- Joined
- Sep 19, 2011
- Messages
- 450
- Reaction score
- 0
I did WTF taekwondo for about 10 years. I also had 5 different instructors, each with a different approach to teaching.
Honestly, you should learn all the techniques you'll ever use in a TKD competition pretty early on, way before black belt. There are only 7-8 basic kicks (depending on how you classify them) anyway, and everything else is a variation on the basics.
By the time I was a blue belt, I knew all the same techniques as all the black belts I knew. The difference between a colored belt and a black belt in TKD shouldn't be the number of secret ninja moves you know, it should be how well you can execute those techniques in competition.
One of my coaches was very focused on Olympic style competition. Everything she taught was centered around scoring strategies for tournaments.
I had another coach from Cambodia who had lived through a war and seen some serious things go down in his day. His approach to TKD was all about real life survival strategies. One of his favorite quotes, "This is not a game!" Another of my coaches was this American dude who focused a lot on breaking stuff and hitting really hard. My first and last coaches were both Korean, and they took their art very seriously. They both tended to focus a lot on exactness of form, and gross repetition of techniques to exhaustion.
Between blue and black, I didn't feel like I had made a whole lot of progress, honestly. It was a lot of repetition of the exact same thing, without much innovation. But after competing in other combat sports, I found that my taekwondo sparring is a whole lot better in terms of position, strategy, timing, accuracy, confidence, and such- even though I don't practice sport TKD much anymore.
In short, what you get out of your training largely depends on 3 things: who your instructor is, who you train with, and your personal work ethic.
I was lucky enough to have some pretty decent TKD coaches. But I've visited a number of schools with some crappy, crappy teachers that should not be allowed to run a class. I've met plenty of folks with black belts who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag. It's all relative.
Honestly, you should learn all the techniques you'll ever use in a TKD competition pretty early on, way before black belt. There are only 7-8 basic kicks (depending on how you classify them) anyway, and everything else is a variation on the basics.
By the time I was a blue belt, I knew all the same techniques as all the black belts I knew. The difference between a colored belt and a black belt in TKD shouldn't be the number of secret ninja moves you know, it should be how well you can execute those techniques in competition.
One of my coaches was very focused on Olympic style competition. Everything she taught was centered around scoring strategies for tournaments.
I had another coach from Cambodia who had lived through a war and seen some serious things go down in his day. His approach to TKD was all about real life survival strategies. One of his favorite quotes, "This is not a game!" Another of my coaches was this American dude who focused a lot on breaking stuff and hitting really hard. My first and last coaches were both Korean, and they took their art very seriously. They both tended to focus a lot on exactness of form, and gross repetition of techniques to exhaustion.
Between blue and black, I didn't feel like I had made a whole lot of progress, honestly. It was a lot of repetition of the exact same thing, without much innovation. But after competing in other combat sports, I found that my taekwondo sparring is a whole lot better in terms of position, strategy, timing, accuracy, confidence, and such- even though I don't practice sport TKD much anymore.
In short, what you get out of your training largely depends on 3 things: who your instructor is, who you train with, and your personal work ethic.
I was lucky enough to have some pretty decent TKD coaches. But I've visited a number of schools with some crappy, crappy teachers that should not be allowed to run a class. I've met plenty of folks with black belts who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag. It's all relative.
