The Martial Truth Of Taekwondo

By: Aaron Ploetz

05/24/04

I'm sick of Taekwondo. I'm sick of the money, the politics, the cheesy tournaments, and the easy rank requirements.

Instructors are out there taking people's money left and right. $80 per month for Instruction, $50 per belt testing, and equipment mark-ups of 40%-50% (or higher). "Little Dragons" or "Little Ninjas" programs where parents pay a mint for their kids to learn NOTHING, but still get a Black Belt to show for it. Want to compete at the State Tournament? That's $55 for one event, $65 for two, and $75 for three. Oh wait! You must be a USTU member to compete, so there's another $35.

Quite frankly, I don't care who controls the U.S. Olympic Taekwondo governing body. I haven't gone to a USTU tournament in 4 years, and I can't say that their ability to retain the Governing Body status is going to influence me to all-of-a-sudden go and support their tournaments. The AAU might do wonders for Olympic TKD, but the AAU has problems of its own, too.

I'm sick of the corruption, and the people within the USTU trying to steal the "State Qualifying" status for their tournament, and sending letters to every dojang in the state [of Wisconsin] telling them that the other person's tournament is not recognized. WHO CARES? What kills me, is that these people think that airing their dirty laundry is going to make people want to go to their tournament. If anything, I'd stay away from them all, just to protect the students from getting involved. My school has not attended a USTU event in 4 years because of this fact (that, and the fees are just WAY too much for college students to reasonably afford).

Then there's the realism. Point fighting is a waste of time. Period. Try and justify it all you want, but there is NO MARTIAL BENEFIT to the practice of point-fighting. All it does is condition students to use fast, light-hitting backfists, and prevents them from striking THROUGH their targets (with punches or kicks, for that matter). Do you know how many point-fighters would get STOMPED in the street? Most of them.

Olympic Sparring solves some of the woes of point fighting, until you get to that no-hands-to-the-head "thing". Sure, you can KICK someone in the face as hard as you want, but if your hand even TOUCHES someone's headgear, you get slapped with a penalty. Like that's realistic. Like I want my students learning to fight with their hands down, and go into a clinch, trying to twitch and fake their way out of it. "Oh I'm sorry Mr. Bad Guy, you can't punch me in the face, because we don't train for that in my dojang."

Finally, there's rank. Rank in Taekwondo means nothing. Now, everyone and their brother holds at least a 1st Dan. Remember when being a plain-old Black Belt used to MEAN something? Now every 8-year-old knows someone in his/her class [at school] who is a Black Belt.

Almost every Taekwondo school out there has a "Little Dragons" program (or some clone thereof) for kids. I've seen schools that will allow kids to ascend to the rank of a 1st Dan Kukkiwon Black Belt by only knowing half-forms. HALF! Keep in-mind, that’s not “half of the number forms”, but “half-forms”. Don't people realize that these kids have better learning capacity than we adults do? If anything, they should have to learn 3 or 4 TIMES more forms than we do.

What kills me, is that all the parents I've talked to (with kids in these programs) don't realize that anything is wrong with it, until they reach Black Belt. That's when they say, "Hey, how come my kid is a Black Belt, and he doesn't KNOW anything?"

And at that point, the damage is already done. How many 14-year-old 3rd Dans do you think are going to be "open-minded", when told that they'd be better-off starting completely over? None. They'll just ignore it, keep doing their straight-up-in-the-air kicks, and coast their way into college, where they'll probably join-up with a college Martial Arts program.

Speaking from experience, I can tell you all the ending of that happy story. I've been involved in college-level Martial Arts programs for the last 10 years. Every semester, I see 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Dans from the area schools come skating-on-in. While all of them are over-confident in their abilities, some of them are at least respectful. Those that come-in looking prove something, find-out the hard way that their sport-Taekwondo-tactics won't stand-up to a full kick or punch. Since we tend to fight with more-liberal rules than others, a lot of them also find-out the hard way that they don't know how to defend against a kick to the groin, and that they really can't kick (or punch, for that matter) very well once they get taken to the ground.

I've seen (and been party to) many of these kids going back to their dorm rooms with busted noses, lips, and EXTREMELY bruised egos...and all mostly due to their own arrogance. Unfortunately, most of them can't handle the bruised ego part, and don't come back.

And sadly-enough, those who do not push their luck, still do not excel. They maybe show-up once a week, and line-up quietly in the back of class; never showing an interest in learning or advancing. They do it either out of fear of failure, fear of a class room of colored-belts seeing a Black Belt not knowing something, or maybe because they were not taught how to be humble enough to learn something new.

Are there any schools out there that are doing anything right? There are a few "old-school" Taekwondo dojangs out there, but most people don't stay with them long-enough. Once they find-out how tough it is, they move on until they find a school where they can get a Black Belt as easy/fast as they want to.

While difficult to find, most of these "old-school" instructors are up-front about this. My first instructor still tells his students that "There are easier ways to get a Black Belt, than through me." That being said, it is even more-rare to find a dojang that has difficult belt tests anymore. Everywhere you go, they keep getting easier and easier. Now, testing curriculums are printed and available in the student manual, or even available online. What ever happened to the days when you went sweating into your testing, because you didn't have ANY IDEA of what the Instructors were going to have you do?

Quite honestly, that's why Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu has seen the "boom" that it has in the last few years. Yeah, sure, Royce Gracie winning 3 of the first 4 UFC's (and going undefeated in the process) might have had something to do with it, but there's something deeper than that. It's the pure honesty of it.

"IF YOU WANT TO GET YOUR FACE BEATEN AND WELL-SMASHED, YOUR ASS KICKED, AND YOUR ARMS BROKEN, CONTACT CARLOS GRACIE AT THIS ADDRESS . . . "

-- Brazilian newspaper ad, circa 1920s

The famous "Gracie Challenge"...still backed by the Gracie family to this very day. Now, I'm not saying that I agree with this sort of blatant aggression, but it's got honesty to it. To me, that says, "if you want to fight with me, you'd better be damn sure of what you're doing!"

Let's also look at some of the things that the Gracies have said in their books:

"You simply cannot promote someone who cannot fight to a high belt rank."

"A school looks bad when a high-ranking student loses a fight."

Like it or lump it, it’s got honesty, and that’s just what the Taekwondo world needs a good, solid dose of.

How about belt advancement in BJJ (White-Blue-Purple-Brown-Black)? Well, you need to consistently beat everyone you spar at your own rank, as well as experience some success sparring those above you. Once you show this, they will simply grant you that color belt. So how do you get a Blue Belt? Go to any BJJ school, mop the floor with their Blue Belts, and they will simply GIVE you a Blue Belt. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. The truth is, that most 4th-6th Dans in Taekwondo would get absolutely OWNED when ground-fighting with a BJJ Blue Belt (or even an experienced white belt, for that matter).

That's the basis of that art...truth. If your kicking or punching technique in Taekwondo doesn't work as well as you'd like, you may not find out for months, or even years (kicking air will do that to you). But if your technique on the ground doesn't work, you find-out RIGHT AWAY.

Now, I'm not saying that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is the be-all-end-all of Martial Arts. But what I am saying, is that as a whole, the BJJ community is doing a MUCH better job of teaching Martial Truth, than the Taekwondo community is (and has been, for quite a while).

These ideas that are common-place in BJJ are not new. Many of us have been screaming about/for them in Taekwondo for years. There are many good Taekwondo instructors out there who do and preach some of those things that BJJ does. But, most do not.

The problem is change. Taekwondo changed to meet the needs of the consumers. It started tough, but got soft once Instructors saw the money-making potential. The same thing then happened to tournaments. Promoters realized that they made more money when people didn't get hurt, so they cheapened the rules.

You see, at this point, Taekwondo (as a whole) in America is similar to a 70-year-old alcoholic, who still drinks 2 bottles of Vodka every day. The alcoholic knows what he's doing is wrong, and that it is bad for himself. But, more-importantly, he fears what will happen if he doesn't drink. If he stops cold-turkey (at this point), he knows that he'll probably die. He's aware of special programs and clinics out there that could help him. But that's the problem, he DOESN'T WANT TO BE HELPED.

Much like the alcoholic, Taekwondo doesn't want to be helped, either. Do you think that all the McDojo instructors out there actually WANT to make belt testings tougher, so that it takes FIVE WHOLE YEARS to get a Black Belt? Of course they don't! That would cut their revenues from testings in-half, and they'd lose about 1/4 to 1/3 of their revenue! Do you think they want kids waiting until they are 16 to get a Black Belt? No way! How many kids would stick around and wait? And then they'd lose the chance to nail the kid's parents for another $500-$1000!

The problem out there is the instructors. They'd rather teach an art that is "profitable" first, and "respectable" second. Would they have to make sacrifices to make their art respectable? Absolutely. And those sacrifices would come right out of their pockets.