To all who complain about TKD

[karateka_101]

If you have complained about Taekwondo or any other martial art, pay attention.
Think of the martial art you complain about. How much do you actually know about the art? Do you know more than the founder? Have you noticed the large amount of people who still practice it and enjoy it, despite criticism? Have you loved the martial art and dedicated your life to it? Have you spent every day doing your best to improve in this art, to train harder today than you did yesterday?

No martial art or fighting style is better than another. It all depends on the practitioner. If you have a strong will to improve, a good fighting spirit and a love for what you do, it doesn't matter which martial art/s you do, you will still become a greater martial artist.

[Ghost]

Originally posted by karateka_101
If you have complained about Taekwondo or any other martial art, pay attention.
Think of the martial art you complain about. How much do you actually know about the art? Do you know more than the founder? Have you noticed the large amount of people who still practice it and enjoy it, despite criticism? Have you loved the martial art and dedicated your life to it? Have you spent every day doing your best to improve in this art, to train harder today than you did yesterday?

No martial art or fighting style is better than another. It all depends on the practitioner. If you have a strong will to improve, a good fighting spirit and a love for what you do, it doesn't matter which martial art/s you do, you will still become a greater martial artist.

Again more rubbish. Some styles are better than others. How could they all be equal, that does not make sence.
To answer your questions in order with relevance to TKD.

How much do you actually know about the art?
1) Enough to know its not worth doing, i have seen many tournament videos that prove to me it is useless and i have sparred with black belts and that proved to me it was even more useless than i originally thought.

Do you know more than the founder?
2) I dont know more about TKD than the founder, so what?

Have you noticed the large amount of people who still practice it and enjoy it, despite criticism?
3) Yes i have noticed the number of people that practice and enjoy it. In the same way as i see the number of people that sit in McDonalds eating Junk food even though junk food is heavily critisezed.

Have you loved the martial art and dedicated your life to it?
4)I have been doing martial arts since i was about 7, i am now 25 so quite alot of. I spent most of that doing Karate and Kung fu.

Have you spent every day doing your best to improve in this art, to train harder today than you did yesterday?

5)Your last question is stupid in that i obviously dont spend every day trying to improve in TKD, i dont do it. I choose not to because i know it is rubbish.

So your whole line of questioning is about what i know about TKD.
I know more than i want to.

The Style you does matter and I AM FED UP WITH ALL THE POLITICALLY CORRECT NONSENCE about this.

STYLES ARE NOT EQUAL. GET OVER IT.

[hybone]

As for the argument of which is a better style etc.. I can help you understand it better:

for breaking boards with kicks - Tae Kwon Do is better
for self defense and more realistic fighting - BJJ and Muay thai are better than TKD. There.....!

.....but remember what Bruce Lee said: Boards... don't hit back

[karateka_101]

Arguments to what you said:

1) What can a video of a Taekwondo tournament prove? What makes these black belts that you sparred with so bad? If you have a good enough reason, these people don't represent the whole style, they only represent themselves.

2) If you were going to make your own martial art wouldn't you do your best to make it as good as possible? The founder knows why the art is good, and would have only done the best job they could. The founder's reputation depends on how good people think the art is.

3) The junk food is not helping these people. Taekwondo, just like any other martial art, is helping people. People lose weight, gain confidence, are able to defend themselves against the many people who are not skilled, find an interest in life, improve their whole character, all this because of martial arts. Martial arts including Taekwondo. When people eat junk food, it doesn't help them. They gain weight and lose health.

4) When I said "Have you loved the martial art and dedicated your life to it?", I was talking about the martial art you criticise, in this case Taekwondo. Maybe if you dedicated your life to Taekwondo, you would see how good it can be.

5) If you did spend every day improving in Taekwondo, you would realise that it is not rubbish.

No style is better than another, in the same way that nobody has a better life than anybody else. Life is what YOU make it. A martial art is what YOU make it.

[Old Fat Kenpoka]

Karateka101:

Do you actually think you are going to convince anyone on a MMA & BJJ forum that TKD is respectable and that all styles are equal? No. You are not. Not now, not ever. You will never ever win a single person on this forum to your point of view.

So what should you do? Apologize? No. Don't apologize. Take a different approach. Describe the benefits of TKD training. Describe how even little kids can do it because TKD is so simple and so ineffective that little kids never get hurt. Talk about the cardio benefits. Talk about the flexibility benefits. Talk about how women like TKD and you are more likely to hook up with a girl at a TKD school than at a BJJ school.

What else should you do? Get a reality check dude! All styles are not equal. They don't have the same objectives, strategies, technique repertoires, training methods, grading systems, and street effectiveness. And, hate to burst your bubble...but if you were to list all the styles of martial arts and then sort them by combat effectiveness, BJJ would be near the top of the list. TKD would be just above Tai Chi and Yoga.

As to your point about it's the practitioner, not the style. Nonsense. Styles have limitations and so do practitioners. Some practitioner's limitations prohibit them from effectively applying their style. That's my case: too old and fat to hurt anybody. If you have an Olympic caliber TKD practitioner in top condition, he might just wup me. Does that mean that style doesn't count? No it doesn't. It just means that he may be getting the most out of his style while I am not approaching the potential of mine.

Don't waste everybody's time here trying to convince them that TKD is as good as BJJ, that all styles are equal, and that we've never seen good TKD. The sad truth is that you've probably never seen good BJJ or MMA.

[Tom Yum]

I completely agree what you said about life.

In regards to TKD, I'm probably only one of the few members on this site that doesn't hate TKD, because I have seen many powerful Korean TKD instructors and fighters.

As you said, these guys eat/drink/sleep Tae Kwon Do so they have a lot of determination and train really hard. The result is that they can kick faster than most trained people can punch and with twice the power. There is a whole world of guys that kick like Bill "Superfoot" Wallace, but they don't come out in the open.

The real issue that people have with TKD, is that some schools promote too easily as long as the student can pay higher and higher fees for the next belt test. As a result, skill and talent is watered down in the next generation of Black Belts. Then they open their own Dojang just for the $$$.

Korean Martial artists say that black belt is the true beginner, but if he cannot perform a white belt level technique at the black belt level, then he will allways be a white belt no matter how much he pays. This is the reason why many martial artists look unfavorably at TKD.

I won't join a school that promotes people on $$$. Only the ignorant will.

[karateka_101]

Originally posted by Old Fat Kenpoka
Karateka101:

Do you actually think you are going to convince anyone on a MMA & BJJ forum that TKD is respectable and that all styles are equal? No. You are not. Not now, not ever. You will never ever win a single person on this forum to your point of view.

So what should you do? Apologize? No. Don't apologize. Take a different approach. Describe the benefits of TKD training. Describe how even little kids can do it because TKD is so simple and so ineffective that little kids never get hurt. Talk about the cardio benefits. Talk about the flexibility benefits. Talk about how women like TKD and you are more likely to hook up with a girl at a TKD school than at a BJJ school.

What else should you do? Get a reality check dude! All styles are not equal. They don't have the same objectives, strategies, technique repertoires, training methods, grading systems, and street effectiveness. And, hate to burst your bubble...but if you were to list all the styles of martial arts and then sort them by combat effectiveness, BJJ would be near the top of the list. TKD would be just above Tai Chi and Yoga.

As to your point about it's the practitioner, not the style. Nonsense. Styles have limitations and so do practitioners. Some practitioner's limitations prohibit them from effectively applying their style. That's my case: too old and fat to hurt anybody. If you have an Olympic caliber TKD practitioner in top condition, he might just wup me. Does that mean that style doesn't count? No it doesn't. It just means that he may be getting the most out of his style while I am not approaching the potential of mine.

Don't waste everybody's time here trying to convince them that TKD is as good as BJJ, that all styles are equal, and that we've never seen good TKD. The sad truth is that you've probably never seen good BJJ or MMA.

You are absolutely right! I agree with you on one thing. I won't be able to convince many people that TKD is respectable and that all styles are equal, because there are too many ignorant people out there. You can't always change someone's opinion, but you can express your own. I don't doubt the effectiveness of BJJ. One of my friends who has been doing BJJ for a couple of months, defeated his opponent in less then twenty seconds using some kind of choke hold. Although, effectiveness is not the only part of martial arts. Martial arts should be about discipline and hard work. Also, if one person does BJJ and Taekwondo, BJJ would probably be more effective for that person. If one person does BJJ with little interest and another does TKD with dedication, the TKD would be more effective in this case. It all depends on the person, not the art.

[Pr0Deus]

hi karateka_101

I have invented a personal tkd style,
it is equal to every other martial art.
in my style i have only one move, The Headbutt.
and i do only practice it in kata.
its a self defense art, mostly against knife attacks.

Is it as effective as bjj in self defence??
I don`t think so.

so then my style is not equal to Bjj.
is this a exception in your theory karateka_101??

[ryanhall]

For God's sake, people, how many times can you debate this nonsense? Don't you ever get tired of having the same arguments over and over and over again? I have seen 5+ threads devoted to this kind of stuff in the past week and a half. Enough is enough.

Thread closed.