So... I travel all the way to Winnipeg (about 8 hours from my home town) for a competition where I get one lousy match and lose.

My opponent did win however, and basically owned the rest of his competition (multiple knockdowns w/ back kicks), and I figure this match was at least close, so if I didn't fight him first I might have at least got a silver. But I didn't... so it's more a "It's ok, you don't suck too horribly" pep talk to myself.

I'm in red... and if you like back kicks, I threw about 8,367 of em, where maybe 2 landed. Dissapointing.

Here's the link. Enjoy.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JE051K4L

Downloading vid now, props for posting it. Will give comments when I see it.

I'm pissed that I didn't go see a KK one-match tonight so I'm hoping that someone else taped-it!But from what i gather from your vid you were weak.

Weight training and cardio-workout will do wonders to your sparring.Be more agressif if you can whenever you can when sparring in your dojang and at tournaments.

Also,look at other styles fighting techniques and use what you want and what wont get you disqualified.

Dude, your chin was up the whole time. What's up with that? It's a kinda risky habit to keep. Aside from what Os said, good back kick around the 36s mark. You need to get sharper, looks like you were hesitating a lot. Throwing back kicks means you have to have your reactions drilled and drilled over and over again so it's not a conscious effort. Plus you look a little heavy on your feet, you probably could have taken advantage of the other guy because he didn't look very coordinated. He threw a really shocking turning roundhouse that a decent fighter would be ashamed to use. You're needing some flexibility in your left leg, because you're leaning back a whole lot every time you throw it, which weakens your follow-up.

I take it aggressive blocking is against the rules in TKd (shin checking, elbow checking)?

It's not. It's a wonder why more people don't do it.

that would be a serious help. I mean throughout that video the two fighters just ate pretty much every kick without even attempting any sort of block

Aggressive blocking just isn't taught in TKD. Unlike a lot of other competitive martial arts WTF TKD is geared to one thing and one thing only: speed. It's completely single minded in this regard, and it's pretty much the same everywhere. A lot of the stuff that could be vital in a match get left out, so you don't even develop a well-rounded base until you've done the art for a fair amount of time. Things like checking, proper blocking and good, solid footwork aren't really developed a whole lot, so you kinda end up being able to throw a really quick roundhouse kick, and that's it. Not a whole lot on defence aside from throwing a real quick back kick. That's pretty much the answer to everything; if you're getting hit, you should be hitting back rather than defending, or ideally you should be hitting first. So you go back to drilling even more speed.

In most other martial arts you'll be learning combinations and defences, to gear you towards being able to hold your own while being able to dish it out. Since the hogu provides more than adequate defence, this kinda falls away so defence is replaced by even more kicking.

A lot of those kicks looked like the attacker was off balance and struggling to get height on them to reach the other guys chest, let alone the head. Were you guys both wearing black belts? I hope it's the shitty quality of my monitor 'cus if you're wearing a BB you should be a LOT sharper with those techniques.

Chest to chest and the guy in blue goes for a spinning back kick at one point? WTF?

When the ref restarts you guys you both put your hands "up" and then drop them below the belt when you fight...what's the point if putting them up if you're not going to keep them up?

Arms flailing all over the place when throwing kicks?

Losing balance when the kicks connect? What's with that? I guess it's a point sparring thing.

To me that looked like a couple of yellow belts (at best orange belts) going at it.

Total respect for putting the vid up and you'd probably kick my ass due to a three year break from training but that's not saying much because my stand-up sucks ass at the moment.

Aggressive blocking just isn't taught in TKD. Unlike a lot of other competitive martial arts WTF TKD is geared to one thing and one thing only: speed. It's completely single minded in this regard, and it's pretty much the same everywhere. A lot of the stuff that could be vital in a match get left out, so you don't even develop a well-rounded base until you've done the art for a fair amount of time. Things like checking, proper blocking and good, solid footwork aren't really developed a whole lot, so you kinda end up being able to throw a really quick roundhouse kick, and that's it. Not a whole lot on defence aside from throwing a real quick back kick. That's pretty much the answer to everything; if you're getting hit, you should be hitting back rather than defending, or ideally you should be hitting first. So you go back to drilling even more speed.

In most other martial arts you'll be learning combinations and defences, to gear you towards being able to hold your own while being able to dish it out. Since the hogu provides more than adequate defence, this kinda falls away so defence is replaced by even more kicking.

That seems odd though, since I would think learning these things would improve your game even for TKD point sparring... or do blocked attacks still count for points? At least good footwork would seem to be beneficial. I mean, olympic style boxing is still very point based fighting and yet the footwork and defense is fantastic.

EDIT: my point being, I'd think things that were practiced competitively would evolve in a way to make them the most effective within the context of the competition

High-level players have it all together; those elements do come into the game eventually, like I mentioned. They just aren't trained right from the start. In TKD, blocked attacks might still count for points if they impact hard enough to the torso, and a hard enough hit to the head will score regardless of whether your arm is in between the foot and head.

When you join any sort of competitive martial art, you learn techniques and defences together. It just happens that WTF TKD is in that ambiguous zone of being both a "martial art" and a "combat sport", where the attacks are perfectly valid but the blocks that you learn are complete bullshit; so you have a set of "effective competition techniques" and a set of "traditional martial arts techniques". There's no such distinction in combat sports like Boxing or Judo which REQUIRE a partner to even practice. Hope this is a decent explaination. Defences in Boxing are good blocking, and parrying, for instance, and in Judo they'd be things like maintaining grips and footing, and breakfalling. All of which are practical. In TKD, the defences are silly things like overhead blocks or knife-hand blocks and whatnot. Effective blocks and defences to kicks aren't taught, aside from evasion and footwork. Guys that have been doing it long enough and fighting a lot gradually acquire a feel for it and manage to evade/block/parry/use footwork well; low to mid-level players will generally be all over the place in terms of quality.

Aggressive blocking just isn't taught in TKD. Unlike a lot of other competitive martial arts WTF TKD is geared to one thing and one thing only: speed. It's completely single minded in this regard, and it's pretty much the same everywhere. A lot of the stuff that could be vital in a match get left out, so you don't even develop a well-rounded base until you've done the art for a fair amount of time. Things like checking, proper blocking and good, solid footwork aren't really developed a whole lot, so you kinda end up being able to throw a really quick roundhouse kick, and that's it. Not a whole lot on defence aside from throwing a real quick back kick. That's pretty much the answer to everything; if you're getting hit, you should be hitting back rather than defending, or ideally you should be hitting first. So you go back to drilling even more speed.

Unless you are talking just about WTF TKD, I disagree. (I am looking at your first sentence mainly).

While I am not really going to get into a long detailed post, it really depends on what you are going for when you spar in TKD. For 12 years I sparred using point sparring (though in the class room we did mostly continuous round and hit as hard as our partner felt comfortable with) and briefly made the switch to Olympic sparring with some guys from various schools. Just about everything you said holds true for Olympic style sparring; Poor foot work (I couldn't even do their footwork drills because they were so unnatural to what I was taught), horrible blocking, no punches, couldn't defend their center line. But they had FAR more explosive power with the back leg than what I see in most point sparring guys. Pretty much the entire time I was sparring them I was going "What the ****?" with how they were sparring and they were going "what the ****?" with how I was sparring. I guess my whole point is it depends on the TKD.

As for aggressive blocking...as much as the ATA is hated, it does teach those kinds of things. Technically it is illegal to "strike" the leg, but every black belt knows how to do it without getting caught and they pass it on to the color belts when they spar them. Basically the most common complain heard from the people who start sparring is the amount of bruises on their forearms and shins.


When you join any sort of competitive martial art, you learn techniques and defences together. It just happens that WTF TKD is in that ambiguous zone of being both a "martial art" and a "combat sport", where the attacks are perfectly valid but the blocks that you learn are complete bullshit; so you have a set of "effective competition techniques" and a set of "traditional martial arts techniques". There's no such distinction in combat sports like Boxing or Judo which REQUIRE a partner to even practice. Hope this is a decent explaination. Defences in Boxing are good blocking, and parrying, for instance, and in Judo they'd be things like maintaining grips and footing, and breakfalling. All of which are practical. In TKD, the defences are silly things like overhead blocks or knife-hand blocks and whatnot. Effective blocks and defences to kicks aren't taught, aside from evasion and footwork. Guys that have been doing it long enough and fighting a lot gradually acquire a feel for it and manage to evade/block/parry/use footwork well; low to mid-level players will generally be all over the place in terms of quality.

I just wanted to say not to knock the knifehand blocks and such. While not ring effective, I have used them in physical confrontations to success. The situations in the ring and the situations out side the ring are totally different. This maybe part of the problem TKD has. If you want to teach people how to fight, you have to teach one thing. If you want to teach them to compete, you have to teach them another thing. Instead, most instructors teach everything so a student doesn't do much of anything well until many years of practice.

Yes, Shu2jack I was talking about WTF. Our sparring is extremely limited, but for what we do I say quite confidently that we do it well. Everything you said holds true for WTF, except for the footwork, because I do believe that WTF footwork is quite deft; it's just not taught as well as it should be in a lot of places. I do have the benefit of training under Olympic medalists and Olympian-level coaches, so nimble footwork is something that you pick up eventually. Other than that, punching is quite honestly the worst thing you'd ever see, and blocking is plain ridiculous. It tends to rely too much on putting your hands betwen the target and the attack you see coming, which is fair enough, but in reality it's horrible because it counts on you seeing the attack, reacting to it and then intercepting it. There's very little emphasis on defending yourself against the attack that you DON'T see coming, which is usually the one that does the most damage.

This isn't my coach's fault; he teaches university students and hobbyists to compete in a sport, rather than to defend themselves or enter kickboxing contests. He's a great all-round fighter because he came up through the "old system" of TKD, and there's a lot he could teach me about kickboxing in general, but he doesn't because sport is our priority and that's what we train for.

It must have been the schools I went to. I didn't consider their footwork very good.

I agree with you though. Most of my matches with the olympic sparring-type guys went like this.

Me: Circling with my hands up so their uber-fast back leg round kicks don't hurt me while I inch my way in and using fast lead leg front kicks as a jab.

Them: Watch me move and bounce around with their hands down.

Them: Suddenly attack with a back leg roundhouse.

Me: Charge in to jam the kick and let loose with the punches to their exposed body.

Instructor supervision the match: JACK! You need to punch harder! Follow through!

Me: *Thinking to myself* The guy is wearing 20 inch thick body armour and has forward momentum/low stance afterwards from his round kicks. There is no fucking way I am going to be able to deliever "trembling shock" or hurt him with a punch.

That is pretty much how all my matches went. Afterwards the guys tried to show ME how to punch. I just think they should try sparring without a chest protector.
/rant

It's the truth. I don't get how people think that the way they fight in sparring should be the same way they fight when they're facing a different ruleset, or different types of fighters. It doesn't really occur to them that if they're facing a fighter that uses different types of attacks, it might just be a good idea to keep the hands up a little bit higher in case you get caught with some totally ninja **** that you didn't see coming. You can't point-spar when you're actually fighting, but when the chest protectors come off you still see people trying to do just that. It's somewhat depressing to throw punch after punch to the liver/kidneys and have them not feel a thing because of the chest protector.

You can't point-spar when you're actually fighting, but when the chest protectors come off you still see people trying to do just that.

That is one of the reasons I really hate about the ATA adopting chest protectors. I find that I allow myself to take shots I would not have if I was sparring without a chest protector like I use to. I have to constantly remind myself to act like I am not wearing one, which is hard because it restricts hand movement somewhat.

Some of my more senior students thought watching me spar for the first 2 weeks when we introduced chest protectors was funny as hell. Apparently I constantly had a pissed off look on my face because I couldn't do what I was used to and I got knocked on my ass a few times due to the chest protector. Normally when someone punches me on one side of my chest, I roll that side back to take some of the edge off of the attack and use the side of my body that is rolling forward to deliver a fast counter attack. Normally that works really well with body punches (for me at least) because the pain only hits a certain spot. With a chest protect the impact is dispersed over a large area and instead of being able to roll with the punches your entire body is jarred back. Needless to say it took me a while to adjust.


It's somewhat depressing to throw punch after punch to the liver/kidneys and have them not feel a thing because of the chest protector.

You got that right. I was depressed for a week because I thought the punching I learned for the past 11 years really sucked. Then I realized that a thick hogu+forward momentum+solid stance= your punch to the mid section not doing jack. Finally, I sparred some guys without chest protectors again and used the same punches. Yep, it is the hogu.