Tag: patterns

Five general principles for teaching a good Taekwondo class

I’ve been training in Taekwondo for more than 13 years now. In that time I’ve attended classes as a student, and I’ve also taught as an assistant instructor and instructor. As a student I’ve seen which classes are enjoyable and interesting, and I’ve tried to distill what it is that makes a good Taekwondo class. And as an instructor I’ve tried to use these ideas to teach interesting and effective Taekwondo classes, and through trial and error, have found what works and what doesn’t work. Here are five general principles that I try to follow when teaching a Taekwondo class.

1. Students shouldn’t be standing still for more than 30 seconds.

I’ve been to too many Taekwondo classes where students have been left standing around with nothing to do for several minutes. You can see them getting bored – it doesn’t take long. While I don’t think that the primary purpose of a Taekwondo class is to keep students physically fit, it is something that should just happen incidentally – students should be doing enough exercises to become and remain physically fit. Many people do attend Taekwondo classes for that reason.

2. Never do the same class twice.

I’ve also been to too many classes that have just been exact copies of previous classes. This is a sure way to make your students bored. Variety is essential for maintaining your students’ interest and enthusiasm.

This doesn’t mean that no two lessons can be alike in any way – if you were to try to make every single lesson completely different from every other one, you’d quickly run out of teaching material. It just means that no two lessons are exactly alike. There should always be something different about any two lessons, even if it’s just doing a different warm-up exercise.

3. In every class, teach your students one thing they haven’t heard before.

This relates to the point about variety, and that no two classes should be alike. An easy way to make sure that no two classes are exactly alike is to try to teach your students one completely new thing in each class. This could be almost anything to do with Taekwondo: it could be a new sparring technique, it could be how to score points when refereeing sparring match, or it could be something about the history of Korea. There is a lot to know in Taekwondo, and most students only ever see a fraction of it. Teaching your students one new thing in every class not only adds variety and keeps your students from becoming bored, but it might introduce them to some aspect of Taekwondo that they find particularly interesting.

4. Always give higher grades something harder to do than the lower grades.

Again, I have been to too many classes where the class consists of a wide range of grades – from white belt all the way up to third degree black belt – and because there are white belts in the group, the entire class does white belt (or often yellow belt) line work. While black belts do need to practise basic techniques like punches and knife-hand strikes, they don’t need to do this all the time, and they DO need to practise the more advanced techniques that they’re learning for their grade. If you always give black belts white belt exercises to do, they will get bored.

If there are a large spread of grades in a Taekwondo class, the class needs to be split into groups. If there are black belts (and if there are enough of them), they almost always need to be split off into a separate group, and given very hard, physically demanding exercises to do – they are black belts after all. If the group of colour belts is large enough, they should be split too – normally around green or blue belt. If you only have one or two black belts in the class, one of them can instruct one of the colour belt groups.

And even if the class is not large enough to be split, if you’re doing something like line work, you should still give the higher grades some harder line work to do.

5. Get the senior grades to teach the junior grades.

This is something that we did a lot in the Taekwondo classes I go to 10 years ago (and which we still do now, though not to the same extent). If two green belt students need to learn the pattern Wonhyo, and there is a blue belt in your class who knows their own pattern quite well, get them to teach the green belts Wonhyo. It gives the blue belt something interesting to do; it helps the blue belt ‘revise’ Wonhyo, and think about it in a different way as they have to describe the moves to someone else; and it frees you up to monitor the class at a higher level – to make sure everyone is active, rather than just concentrating on teaching two students in your class one pattern.

Can you learn Taekwondo without an instructor?

Can you learn Taekwondo without having an actual instructor standing in front of you telling you what to do? The short answer: in my opinion, no. It is not possible to learn Taekwondo – assuming no previous training in a martial art – from just printed and online materials. If you’re completely new to martial arts, and you want to learn Taekwondo, you need to find an instructor.

I think the main reason for this is that people who haven’t done a martial art before – and who haven’t done anything that requires very precise movements of the arms, legs, and whole body – generally have very limited body control. Body control is just the ability to move you arms and legs into very specific positions, and to know whether or not, without looking, an arm or leg is in a given position. It sounds deceptively simple, but a lot of people, particularly by the time they are 20 or 30 years old, have gotten used to a certain, quite limited way of moving, and when they start Taekwondo, they have to unlearn this. Without having a physical instructor in front of you, watching the techniques you do, and correcting them, it’s very difficult to learn body control.

Thus if someone who had never done martial arts before tried to learn Taekwondo from one of Choi’s books, or from some Kukki-won videos online, they may be able to roughly mimic the movements, but there would be a lot of inaccuracies. Furthermore, they wouldn’t be aware that there was anything incorrect about the techniques they were doing.

In addition to that, someone who had never done martial arts before would generally not be able to know whether any one learning resource they find is good. For example, there are loads of forms videos available online; some of them show a person performing a form well, others show a person performing a form incorrectly. Unless you’ve had a lot of training from an experienced instructor, you’re unlikely to be able to tell one from another.

However, there are a lot of caveats to this statement. If someone did have previous martial arts experience, for example – whether it’s Karate or Muay Thai or even something like Judo or Kendo, which focus on very different kinds of combat – then I think they would stand a much better chance of learning Taekwondo without an instructor, and just using books and videos. This is because even though Judoka and Kendoka learn to move in a different way to Taekwondo-in, they still learn body control. They learn to identify the positions of the hands and feet in movements, and can translate that into their own actions. Such a person trying to learn Taekwondo in this way would still face a number of difficulties without an instructor, but not as many.

And similarly, if you’re someone who already has a grounding in Taekwondo, you can certainly learn more Taekwondo without needing an instructor. If you’ve been training in Taekwondo for, say, three years, and you read about the next form you’re learning in a book, or you watch a video of it, then you’re definitely going to be able to learn a lot.

So in conclusion, if you’re completely new to martial arts, and you want to learn Taekwondo, find an instructor. If you have some experience in martial arts, you will definitely benefit from having an instructor, but you could also learn some parts of Taekwondo without one.

Beyond just learning the movements, there are a number of other reasons to train with an instructor. An instructor or the organisation they are part of can promote you through the colour belt grades, and then eventually to black belt. Training with a larger organisation will likely also give you access to Taekwondo competitions and seminars.

‘Is Taekwondo a religion?’

I’ve put the title above in quotation marks because this is not a question that I am asking of you, the reader – this is a question that was asked of me a long time ago. Actually, more specifically, it was put to me as a statement – that ‘Taekwondo is a religion’ – by one of my friends.

I hadn’t been training in Taekwondo for very long at the time – probably about a year and a half – and the friend who asked it of me was not a martial artist at all. She was just very interested in philosophy (and went on to study philosophy at university).

My answer at the time was a firm ‘no, Taekwondo is not a religion’, though not having thought of the question before, I was not very well equipped to say why it was not. Nevertheless I have not forgotten being asked the question.

Certainly in some ways Taekwondo is similar to many world religions. We have a traditional style of clothing – the dobok; we have traditional rituals that we learn from and teach to each other – the forms; we have separate denominations – the different styles of Taekwondo – Changheon-yu, Kukki-won; we have founders; we have a hierarchical structure.

But these things alone do not make something a religion. Many of these attributes also apply to the supporters of football clubs, and they are generally not considered a religion (though I’m sure some philosophers would disagree). This question comes down to, as it often does: what is the defining quality of a religion?

Personally, I think that a religion has to have a supernatural belief system – you have to believe in a deity or some other metaphysical entity. While in Taekwondo we do idolise a number of people – such as Choi Hong-hi and Hwang Ki – there are no gods or goddesses. On this alone, I would say that Taekwondo is not a religion.

However, some would argue that belief in the supernatural is too narrow a constraint for the definition of a religion. It would most likely exclude Confucianism (which I would also not consider a religion, but again some would argue differently). Some would argue that a religion is any codified set of beliefs.

Taekwondo – particularly Changheon-yu Taekwondo – does have a set of beliefs. These are the tenets, or virtues, of Taekwondo: courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control, and indomitable spirit. These are the tenets by which students are expected to act in Taekwondo classes. But it is also often remarked that Taekwondo is not just an activity that you do for a few hours a week – it is a way of life. The five tenets, as well as other aspects of Taekwondo and Korean culture, are supposed to be part of your life outside of the dojang too. Therefore, the tenets, and the culture of Taekwondo, is a set of beliefs about how to live, comparable (and indeed heavily influenced by) the values of Confucianism.

So under this broader definition of a religion, where a religion is simply any set of beliefs, Taekwondo could be considered a religion. However, this does also make it arguable that capitalism is a religion as well. (Again, I’m sure that some philosophers would argue that capitalism is a religion.)

So in conclusion. This question leads to the usual philosophical minefield about the definition of religion and what things you think should and shouldn’t be considered a religion. While there are some similarities between Taekwondo and world religions, I think they are sufficiently different that Taekwondo should not be considered a religion.

Are there too many forms in Taekwondo?

Taekwondo has A LOT of forms (patterns, 형 hyeong, 틀 teul, 품새 pumsae). Most Taekwondo practitioners only really know of the forms in their own style, and have a limited awareness of the forms practised by other styles. To give you an idea of how many forms there are in wider Taekwondo, in the book Taekwondo Forms, which lists forms from four styles of Taekwondo (Changheon-yu, Jukam-yu, Kukki-won, and Songdo-kwan), there are 71 forms. A cursory glance at the forms page on the Taekwondo Wikia website http://taekwondo.wikia.com/wiki/Taekwondo_Forms reveals 30, 40, maybe 50 more (depending on which styles of Taekwondo you consider to be legitimate, which is itself a topic that could cover several blog posts or even an entire book). With the announcement from Kukki-won last year of the development of ten new Taekwondo forms, to be used for competitions, it all leads to the question: are there too many forms in Taekwondo?

It’s worth noting that Taekwondo has had some very prolific forms designers in it. Choi Hong-hi, the founder of the Changheon-yu style, is an excellent example. With the assistance of a few of his fellow practitioners, Choi created 25 full forms for his style of Taekwondo. When you consider someone like 糸洲 安恒 Itosu Ankō, a highly prominent Karateka who is credited with designing the 平安 Pinan series of forms in Karate (known as 평안 Pyeong-an in Taekwondo and Tangsudo), created 5 forms, 25 is an impressive number. Hwang Ki was also quite prolific, creating the 칠성 Chilseong and 육로 Yungno series’ of forms, as well as 화순 Hwasun – 14 forms in total. Bak Jung-tae, the founder of Jukam-yu, designed 6 forms, but among these are some of the longest and most complex forms in Taekwondo.

With the addition of ten new forms into Kukki-won Taekwondo, that puts the total number of forms in that style up to 35 (if you exclude the apparently unfinished forms of 한류 Hallyu and 비각 Bigak, and the older version of the form 고려 Koryeo, but if you include both the 팔괘 Palgwae and 태극 Taegeuk forms). That means that there are now more forms in Kukki-won Taekwondo than any other style of Taekwondo (legitimate or illegitimate). It beats Changheon-yu’s 25 (including both 고당 Kodang and 주체 Juche). Has the number of forms in all of Taekwondo surpassed the number in all of Karate? It would be difficult to count either set, as there are many forms that it would be questionable to include.

The problem is that there’s really no limit to how many of these forms can be designed. It’s difficult for new forms to be introduced into Changheon-yu, because there’s no central authority to decide what is and isn’t correct in Changheon-yu (or rather, the central authority is Choi’s books, which aren’t going to change now). But Kukki-won could design a new set of forms every ten years. Each set could never entirely replace the previous set, as the design of each set would be recorded for posterity, and still practised by some (which is what’s happened with the Palgwae forms, which were supposed to be replaced by the Taegeuk forms).

So as much as there is the problem of inflating grades (tenth, eleventh, twelfth degree of black belt), there is the potential for an inflating number of forms. With possibly well over 100 forms in all of Taekwondo, and now at least 35 in Kukki-won Taekwondo, this inflation has arguably already happened, and may well continue to happen. It’s not necessarily a problem yet, but it may become a problem at some point in the future.

Why do I say ‘form’ instead of ‘pattern’?

I practise Changheon-yu Taekwondo – the style of Taekwondo promulgated by Choi Hong-hi. In Changheon-yu, we call forms – predetermined series’ of movements that are used as educational exercises, among other uses – ‘patterns’. We use this word because it’s the word that Choi favoured. I, however, prefer to use the word ‘form’, and here’s why.

In the early years of Taekwondo, everyone called these exercises 형 hyeong, which is the Korean pronunciation of the Japanese word 型 形 kata, and this is evidenced by early Korean texts. 형 hyeong is generally translated into English as ‘form’. Now, however, alternate words are used. Choi changed to using 틀 teul to describe them. 틀 teul literally means ‘mould’, and the implication here is that the exercise ‘moulds’ or ‘shapes’ your techniques. Choi chose ‘pattern’ as the translation of 틀 teul, with the same aim. In Kukki-won Taekwondo, 품새 pumsae is the modern Korean term for these exercises.

Part of the motivation behind these changes was to de-Japanese Taekwondo. Taekwondo is descended from Karate, and for a long time, the Korean pronunciations of Japanese terms were used to describe techniques in Taekwondo. However, since the Japanese had occupied the Korean peninsula for several decades, and had attempted to eradicate Korean culture, many of those in Taekwondo wanted to remove the influence of Japan on the art, and this meant changing the terminology. That’s why nowadays we use the term 손칼 sonkal to describe a knife-hand, rather than the term 수도 sudo – the Korean pronunciation of 手刀 shutō, which refers to a knife-hand in Japanese martial arts. The word for ‘form’, 형 hyeong, was also replaced.

I use the word ‘form’ rather than ‘pattern’, when writing in English, because I think that ‘pattern’ implies the wrong meaning – ‘pattern’ suggests a series of movements that repeat themselves, and while this is true for some forms, it isn’t true for a lot of them. ‘Form’ is a generic word that doesn’t imply anything about the content of the exercise. Also, using ‘form’ brings the terminological conventions of Taekwondo into line with those of other martial arts. I use 형 hyeong in Korean for the same reason.