What contact level do you use in sparring.

[AdamTKD]

Contact levels

Speaking on this thread for what I've seen in the WTF Taekwondo Club I'm with.

Light Contact - There for practice, used in instances of no body protection.

Medium Contact - Used with body protection, arm guards, shin guards, groin guard etc

Possibly the heaviest contact comes when kicking targets that are held by other students.

As far as body protection goes I will not attend a class without the minimum of groin guard and shin pads on, seen too much and felt too much for any other option.

Adam.

[MichiganTKD]

Contact level

At our school we use WTF rules, with and without body armor and headgear:

Class free fighting: light contact, meaning you contact enough to touch the skin or push the guy back with causing pain. This is primarily for lower ranked color belts.
No head punching, controlled head kicking. We practice the philosophy: if you make the guy stumble back by killing his balance you can really contact him.
Testing: light/medium contact, but same rules. Lower belts are expected to just demonstrate they know technique and steps. red belts and black belts must demonstrate that their technique can connect and be effective. If two fighters at testing are very good, they might put armor on to lessen accidents.
Tournaments: the whole deal. Body armor, headgear, cup, mouthguard, shin/forearm pads. Contact is medium, technique must produce an audible sound to the abdomen. We have gotten away from head kicking in tournaments because people have gotten hurt.
Black belts in class and practicing with each other generally are responsible for how much contact they are willing to tolerate. Black belts who want to contact fellow black belts are expected to be able to receive it as well.

[Damian Mavis]

"We have gotten away from head kicking in tournaments because people have gotten hurt."

Really? Wow, if they are so worried about people getting hurt maybe they should just stop hitting eachother all together?

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

[MichiganTKD]

Contact level

We stopped allowing head contact at our tournaments to minimize accidents. It is much easier to recover from a solid shot to the body than a solid shot to the head, and I've seen competitors get laid out from body shots as well. The difference is, if you take a hard shot to the body it will double you over and cause a lot of pain, but you will recover because you can make your abdominal muscles strong. You cannot make your head strong.
If you take a solid shot to the head, aside from a concussion, there can be long term damage and the possibility of serious injury when your head hits the floor-headgear or no headgear.
Contrary to what some of you believe, tournaments are about having an enjoyable time with other fighter, not about knocking out the other guy. I think some of you might be better off just being streetfighters.

[Damian Mavis]

And I think you don't have a clue about real martial arts training or even TKD for that matter. Sounds like you got yourself into a serious McDojang. Try some other schools were they don't baby you and you'll be shocked at how much better it is. MARTIAL ARTS means WAR ARTS, not let's sit around and HOLD HANDS ARTS.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

[bvermillion]

We stopped allowing head contact at our tournaments to minimize accidents. It is much easier to recover from a solid shot to the body than a solid shot to the head, and I've seen competitors get laid out from body shots as well. The difference is, if you take a hard shot to the body it will double you over and cause a lot of pain, but you will recover because you can make your abdominal muscles strong. You cannot make your head strong.
If you take a solid shot to the head, aside from a concussion, there can be long term damage and the possibility of serious injury when your head hits the floor-headgear or no headgear.
Contrary to what some of you believe, tournaments are about having an enjoyable time with other fighter, not about knocking out the other guy. I think some of you might be better off just being streetfighters.

Do you remember that thing they taught you to do way back when you first started when you saw a foot coming at your head?????? BLOCK

[MichiganTKD]

Tae Kwon Do contact

Au contrair my thuggish Tae Kwon Do brothers!

If you recall, Tae Kwon Do ends in "Do" because it is a Way that promotes physical, mental, and spiritual excellence, as opposed to simply a set of techniques to hurt or kill someone. This includes respect for fellow human beings. Students are not punching bags, and we do not practice with each other for the purpose of breaking each others bones or knocking each other out. Even Gen. Choi did not promote a style that advocated full contact to each.
As for training at a McDojang, rest assured this is not the case. I've practiced with fellow students who know when to let up yet have some of the strongest technique I've ever seen. They just choose not to treat other students as punching bags. We've had accidents, but not because we were trying to knock out our classmates.

[MichiganTKD]

Contact level

There is something else to understand:

We practice the philosophy that after Black Belt, it is each student's choice how they want to train. Many of the younger black belts (15-20's) want to practice tournament technique. If this what they want, this is how they can train. Others are not interested in tournaments, especially the older students, and want to train traditionally. Meaning they want to practice power. However, they still respect their fellow students and do not wish to contact them with full power. They sublimate their power techniques into training methods that do not put classmates at risk. This is the "Respect" thing. Noone forces our black belts who want to train for tournaments to do so, and noone forces the ones who want traditional practice to train for tournaments. Everyone chooses their own path and practices accordingly. Much like life.

[osopardo]

Don't mind Sabumnim Damian's "thuggish" attitude. He's been pursuing less "genteel" arts recently.

[osopardo]

And to put the last word on this debate.....

"What contact level do you use in sparring?"

Answer: "It depends on a wide variety of conditions, circumstances training partners, etc."



Something I've seen some of the kids do with new "victims"...

"Hey, let's do an exercise on control, let's see who can hit the lightest. I'll go first, then you go"

Tap "victim" on shoulder with fist.
"Victim" responds with a lighter tap.
Haul off and punch victim as hard as possible on shoulder, then run away yelling, "You win! I lose!"

[Damian Mavis]

Ok first of all, there is alot of generalisation going on and it's annoying as hell. I get all kinds of generalisations from Muay Thai guys and other arts (especially those damned kungfu guys! They are the worst) but when I get it from TKD guys it really aggravates me.

My attitude on contact and sparring in TKD come from my traditional background in a good solid TKD "as an art form not a sport" school. I wouldn't for one second start implementing the attitudes of other arts into my school.

I truly resent the opinion from "softer" TKD practitioners that those of us that still remember what martial arts are all about are somehow street fighters or thugs. For crying out loud, I'm fully aware that TKD for the majority has turned into a feel good self help program with little to no actual realistic self defence training (whether mental or physical) but that doesn't mean we have to encourage it!


Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

[Spookey]

Mr. Mavis Speaks!

....and I agree!

Well said Mr. Mavis, well said!


Taekwon!
Spookey

[Damian Mavis]

No, there is more to the mental aspects and benefits of TKD than just that, although some of the things you listed are good things to teach children don't you agree Handtohand?.... But it is more limitted if there isn't good contact training. The confidence, inner strength and toughness that lets you handle lifes little problems better comes from training period but these benefits are much more obvious when there is contact training.

My greatest sense of satisafaction is in a situation like this: I get an adult female student that is basically an emotional basketcase and cries just about every single class for the first 6 months, 4 years later as a black belt she is emotionally and physically alot tougher and stronger and never breaks down over little stupid stuff again. At the very least I've helped her deal with life a little better and at the most I've helped prepared her more towards handling the stress and fear of a street defence situation without freezing up. Or helped her find the confidence to not act like a victim and avoid a street defence situation to begin with! That is why I love teaching TKD.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD

[osopardo]

Damian,

For the record; I was only "funning" you and I do agree with you.

I had been truly surprised for a while when I first started hearing comments from other styles about how "soft" TKD is by comparison. My instructor is a 7th dan in a WTF-based system, but his age and his years of experience and his origins in the style and the way he has taught never gave us any indication that it was a watered-down warm-fuzzies feel-good "sport" style.

We train by rule sets and conditions; when training in the dojang with training partners there is a certain set of rules, when training for or competing in tournaments there's another set of rules, when training a child yet another set of rules, etc. etc.

Then in addition to all that there is a different set of rules and mind-set in the self-defense training, which takes into account every possible technique one might encounter in a violent confrontation. Chokes, kicks, punches, shoves, elbows, knees, headbutts, knives, sticks, guns ... we’ve had to deal with it all repeatedly in self-defense training.

When I started TKD training as a middle-aged, 9-to-5 workadaddy, I had my experiences and memories of my training as a youth (boxing, judo, wrestling, street fighting) and the benefits of that training that I wanted my son to also have. So these days I train in martial arts as a way of encouraging my son to train in M.A. (ok maybe I do it just for me too).

I drifted into TKD primarily out of convenience and a sense that any style is as good as another. TKD = Korean Karate = Fighting Art = whatever. Maybe I was just lucky finding the right school and the right instructor. Maybe there are schools out there promoting a false sense of confidence and accomplishment and setting people up for catastrophic consequences.
I wouldn’t know. Most students I’ve met usually lose those notions around green belt level.

But I think it’s just plain silly to;
a. State that the techniques of one style are superior to another.
b. Disregard the specific circumstances and rule sets of a situation.
c. Allow ourselves to respond to such nonsense.

By the way, regarding character strengthening; my son went from being a cry-baby as a yellow belt every time he failed to get something right or every time he got hit, to being a strong, self-confident, relaxed black belt, able to smile through pain or frustration or defeat. The instructor has at times pointed to him in the middle of a session and said to him; “Brace yourself mister, I’m gonna make you cry.” Only to have the boy respond with a smile, “Bring it on, sabunim!” And he is not the only one who has experienced such growth.

I’ve seen courage, I’ve seen toughness. I’ve seen strength.
It is an eight-year-old child standing alone in the center of the floor, facing a table of judges he’s never met before. It is a young man sparring full contact against a larger, stronger opponent, without fear, without discouragement, it is a boy walking away from a schoolyard bully because he has no need to prove anything. That’s the kind of stuff you pick up training in a so-called “watered-down” sport?

[Damian Mavis]

My responses might seem angered but honestly they are light hearted, even if I act like you're an idiot or totally disagree with you, like Michigan TKD..... the only people to truly get under my skin are kungfu dudes haha. Arrogant delusional bunch of freaks! Even with them though I'm never too serious and don't really think of them as worse than any other group.. well maybe a little.

Damian Mavis
Honour TKD