirty, like eye gouges, biting, etc.)
I also like that Marty mentions that he of course thinks TKD is the best style. We feel that way about Kali, based on almost zero comparison, and isn't that the way it should be? After all, if you were doing one form and actually thought another form was better, wouldn't you switch? (You would if your goal was to be the best fighter possible; some people stay with a form they know isn't great just because they've put too much time into learning it already, or because their friends are using it, or whatever.)
It reminds me of a short argument I had with someone about my writing years ago. They didn't like a short story I'd posted on the D2 site, I did like it (obviously, since I wrote it and wouldn't have posted it if I'd thought it sucked) and the other person (who had absolutely no ability to write fiction, but could not accept that reality) said something like, "What, you think your writing style is better than mine?"
I said, "Of course. Everyone thinks their style is the best, or they'd be writing in a different style. Right?" That bit of logic pretty well shut her up, which was fortunate, since I was annoyed and close to launching into a savage discussion of the shortcomings of her painfully-labored and desperately-precocious writing style.
Funny how my posts never end up on the same subject that they began on, isn't it?
