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Originally Posted by daddydiboy  I used to train KD when I was in my twenties. I stopped many years ago and changed to silat instead. An incident changed my view of the effectiveness of TKD moves. This is what happened:
I was training with another guy whose art was silat. He was putting up his own style of dancing-like movement, and I was bouncing around as most TKD practitioners spar. There I was showboasting my fancy kicks (I was young and foolish then)and I moved in with a front kick to his upper torso (in TKD we just dont kick below the belt, do we?) He blocked my kick, suddenly grabbed my ankle and lifted my foot up in the air. I landed on my head and passed out for a few minutes.
This incident made me questioned the effectiveness of my training in TKD. That guy invaded my inner circle and I just didnt know how to respond. I was used to the way TKD sparred: you move on the other guy outside his circle. Move in, move out, side steps, forward and backward and the likes. I didnt remember training for fights in this inner circle, unless you count one-steps and three-steps sparring as training for this kind of fight.
The silat I am training in now do not have any kick at all in its syllabus, unless you count leg sweep not higher than knee high as a kick. The philosophy is that kicks are just ineffective. When you lift one leg to kick, your foundation is left with the other leg. In that instance that you lift the kicking leg, you are vulnerable to counterstrike. Think about it, human beings are not made to stand on one leg. You need two legs to stand upright, to balance yourself. When you compromise that balance on just one leg, your foundation is weakened.
Let us picture a scenario here. A man execute a roundhouse kick to the head of his opponent. The moment he lift his kicking leg, the opponent moves into his circle, blocks the kick somewhere above the knee, making the kick itself ineffective. His inner circle already invaded, his balance is already off, what can his opponent be thinking of in order to finish him off? A simple shove to the ground is easy enough, punch to the midsection or a legsweep to the hind leg (the standing leg) will surely send him tumbling down. What would BJJ do in this situation, I wonder?
My point is this. To focus your arsenal with kicks all the time is simply too dangerous. What do you think? |
I somewhat agree. Though I would like to point out from my observations, TKD, say 30-40 years ago didn't emphasize bouncing kicking. Though there were high and jumping kicks, I was lead to believe these were to increase balance and form. Though I think they were also part for "show". The "show" part had me reserach TKD and the arts that comprised it. As many of these in it, didn't actually have such flare.
Back then, there were drills/rotuines/tactics, aimed at getting the foot/leg caught in order to respond/counter. The arsenal had as many hand tactics, takedowns, grappling, etc, as kicks alone was a small fraction of the entire study.
Perhaps the problem with TKD nowdays, is this flare/focus, and not of tactics on "in-case scenarios", as the mainstream of it recently, seems to be sport.