I wanted to say hi, my name is Ben obviously and im new to these forums. Im so gald i found this site.... seeing stuff like sherdog makes me want to puke.

Anyway since i found this site I have been non stop reading, and I have noticed that there are alot of Tae Kwan Do bashers here. I am a huge mma fan and kickboxing/boxing/BJJ fan but i personally have done TKD for about 12 years now. For the longest time ive wanted to get into other martial arts becuase there is just so much out there to learn, but because of college and so forth I have not been able to go out and find good schools.

Now as far as TKD is concerned, alot of you are correct, there are so many bad schools and money stealers out there. I moved around so much as a kid trying to find good qualitiy schools. American versions of TKD, including the olympic styles, are absolutely horrible. They have no respect for the traditional art and not even close in their teachings.

The past 6 years I have been training at a traditional Korean TKD school. TKD has so much to offer and alot of people write it off. TKD teaches amazing self respect and discipline, especially when it comes to mastering and perfecting certain techniques. After practicing it for so long you tend to veiw other arts as "sloppy" sometimes. TKD teaches amazing balance and poise as well. Alot of what you see in the olympics is a bunch of idiots jumping at eachother with roundhouses doing absoultely nothing but trying to get a chance kick to the head, making complete fools out of themselves and not defending themselves at all.

Alot of the flashy kicks learned in TKD are highly misrepresented as well. In TKD, you learn how to use your bodies weight to affect kicks and make them more powerful that just your leg strenth alows. This causes certain spinning type kicks to be extremly powerfull, and when used at the right time you manage to keep execelent balance as well as catching your target completely offgaurd. As an example most spinning back kicks are actually desinged to hit moving targets. Suprise and power are their strenghts, not just to look flashy by jumping crazy at a stationary target.

Some people consider TKD an "impractical" art. I can understand how people would fear taking something they consider this, especially when you consider how misrepresented the true tradional art is. At my current school we also learn tons of specific self defense techniques that gain in difictulty and effectivenes as you rank up. Part of my TKD training included training from Akido and Judo type self defenses. Also the whole theme of Real Korean TKD supports practicality and street defense of oneself. After sparring matches and practice, my instructor used to say, if you came out the way you came in, defended yourself and kept the opponent at bay, then you have learned something. Balance and straight punches and kicks while maintaing complete control of a chaotic situation is what TKD teaches you. Moving sidekicks, roundhouses, leg kicks, and sweeps extremly practical in a quick street situation.

I advise those who are interested in TKD to be carefull where you spend your hard earned money an time at. Dont be afraid to try it... the traditional art of TKD has so much to offer, and i wish that everyone could see it.

Anyway if you have gotten to this point, thanks alot for taking the time to read and i would love to hear opinions and ideas from everyone. Like i said im new to this site and id love to have some good discusion.

Thanks- Ben

Awesome post, welcome to the site

nice post. the good thing about tkd is that it teaches you good reflexes. and those reflexes are very good for mma. knowing when to kick, following through with your kicks... and so forth. i have never been an advocate or hater of tkd, i just feel as tho tkd is impractical by itself. so.... anyway. nice first post, hope you post more than 10 good posts. :)

ive been training 5 years...its pretty impractical by itself in a mma environment but in the street it is really quite good against a unskilled opponent...

teaches you more than just how to fight....teaches you self respect, respect for others plus all the flexibility, reflexes etc...imo its a good martial arts to practice but nothing compared to a mma style in the ring

too much to read, go fuck a quadrapalegic hooker, might make u feel better.

btw, what does TKD stand for? Take Kock's Daily? oooooooooooooh!

Thx... and andrew your a moron imo.

I do agree that by itself in an mma inviroment TKD would be at a big disadvatnage. TKD does not teach you how to defend yourself against a skilled grappler or oponent. Now as far as self defense on the street vs somone whos clueless on fighting, id say it definatly holds its own. After so many years of training I have become very confident in my stand up ring fighting and street self defense, however an incident at a club did scare me one time. I was out with some friends and a semi-drunk guy shoved my girlfriend to the ground, when i picked her up and confronted him he imediately began swinging wildly and I hit him with a hard leg kick just above the knee as he came foward. He was so off balance from swinging he hit the ground hard. But what i did not notice was a friend of his who charged me from behind and ran me into the wall. He was alot bigger than me, and if the wall had not gotten in the way I would have probably gotten seriously injured from having this guy straddled on top of me on the ground. I had no way to defend something like that becuase of the way he tackled me, it was impossible to get a throw off. I did however get lucky and by instinct hit him with an elbow going down toward the neck and it dazed him really bad. At first i was not even sure I got him becuase we both hit the ground shortly after he ran me into the wall. I replayed the scenario over and over in my head for weeks afterward wondering what would of happened if I did not get that elbow off before we hit the ground. These kind of things can happen all the time and that is where i find my TKD to be weak. This could also hurt a fighter in an MMA inviroment becuase TKD sutdents are never tought anything like sprawls to defend themselves. I am really hopping to find a good BJJ school here in houston where i live. I think getting training in an art such as BJJ would make such a better all around fighter. Im just not even sure where to start looking.

nice post dude, welcome to the site. your gonna love it once you get past the idiots...

nice post dude, welcome to the site. your gonna love it once you get past the idiots...

you will never get passed the idiots...

Welcome Benroliver.

GSP and David Louiso(sp?) have showed some nice Taekwondo moves in MMA matches and some of them are on highlights now.

Where do you live Benroliver? We might be able to help you find a place to work on your ground game.You can learn ground skills faster than you might think.

damn. awesome posts. i think we've finally found outselves a new quality posters, instead of these other fools that just talk shit or are baseically ignorant to what the hell is going on.

the TKD thing sounds really interesting, i just hope that that doesnt happen to any other martial arts, where they're watered down and turned to shit when taken away from what it was intended to be, or it's original roots.

hope to see you posting more again soon...

Thx... and andrew your a moron imo.

I do agree that by itself in an mma inviroment TKD would be at a big disadvatnage. TKD does not teach you how to defend yourself against a skilled grappler or oponent. Now as far as self defense on the street vs somone whos clueless on fighting, id say it definatly holds its own. After so many years of training I have become very confident in my stand up ring fighting and street self defense, however an incident at a club did scare me one time. I was out with some friends and a semi-drunk guy shoved my girlfriend to the ground, when i picked her up and confronted him he imediately began swinging wildly and I hit him with a hard leg kick just above the knee as he came foward. He was so off balance from swinging he hit the ground hard. But what i did not notice was a friend of his who charged me from behind and ran me into the wall. He was alot bigger than me, and if the wall had not gotten in the way I would have probably gotten seriously injured from having this guy straddled on top of me on the ground. I had no way to defend something like that becuase of the way he tackled me, it was impossible to get a throw off. I did however get lucky and by instinct hit him with an elbow going down toward the neck and it dazed him really bad. At first i was not even sure I got him becuase we both hit the ground shortly after he ran me into the wall. I replayed the scenario over and over in my head for weeks afterward wondering what would of happened if I did not get that elbow off before we hit the ground. These kind of things can happen all the time and that is where i find my TKD to be weak. This could also hurt a fighter in an MMA inviroment becuase TKD sutdents are never tought anything like sprawls to defend themselves. I am really hopping to find a good BJJ school here in houston where i live. I think getting training in an art such as BJJ would make such a better all around fighter. Im just not even sure where to start looking.

we learn sprawling but its mainly for improving cardio etc but i mean you watch enough mma to understand that its a sprawl...

i still maintain if some dude who outweighs you by 30-40kg, and you arent in a ring your going to get a lot of punishment before you get position on the ground. my advice which i learnt when i was younger and started training martial arts, always avoid if you can....otherwise go throw down in your dojo or amateur mma event :D

Welcome to the forum Ben.

very nice post, im glad your trying to be very reasonable and fairly neutral about the situation. Its ok that you dont learn sprawls, cause TKD is only 1 art. Muay Thai and karate dont teach them either, and grappling arts dont teach you how to punch. If your BJJ class teaches you how to box, then its not pure BJJ. So wiht that said, TKD seems to be a good skill to have in any environment. Sure it alone wont win a mma fight, but what will?

Thx for the positive replies, btw im from Houston Texas, currently living in sugar land for those familiar.

tkd sux

tkd sux

... I wish i could show you otherwise.