Anyone study TKD?

[dodgeduckdodge]

Price? unimportant. You usually get what you pay for~

Class length? unimportant

How many times per week? unimportant

Ask to try it for one month. See if you like the teachers, the members.

Ask yourself, do I feel like I would like to be a part of this family?

Is the teacher real? Do they have international relationship with Korea?

Personally, I would never join a Taekwondo school that did not have an excellent relationship with Korea.

Best of success,

Alcohol

[Red Rum]

Price is important for a lot of people

How many times a week is very important. 3 times a week or more if you want to be serious.

Relationship with korea is unimportant. The largest single TKD group is the American Taekwondo Association and they have schools in every state and as far as I know every major city. They have a huge tournament circuit as well.

The most important is finding a quality instructor no matter what system you choose.

The training should reflect what you are looking to achieve.

Here here. Lineage is not always as important nowadays. It is nice to have a good string lineage (knowing that your teacher was good and his teacher was good, etc), but I have known poor schools to produce great thinkers and great martial artists.

A lot of wing chun nowadays has no ties to Hong Kong
A lot of BJJ has no ties to Brazil

As for the style that I am learning under (CKD) it appears to have tried to break free a little from the whole Korea thing.

[Laura]

Well, this is the school I've decided to join. They have strong ties with Korea, their classes are $35 a month for an hour an a half twice a week (all I can make with my schedule anyway) and they're very nice and open people. I don't believe you always get what you pay for - I think some people like to take advantage and this happens too often in martial arts. I've had excellent Wing Chun instruction for $45 a month, a great teacher that doesn't charge me much for Jeet Kune Do - and now these folks. I'd say I've done well in choosing a good school.

http://www.bluewavetaekwondo.com/

[dodgeduckdodge]

Price is important for a lot of people

How many times a week is very important. 3 times a week or more if you want to be serious.

Relationship with korea is unimportant. The largest single TKD group is the American Taekwondo Association and they have schools in every state and as far as I know every major city. They have a huge tournament circuit as well.

The most important is finding a quality instructor no matter what system you choose.

The training should reflect what you are looking to achieve.

ATA is a certainly a great business model, like McDonalds, however, it is a laughing stock among serious Taekwondo practitioners worldwide.

A quality instructor who can not teach you excellent techniques, or true character development on a Taekwondo level, is a joke.

Today everyone in MA business babbles about "Quality", when very few have it. I have never seen a "true" Taekwondo school of quality that was not a Kukkiwon (South Korea) based school.

Alcohol

[dodgeduckdodge]

Here here. Lineage is not always as important nowadays. It is nice to have a good string lineage (knowing that your teacher was good and his teacher was good, etc), but I have known poor schools to produce great thinkers and great martial artists.

A lot of wing chun nowadays has no ties to Hong Kong
A lot of BJJ has no ties to Brazil

As for the style that I am learning under (CKD) it appears to have tried to break free a little from the whole Korea thing.

I would not join Wing Chun that did not have strong connection to China, same for BJJ and Brazil.

Nowadays, the is no such thing as lineage for most MA schools. This is one of the major reasons that most school are terrible.

Western people get a preconceived notion of what a good school is, and the marketing companies (like ATA) model their programs on that thinking. So when the average Westerner walks into a truly good school, they can't recognize it and because it does not match their preconceived notion, they think it's bad. Funny.

Chung Do Kwan never broke away from Korea. The current president of Chung Do Kwan, UM, Woon Kyu, is also the current President of Kukkiwon (World Taekwondo Headquarters).

Alcohol

[dodgeduckdodge]

Well, this is the school I've decided to join. They have strong ties with Korea, their classes are $35 a month for an hour an a half twice a week (all I can make with my schedule anyway) and they're very nice and open people. I don't believe you always get what you pay for - I think some people like to take advantage and this happens too often in martial arts. I've had excellent Wing Chun instruction for $45 a month, a great teacher that doesn't charge me much for Jeet Kune Do - and now these folks. I'd say I've done well in choosing a good school.

http://www.bluewavetaekwondo.com/

Let us know how it all goes.

Best Regards,

Alcohol

[GranFire]

I would not join Wing Chun that did not have strong connection to China, same for BJJ and Brazil.

Nowadays, the is no such thing as lineage for most MA schools. This is one of the major reasons that most school are terrible.

Western people get a preconceived notion of what a good school is, and the marketing companies (like ATA) model their programs on that thinking. So when the average Westerner walks into a truly good school, they can't recognize it and because it does not match their preconceived notion, they think it's bad. Funny.

Chung Do Kwan never broke away from Korea. The current president of Chung Do Kwan, UM, Woon Kyu, is also the current President of Kukkiwon (World Taekwondo Headquarters).

Alcohol

What exactly are the ties to the motherland supposed to do?

I speak neither Korean, not Chinese or Japanese. I can't read the materials unless translated, losing some of the original.

Frankly as I have been told, keeping the ties is not as easy. It might not be as welcome from the other side as we might think.

And as much as I'd like to see Asia, I don't see it happen anytime soon...

[wsdddoa012]

response

For the most part many of the original connections of Martial Arts has been lost due to changes in time, ways of doing things, styles and new beliefs.

[Tom Yum]

It begs the question what kind of Tae Kwon Do was it?

I'm guessing back in those days, TKD was alot "harder" in the sense that the head instructors made their reputation from the quality of their students; seems like things didn't get soft until the 80's when people who wanted to train in martial arts didn't like the idea of training to learn how to fight - rather how to be self-confident and fit (even though all three should go hand in hand).

[Laura]

Why is it so important to be barefoot?

[jeff5]

I remember doing "one steps" that actually had some real life useability. This TKD had nothing in common with what is found in the storefronts these days.

I think this is just when Tang Soo Do was becoming TKD. I had a similar experience with TKD in the early 80s. I joined it as a semi-out of shape 11 year old, and stopped when I started high school as an extremely in shape and muscular 14 year old. The training was very intense. Lots of sparring, lots of contact. Body mechanics and hard training were the norm. We did knuckle push ups, kick the floor with our feet to toughen them etc. Physically we would do things like 200 side kicks in 90 degre heat, no air conditioning. To and from a horse stance. Talk about sweat. Honestly, even after studying a multitude of other arts, a lot of the body mechanics, especially when it comes to kicks, have still stayed with me. I see so many people use their kicks wrong, or mis-use them from the way I was taught. This was no McDojo for sure.

Now I was studying at another school recently that shared space with a TKD school. I have to say I was appalled at how they taught. It was "limp" compared to what I had learned. I don't know what type of TKD it was, but it was bad.

Point is, I believe you could still probably find some quality instruction, but like many things the quality is going to be in the minority.

[dodgeduckdodge]

We obviously come from close to the same era. My Dojang was a lot like the Cobra Kai from the Karate Kid movie-That's probably why I told my mom I wanted to go.

I remember the sensei teaching us what he called an "Oxbow" strike, explaining that "if you have defensive stab wounds in your hands, and cannot make a fist, you can use this technique to still be able to strike"

Far removed from the 6 year old black belt type mcdojangs you get nowadays. And while I am griping, what about Hapkido? I can't find anything decent in my area. It's all add-ons at a TKD mcdojang!

What good did the Cobra Kai Oxbow style training do you? What did you accomplish in martial arts as the result of the non-McDojang training?

Alcohol