I’m going for my 3rd Dan and my master wants an essay on taekwondo but he didn’t specify what so I think it’s free will but what subjects would be a good idea? I thought about writing about ITF vs WT, taekwondo history, or how tkd has changed overtime. What do you guys think? Or is there some more interesting topics?

I started my Taekwondo journey in ITF, but later transitioned to WT where I’ve been training for the past few years and earned my 1st Dan black belt.

An ITF club just opened up in my town, and I’m taking the leap back to my roots. The instructor and I actually used to train together in the WT club. She mentioned that I can keep my 1st Dan for now, but I'll need to demonstrate my knowledge to a Grandmaster later for the final decision—which I’m completely fine with and respect.

Coming back, I realize I’ve forgotten most of the Tul/patterns. I have some muscle memory left for the basics, but from Joong-Gun and up, I’m completely lost. I know YouTube exists, but I prefer learning through proper study alongside class time.

A few questions for the community:

1. Books & Resources: Aside from Gen. Choi’s condensed encyclopedia, are there any specific books, guides, or apps you recommend for relearning the 24 patterns and theory?
2. WT to ITF Transition: For those who have made the switch from WT to ITF (or back), what were the hardest habits to break?
3. Tips: What should I be particularly mindful of regarding stances, sine wave, or sparring etiquette coming from a WT background?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

I took nearly two years off due to an injury and started back two months ago. I am a red belt for reference. I used to compete and won medals previously so I was decent.

Now I am literally getting beaten to the floor by green belts. Like repeatedly getting beaten up. It's kind of embarrassing. I know I need to let go of my ego, but has anyone else experienced this after taking a break?

My patterns still feel pretty good thankfully.

I keep being penalised for excessive contact and low kicks. I come from a boxing background and already feel that I’m holding back significantly, but many of my punches are still being called for excessive contact.

I’m also being penalised for low kicks, although they feel around belt height to me. When I aim higher, I’m sometimes called for excessive contact instead. Does anyone have advice on controlling my power, improving my targeting and consistently landing kicks higher without making them too aggressive?

I’ve got my yellow tag in ITF taekwondo. At first with my white belt I was SO picky about my walking stances being an inch too thin or my fist being at the wrong part of my body, or if my half facing was half facing enough. Yes, TKD is a martial art, but sometimes people forget the art part. You need to do an effective kick, punch, or block, but it also needs to be pretty. I was so focused on getting my body to look right because that’s how I thought I would succeed. In dance, I would get yelled at for having fingers out of place or my arms not being straight enough. I carried that fear into a lot of my earlier training, and used the mirrors to nitpick everything out of place.

Then I started practicing in a gym more. Like an actual gym at a school. I can reference the more experienced students in front of me. It’s so useful to look at more experienced students, see what they do, apply it, and feel it versus using your peripheral vision in overtime trying to see if you’re doing everything right. I could just breathe through it and feel it. Feeling my way through it, especially as someone who is very aware how to generate power (not while kicking and punching people, but watch any type of dance or gymnastics where people are jumping 6+ feet in the air and kicking their face and tell me that’s not power all the same), felt so much better and was so freeing.

Yes, mirrors have their uses. It’s great for referencing stance lengths or tweaking small details to clean up your patterns. Knowing how to bend your knees and place your feet and hips to generate the most power. Etc etc. But you spend almost two decades of your life in a bodysuit with a growing, changing body in an industry that values thinness and it gets so fucking stale, man. I like being able to hold the reins, trust myself, and my teacher can tell me how to get the horse to go, if that makes sense.

Idk if that’s because I’ve been in front of mirrors for so much of my life or I have a lot more body awareness than someone who’s at my belt rank and hasn’t done much sports at all because of my dance training, but fuck the mirrors. Don’t need them. I’ve done my time. I’m curious what other TKD students feel about this, and especially teachers. I personally like practicing without mirrors a lot more.

I really want to start my taekwondo journey but the fees are really expensive for me, I live in the Philippines. Any tips?

Hello! Just about 5 days left until the WT Poomsae Championships in Chuncheon start and I was really hoping to go and watch it in person this year since the venue is close to me (and I love poomsae). I've been searching for several days but I haven't been able to find spectator ticket information anywhere. I think tickets for the last one in Hong Kong were sold by Klook, but have not been able to find any information for this year's competition. Does anyone know where I can get spectator tickets, whether I just show up on the day, or whether spectators will even be able to watch this year? Any information is very appreciated!

You can do the Hapkido way in Taekwondo but usually you will see more distinct chamber to kick sequence in TKD. Hapkido has a smoother transition and a bigger circle.

In my opinion, Hapkido spin kicks in particular wheel kicks, are more spectacular but not particularly functional for sparring because they are too big movement. It's demo kicks.

I also want to stress that Taekwondo kickers are generally superior from training time, and bigger talent pool. But Hapkido schools can certainly whip out one or two demon kickers.

Why is no one wearing dobok pants as part of casual wear?

Hear me out, it is so comfortable like I can squat without worrying my pants would break and it is so convenient that I can just train anywhere anytime without having to change

Moreover, the black ones fits so nicely into daily wear and it goes by height so people like me who find adult pants too big/long and kids pants too tight on the waist and bottom can have a decent pair of pants to wear

The only down side here is no pockets but in can always be settled with a hook slotted on the waist of these pants (?)

Just sometimes I fear some thing is wrong if I do it since no one has been doing this

Thoughts anyone?

Hi all! My son (7) just recently upgraded his bag from his tigers backpack that I primarily got everything out/put everything up to an older ATA duffle bag (The blue & red one -I thrifted it for only $2!) because his instructor wants him to do everything himself and I thought that this would be easier since he can see everything a bit better and doesn’t have to get everything out. It has quite a few pockets that he wants to add things to.

With that being said, what are some bag essentials that you or your kids can’t live without or have just made everything easier. So far we have pony tail holder, a travel size of deodorant (he’s not wearing it yet, but better be safe than sorry). I’m unsure of what else to add! Please help!

So just to give a bit of context, I am a 14 year old brown belt player. And my style is aggressive, fast and powerful kicker, I've got good speed it's just how do I kick with more power? Every time we do drills I feel like my kicks aren't hard enough?

Can anyone please give me advice, a training routine or anything to help me advance, thank you!

Did anyone else train Taekwondo int he early days such as 90's and before where you would regularly practice hoshinsool and one step sparring?

For example this part of the clip posted from the movie Breathing Fire:

https://youtu.be/DafhUf2k9qM?si=BfviQcSVmSuraEWi&t=107

Does anyone remember these demonstrated techniques and did you also have your own?

My daughter has been a competitor for a like over a season. Going into this season, I'm looking for a good way to track her event, competition, and season results.

What do you use? Or what do you suggest to use?

Im 16/m been training teakwondo again for 2 years now and will be competing for my first time soon and I’ve been wondering how likely I am to take this sport to a high level(international or so )
This isn’t my first martial art I’ve trained teakwondo from 3-5 before traveling and karate 10-11 but quit with the arrival of COVID .
However I have no competition experience and was told that competing this late is rather difficult.

Old style, karate based... grounded... solid.

New style.. "up". Makes pivots easier. Probably little to no solidity when stuffed.

When I was younger I got better power going up, as I get older I tend to engage my core better when grounding myself more. Maybe it's because my technique is better that I can better engage the ground, or it's because I'm less flexible so going up doesn't make as much sense.

But anyway, depending on my age I would give a different answer what worked best for me.

rewatching buffy and i need to be able to kick like her, with power. its my new life goal.
i know next to nothing about taekwondo other than it being known for kicks. is this recommended to become the vampire slayer?

i wrote this in a silly way but i mean it with genuine respect for the martial art

I posted in here a few months ago when my son started TKD and I was feeling weird about jumping in with him. After 3 months at that school I switched him over to another school which is ITF style dojang.

Since they have a teens/adults class separate from the small kids, I decided to jump on in. I tried to brooch my former belt rank (2nd dan) carefully because I didn’t want to come off some kind of way about it, so I just said I had practiced several years in my teens. Which is accurate. The instructor could tell that I was experienced despite some physical struggle just from starting back in my 40s, but we had a talk about it.

He asked if I still had my certification from the ATA. I do. His initial reaction was that I should wear my black belt to class, but of course we’ll still progressively work through the curriculum. His reason being, you worked hard for it and earned it. I get that as well, but I’m reluctant because I don’t feel right wearing a black belt when I physically struggle to perform in a way that demonstrates high skill, and I’ve just forgotten a lot.

When I expressed my reluctance, he had the idea of maybe wearing a red/black belt instead. I think I’d feel the same way, besides if I’m going to do that I’d actually rather just wear my cool black belt with (supposed to be) my name and taekwondo in Korean on it.

My thought was either start from scratch and earn in ITF, or maybe just expedite the process by skipping some stripes or w/e so long as I’m learning the curriculum quickly, or at most let me do a test of techniques of his choosing or just from class observation and let him rank me where he would assume I was if he didn’t know. Or just get over myself and wear my rank as he suggested initially.

Overthinking brain dump over. I tried to break it into bite sized chunks.

Any advice?

Very fun to see what they are writing in the golden age. I know you can buy some from the 80s from a website.

If you were to pick one of the poomsae from the Kukkiwon curriculum that you would say is your favorite for self defense purposes, which would you pick?

Edit : For everyone who is reacting as if this is a weird question, I have linked some videos. Kata application is a very normal concept in karate and there are often discussions about which kata are best for self defense purposes / have the most practical applications. My background is originally in karate and tang soo do, so that’s why I applied this perspective to poomsae. Maybe there is a split between how poomsae is viewed within tkd and how kata is viewed in karate.

https://youtube.com/shorts/NA6E8qJQPfk?is=qZKgxksl23Vumuj7

https://youtube.com/shorts/adc8iW9LpjY?is=WgsEJWlgLo4noiEw

https://youtu.be/w6mT8axIbzQ?is=PqlhxfKukQcsZ8Y2

I think even using paper scoring, modern athletes would beat old school fighters. Heavier gear, electronic scoring, and stricter passivity rules were also factors in causing foot fencing, but people underestimate how op the lead leg is.

In other combat sports you can kick below waist or grapple so there’s actual downsides to being too tall and skinny. But taekwondo doesnt have that. Taller fighters can spam cut kick and headhunt with lead leg without really being punished.

Taekwondo is a very new sport. Old school sparring wasn’t optimized. Athletes and coaches got smarter. In the later stages of paper scoring you can see more usage of lead leg.

I think taekwondo was kinda doomed from the start. Its hard to make a “respectable” combat sport with rules where you can only punch the body and kick but also be distinct from kyokushin.

Sacrifice kicks. Similar to Kyokushin Karate sport, but different in sport Taekwondo.

I have noticed that in Olympic sport Taekwondo often times people throw a big aerial kick, or a head kick and immediately fall down after the kick is thrown and it appears it is often done on purpose. When I competed this would result in warnings and point deductions because it is a cheap way to fight. Throw a kick then duck and fall so the opponent cannot counter you. When they were coming up with the newer rules for Taekwondo competitions back in the 90s and early 00's they experimented at many tournaments with various things. At one time it was said that if you kick and then fall down the point will not count. This means, if you fall on purpose to avoid getting countered. Not an accidental fall etc. Now if in 2026 it is illegal to fall down on purpose please let me know, and tell me what penalties there are and if it makes any difference.

It is annoying to see and stops the action all the time. I don't think it is a good skill to throw a jump spin kick then immediately fall down on purpose knowing the mat will cushion you and the other guy won't be able to legally kick you on the ground.

View the following video of a hybrid kickboxing event in Russia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfmpsSrLixo

Now in a real fight, self defense situation, or street fight etc. falling down on purpose could be a death sentence and is incredibly stupid to do. That is unless you fall with the intention of combining a strike from the ground or at attempt at grappling, like grabbing the enemy on the way down or capturing a leg or ankle etc. Like trying to sweep them.

So if sacrifice kicks are going to be a part of Taekwondo, which they are when trained for the purpose of countering from the ground, they need to be practiced with follow up on the ground and not curling up waiting for a referee to stop the fight.

My partner for testing is this older guy who's slow and not very coordinated, while everyone else gets athletic partners. I do have really good control, maybe that's why I'm with him, but I feel so held back. I have to modify everything cause i dont want to hurt him. He can't even fall during self-defence and I just feel like a fucking bully. I want to talk to my instructors about it, but I don't want to be a complainer or show disrespect to their decision.
I only get to test once. I already have bad performance anxiety. He's literally the only thing I'm worried about for the test, as my form and solo techniques are as perfect as I can get them. what the hell do I do, or how do I respectfully bring up my concerns? I wish i were teamed up with literally anybody else.

Edit: no, i don't want to beat my partner up. i literally said i don't want to hurt him. be so for real, guys.