Tao kwon do

[eXcessiveForce]

Ryan you are entitled to tell people what you believe and I would not tell anyone not to value your opinion.

My only concern is for someone who wants to take martial arts and the best school in there area is the TKD school. The instructor running my TKD school is a JKD instructor so he has a lot to offer the students. The fact that he is teaching TKD is only part of his character.

It would be sad if someone in that town chose to pass up his instruction for the alternatives in that town. 1 WTF instructor, on of my students who broke away so she could play with little children and get paid for it. And, oh wait there is no more and anymore. The rest have all come and gone including the JKD school.

the closest school that teaches NHB type instruction has had instructors arrested for dealing drugs and are known in the community as a bunch of bullies and thugs.

I know about ever school in that area because I visited each school and worked out in most of them. Sometimes they new I was an instructor and sometimes they didn't.

The point i'm making is to discredit or give credit to any school before checking it out may mean the difference between someone recieving quality training and someone recieving no training.


I have seen people grow even in poor schools simply because they had the desire to grow. And although the instruction they recieve is substandard they end up learning the basics and then seek out how to improve.

Much as I did as a child. One of my instructors thought he was a tough guy because he was large and could use force to push around smaller less experienced people. I learned a lot from that school. Mostly what not to do. But I also learned how to handle a big tough guy with a little bit of training and an ego.

If someone had told me to go train at the JKD school when I moved to Virginia I do not think I would have recieved as good instruction as I do at other places. I was in fact very disappointed when I found out how the JKD school was running.

Hell the TKD instructor that lets me work out for free taught Wing Chun for 10 years. You just never know until you check it out. That's all I'm saying. I started TKD when I was 4 and would never have gotten into it at all if I hadn't gone to that school.

Hell I never wanted to be an instructor but in high school i didn't like working at fast food places so I opened a school. ANd a funny thing happened my school ended up almost all adults.and I learned more from teaching then I had ever learned from training up to that point.

okay well enough of my rant. hehehe

[Szczepankiewicz]

And, oh wait there is no more and anymore

That is one of the coolest Zen koans I have ever read.

Spanky

[Sphinx]

what exactly is that ox's neck and what martial art is it from, when should it be used.

[eXcessiveForce]

an Ox jaw is when you bend your wrist downward (palm toward forearm) fingers are straight and tensed you strike with the back of the wrist where the bend is. It is found in many martial arts. I was shown it by a TKD instructor but I have seen it in other arts before like kung fu.


It seems like a crazy strike, I thought my instructor was nuts when he showed me. I thought for sure you would break your wrist but you don't. It is an incredibly hard striking surface and risk of injury is minimal.

[eXcessiveForce]

better way to visualize it is to think of Karate Kid, and Paint the Fence.

It can be used like a backfist or can be used up under the chin. You could even use it as a gunting (sp?) limb distruction

[Cain]

kind of foolish

again i see many judging tkd from olympic tkd... olympic tkd != all tkd.. when will you ppl learn that? when i trained tkd, we trained grappling, a lot of weapon-defence, low kicks, knees.. elbows.. a lot about entering.. getting out.. distance-things! and a lot about general power-creation, how to use your body to generete the most power possible at the moment.

so again, don't judge a MA cause you have seen 1% of it, that is just stupid.. and quite ignorant

[Smith Adams]

TKD

When I first started training the only school in my area that was worth attending was a TKD school I studied it for ten years. It seems o have changed in those ten years. Sparring for instance slowly became lighter and lighter contact. When I was coming up the classes were mostly adult males who were trainign very hard and got my ass handed to me many of times. As the years progressed the men slowly left and I eventuallly left because I was tired of training with children and women ( No offense ladies)I have used Tkd effectivly many off times knocked people out with high kicks and punches. Ihave broken ribs with side kicks and had my ribs broken with side kicks. It is an effective art It just depends on the player. I do recognize the two weakeness about it ...clenching and ground games... the best thing about it was sparring when you have decent opponents... One find a school that spars ....two make sure the instructor can kick your ass and wll do it..I have seen a lot of TKD schools whose onwers could be beat up by the average man on the street...and schools where the instructors do not spar his students...three tkd has a bad rep because there are so many schools out there that suck it is over done.. They award anyone black belts that serve their time and pay thier money...before you sign up go through a class and ask to observe a high rank class or one of their promotional testings you need to see where they are headed....

After training for ten years in Tkd sometimes I wish I would have trained only for five years andf spent the rest of my time in Thai or BJJ Or JKD ...............But it was fun and that is the most important thing...

[Tom Yum]

I have 2 words which will end this argument: Manson Gibson
His other alliases are "black bruce lee" and "thai killer". He's kod thaiboxers with side kicks, spinning backfists, hook kicks and jump spinning back kicks. How? Perhaps he made a deal with satan

The difference between he and your average TKD instructor is that he likely spars against tboxers in preperation for fights. He knows that he will get kicked in the thigs and ribs, clinched kneed & elbowed. He's familiar with the arsenal and has built his defenses. He's keeping it real.

If tKD people trained as hard as thaiboxers and sparred with other styles, they could improve the legitimacy of the art

[Guest]

Excessive Force - you really need to take up Thai Boxing. You've gone from one nonsense art to another.

Schizo - re your comment about all those screw drivers in the toolbox. You need LESS screw drivers. It is not good to have more. It doesn't give you more options, it makes you spoiled for choice. Pick the one that will do all the jobs.

Tom - choosing one fighter who radically adapts TKD training does not prove your point. It proves Ryan's.

Ryan - striking with the back of the wrist IS powerful. I used to train it from a distance, wind-milling my arm forwards. Throw it like a ridge hand, but twist at the wrist so the back of it strikes instead of the knuckles on the index finger. But I threw it out, because I don't want too many screw drivers.

[brokenelbow]

So only Muay Thai works?

[ryanhall]

No, there are many things that work. There are more things that don't. The things that work tend to have a lot in common. Muay Thai is just an example of one of the good ones.

[brokenelbow]

But I've seen Muay Thai fighters lose, so how is it one of the good ones? Also what do the good ones have in common?

[doubleouch]

Apply good training methods to almost any art and it will work. Nuff said.

[ryanhall]

But I've seen Muay Thai fighters lose, so how is it one of the good ones?

Nothing on the face of the earth is completely undefeated. Frankly, the tone of your post is a little annoying. You're being argumentative for the sake of being argumentative. I am not a Thai fighter, I just respect the style.

Also what do the good ones have in common?

1) Movement (no static stances)
2) Offensive orientation
3) Tools that work on noncompliant opponents
4) Powerful tools delivered with economy of motion and the weight of the body
5) Positioning--the art or style teaches you to gain dominant position over an opponent (clinch (Thai), mount/chest to back (BJJ), make slipping--'em miss, make 'em pay (boxing)).

The list goes on. I would think that you'd understand this after training with so many black bag special forces operatives in the past. Real fighters (self-defense practitioners and ring fighters) respect Muay Thai the same way they respect boxing or BJJ. It's not the be all and end all, but it works. Most decent striking styles on the planet borrow from it.

[mr. bond]

sigh....more tkd bashing and ego clashing....

in response to everyone who sees tkd as ineffective on the street, you're taking tkd's intentions for the street completely out of context. to say that we would do the same things in sparring as on the street is just not accurate. every decent tkd practictioner i've met would scoff at the idea of using a head kick in street combat. they practice techniques like wrist locks and other joint locks and shots to the ribs, temples, and whatever else for use in a self defense situation.

so don't take olympic sparring and think that this is the only thing tkd can bring to self defense. it's just not true.

i will admit tkd is VERY weak when it comes to groundwork, and often grappling as well. but if you find an experienced, well-rounded tkd instructor i'm sure this kind of thing could be avoided.