I don’t mean to blame TKD…

During my various rants about sparring, I sometimes imagine the effects of WTF style fighting if applied in the real world. I stumbled across a posting suggested by ethesis in the comments section of 24fightingchickens.com. It was a page simply entitled, “How to spar a Tae Kwon Do Black belt.” It reminded me of a friend who spent a month at his local WTF TKD school. He had moved to a new area and was looking to continue his training. When he tried out the TKD school, he found the sparring really puzzling. They would get ready in their stance with their hands down, and he’d stroll up and punch them. He said, “I don’t mean it’s like I could walk up and punch them, I mean I literally walked up and punched them.” That aspect was so alien, the instructor (6th Dan) decided to spar my friend (Sankyu), to demonstrate how to deal with such an ‘unorthodox’ style. Apparently, once you beat the 6th dan, you don’t get to go there anymore. He’s moved on, and now he’s back at a Kenpo school and much happier. There was nothing wrong with the punches or kicks at that TKD school, they just were practicing for a different game than he was playing. He wasn’t even going outside of the rules, he was just doing things they didn’t see as valuable to address. You’ll never see my friend in the Olympic TKD finals though. He doesn’t have the kicks for it.