[complete]

Originally Posted by john55

TKD does have some really good points, but it is a sport. Most people train it to spar/fight other TKD fighters under their rules. TKD doesnt really include fighting from the clinch, grabs, takedowns, throws, or ground fighting. It also doesnt really include certain strikes such as elbows and knees and doesnt want you to kick below the belt. There just isnt a real self defense aspect to it. Now it does include some of those things I mentioned above, but they are few and far and are not focused on.

Another problem is that a lot of TKD people arent the athletic types. I dont mean that all people who take TKD arent atheltic. What I mean is that when I walk into a boxing, wrestling, or bjj gym, Everyone is big, lifts weights, and has excelled in sports for the most part from my experience. This is not the case for TKD. There are families, kids, etc in the sport. The problem is that these people think they are prepared to fight, so its a big false sense of reality that could really hurt them. Now am I saying that TKD is not practical, NO. It can be used for self defense and provides a decent base for people but its just not usually trained to in most schools that I have seen at least.

For example, at my school a few of the black belts were training some type of headlock escape. There was no force involved and they were showing how you could just roll out of it. The headlocks looked like something you see on a TV show. I wanted to put a rear naked choke on one of them to see if they could get out of it. It just wasnt realistic. I doubt their elbow in the rib would release an attacker, but who knows, no one has ever tried the stuff out. They didnt even understand the mechanics of the headlock or anything that is usually fully explained during a bjj practice on headlocks. O, and by the way, no other belts were allowed to practice the escapes. For some reason, you are only allowed to learn self defense moves when you are at a certain level. Who wants to train for 4 years then be able to learn about a headlock?

I certainly don't deny that those situation mentioned above does occur in TKD schools. This art can be used for effective self defense but as sports aspect is more popular, it's much harder to find school that's not so sports oriented.