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TKD instructor promoting too fast?

DarthTex

Yellow Belt
Joined
Oct 30, 2005
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I have been training TKD for 6 months now and I am in yellow belt soon to test my green stripe in Feb because every time there is a test there is grading fees is he just hungry for money?
 
My TKD schoool has a $50 fee for each belt test, roughly every two months. Not bad, I guess. You gotta pay to play.
 
As far as TKD goes, you should keep the following things in mind:

- Colour belts are not regulated centrally. They are completely up to the instructor
- Some people advance faster than others in the beginning because of talent/etc
- Black belts are regulated centrally (Kukkiwon, Korea), and should generally fulfill a certain standard
- This standard means that you know all the basic techniques and can execute them properly

In TKD, a black belt doesn't make you a "master" like in other arts. It makes you a beginner. In a regular western Dojang, with 2-4 trainings a week, it should take you between 3-5 years to black belt if you train properly.

In short, 6 months for green stripe is not really all that fast.

What you should be asking yourself is whether YOU feel like you are progressing and improving. You should also look at the black belts and ask yourself if they are at a level you want to see yourself in a few years. Both technically and in terms of sparring ability.
 
We only have class 2 times a week for 45 min each class and my instructor said that it takes 1 in a half to get the black belt 2 for really slow people.

What's the different between me and the black belt, they know more pattern can do few more push ups and know my fancy kicks and kicks faster. I usually come to class really early to see the class ahead of me doing which isn't too much a big of difference.

And no I do not see my self in the black belt rank it's just not worth it, I was originally going to take BJJ but couldn't found the school near me. So I took TKD just for fun little did I don't think I have progress at all

I see many TKD people in my school sparring all ranging from low color belt to high color belt they have a bad habit of leaving there hands down. If I was allow to punch the head I would have given them a 1,2 punch .

I have been cross training in Boxing, MT and little bit of grappling from my college. I see allot of opening when I spar with people in my class in TKD that I can shoot for a take down and just go for a GNP. Over all I am very frustrated with how the instructor is teaching. I got dupe into a 1 year contract so I may as well finish it.
 
DarthTex said:
We only have class 2 times a week for 45 min each class and my instructor said that it takes 1 in a half to get the black belt 2 for really slow people.
That's how long it takes in Korea, but in Korea, they train 5x a week, for a couple of hours. There is something fishy there.

What's the different between me and the black belt, they know more pattern can do few more push ups and know my fancy kicks and kicks faster. I usually come to class really early to see the class ahead of me doing which isn't too much a big of difference.
The question is whether their kicks have snap, whether they kick with power, whether they can use combinations and footwork to beat their opponent, that sort of stuff.

And no I do not see my self in the black belt rank it's just not worth it, I was originally going to take BJJ but couldn't found the school near me. So I took TKD just for fun little did I don't think I have progress at all

I see many TKD people in my school sparring all ranging from low color belt to high color belt they have a bad habit of leaving there hands down. If I was allow to punch the head I would have given them a 1,2 punch .

I have been cross training in Boxing, MT and little bit of grappling from my college. I see allot of opening when I spar with people in my class in TKD that I can shoot for a take down and just go for a GNP. Over all I am very frustrated with how the instructor is teaching. I got dupe into a 1 year contract so I may as well finish it.
Well, TKD will not teach your sprawling and grappling. It's not meant to either. You need to supplement it in order to learn that.

But the place doesn't really sound like a legit TKD school, to be honest.

How often do you spar? Do you spar full contact (with pads and head protection)? Does anyone in the club compete? When you spar a black belt (using TKD rules), do you get your ass kicked around? Is the teacher Kukkiwon certified?
 
We don't have sparring gear because of our belt levels we have to wait until we get a higher level. When we do spar but we have to spar with a blocker and we do all king of sissy kicks for less then a minute each spar. We can't do much in sparring can't kick bellow the belt, no punching, can't kick with full power.

Spar with black belt, they don't allow that due to gap in ranks difference, but to be honest I don't mean to sound like a narcissi. I would own 1/3 of the black belt class if I had full gear own.

Kukkiwon certified? Don
 
Well, to be honest, not letting yellow belts do full-contact sparring is not SUCH a bad idea.

The real question is whether you can learn something in this school.

And other than the very short time to get a black belt (which rings an alarm), there's not much to point either way.
 
It has given me better kicking techniques other then that the pattern is useless.
 
DarthTex said:
It has given me better kicking techniques other then that the pattern is useless.
Forms are not meant to be "useful". They may give you crispness and proper hip usage over very long periods of time, but their purpose is to preserve tradition.

What you should be looking in TKD is kicking.

Look at the instructor and the top black belts. Do they have good kicks? If so, then you may learn something there. If it's a TKD school with bad kicks, there's something really wrong.
 
The TKD instructor and assistant instructors both have good kicks. I actually did spar with one of the assistant instructors but only for like 30 seconds he did out kick me but I manage to hold it on my own.
 
Ah yes. The great promotion debate in TKD.

We do ITF style. It takes like 4 to 5 years to get your black belt. To be perfectly honest it doesn't matter how athletic you are. Everyone pretty much promotes at the same rate.

That being said I get many, many, many people who have been to Korea at some point and come in and tell me they are blue, green, even black belts after training for six months to a couple of years. To be perfectly honest they are almost always very, very bad for their rank. Slapping kicks with no power. Almost always hurt themselves when they are sparring you with no pads, etc, etc, etc.

But I've had people from WTF schools in the states who were fricken awesome! There seems to be no consistency. No rhyme or reason to it

And, to be honest, I've seen plenty of abuse in sending people for testing too early in the greater organization I belong to. All this has led me to the conclusion that ranking is not really that important. It is the daily training that is good. The politics, while it can't be avoided, just muddies the waters.
 
DarthTex said:
Spar with black belt, they don't allow that due to gap in ranks difference

Where I trained, that's who the white belts always get paired up with for their first couple of sparring sessions. Who's the most dangerous person in the room? It's not the black belt. It's the white belt with no control or technique.

IMHO, you don't want to have white belts sparring each other right off the bat. You want them to spar with a black belt or an upper belt to let them get a feel of what to expect and to also know that their sparring partner will take care of them and not beat the crap out of them. Once they understand the particular rules of the school / organization and have some basic techniques down, then let them spar other white belts. Just my .02
 
Evil Eye Gouger said:
In TKD, a black belt doesn't make you a "master" like in other arts. It makes you a beginner. In a regular western Dojang, with 2-4 trainings a week, it should take you between 3-5 years to black belt if you train properly.

I think thats also true in almost all other arts except BJJ.
 
When I started before, I go promoted from white to yellow from october to december then yellow to blue (3rd level here) from december to june. You can always tell your instructor that you don't wanna take the promotion first. Other instructors promote quickly but then slow down by blue
 
ive been training taekwondo a year and i am a green belt. I also had 4 years of kung fu and kickboxing before that if thats any inclination. A good tkd school should take about 4-5 years for a blackbelt. Like someone said, thats just the beginning
 
I'm a 2nd dan in WTF tkd and in my school it takes 4-5 years too. I got mine in 4 1/2 and was training an average of 4 times a week.

My teacher was a national champion over 10 times and won silver on 2 occasions a the World Cup and Pan
Am games. Many of the the black belts we're national champions too.

So unless your teacher has these types of credentials I would say his 2 years for a black belt is a crock of shit
 
DarthTex said:
We don't have sparring gear because of our belt levels we have to wait until we get a higher level. When we do spar but we have to spar with a blocker and we do all king of sissy kicks for less then a minute each spar. We can't do much in sparring can't kick bellow the belt, no punching, can't kick with full power.

Spar with black belt, they don't allow that due to gap in ranks difference, but to be honest I don't mean to sound like a narcissi. I would own 1/3 of the black belt class if I had full gear own.

Kukkiwon certified? Don
 
Why diss WTF, ITF guy? We fight full contact you guys only tap each other, whats the problem?
 
cbdk said:
That "not sparring until you are a certain level" is horse shit. THat is how you become better is by sparring peole that are better than you.
This is true, but beginners' time is better spent learning the technique. Sure, sparring should be introduced very early, but not letting yellow belts spar, or not letting them spar full contact may not be such a bad idea. Practicing bad technique against other people with bad technique will only give you bad habits.

Plus I hope you are taking ITF TKD and not the sport WTF TKD.
I'd like to clear up the confusion here.

WTF TKD is actually only sport, because the WTF only organises tournaments.

But most people do not learn WTF TKD. They learn Kukki-TKD, which is the official sport of South Korea, and which involves forms, breaking, self-defense, basics, sparring and, yes, WTF TKD (Olympic sparring).

In most "WTF TKD" clubs, they sometimes spar using ITF TKD sparring rules (no contact, pretend to fight), but most competitive people don't do it because it's not really fighting.
 
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