Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

1. Taekwondo- only well known for its kicks? Taekwondo (TKD) is well known for its advanced, acrobatic and sometimes flashy kicks. One may assume that such a leg centric, acrobatic martial art would be hardly practical in a live self-defence  situation and certainly not in another competition format like under UFC MMA rules. And there are a lot of people out there believing that. Despite that I touched on the matter of modern Taekwondo being an effective and practical Martial Art for self-defence in one of my last posts. To rephrase my statement from earlier.  I believe it can be an effective self-defence system when taught correctly.  The Martial Art of Taekwondo offers the subject of self-defence named hosinsul (literally self-defence in Korean) but the methods are often times developed poorly without an organized system behind it or copied from other martial arts lacking its contexts and therefore taught in a vacuum. Of course this is a generalization and in some pla...

Discussing some more and some less underrated strategic uses for the Cut Kick In a discussion with an oldschool taekwondoin one is nearly ensured to run into the cut kick sooner or later. There is probably no other subject which is more controversial in modern sports taekwondo than the cut kick. One could argue that the eHogu and the electronic scoring system is more controversial because it enabled the use of such strategies but that is a discussion for another day. Today we want to concentrate on the cut kick. This article is targeted for people like me who do modern sports Taekwondo on a lower level and rarely or never compete. I think it is useful for those people to know WHY they are doing what they are doing in a sparring match especially if they do not compete that much (lately) and hence do not get the first-hand experiencewhy cut kicks are an essential part in the current taekwondo metagame. Those are often also the people who deem modern Taekwondo as less or inferior, but ...

Post 1: Taekwondo- An effective System? “Taekwondo is not an effective martial art!”  I hear this or similar statements a lot nowadays by practitioner of other Martial Arts or combat sports, on the internet and even from people practicing Taekwondo itself. People tend to flock to Martial Arts (MA) like Krav Maga or MMA if they want to learn a holistic combat system. This problem is not unique to Taekwondo but also to other Traditional Martial Arts (TMA) like Kung Fu, Karate or Aikido. But why is that? After a quick search on the internet I found that there was a time when Taekwondo fighters where feared for their deadly kicks, especially to the head. Nowadays in Taekwondo competition and sparring people are flailing around with their feet due to eHogu and a restrictive kick- centred rule set. “But hold on a second! That is Taekwondo sparring! It has nothing to do with Taekwondo as a self-defence martial art!” some might say. And you are right my observant reader. It has not. B...