| Total Views: 174 - Total Replies: 11 |
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The simple answer to your original question, is NO, they shouldn't be allowed to deliberately hurt other students because of a lack of control. At my school I would be pulling them over to a heavy bag or wave-master and having them do full speed touch drills until their control was where it should be. It has been pretty unanimous with everyone who has posted that technique gives you power, but it also gives you control. Control of where the strike is landing and how hard it will strike. Which in our sport could mean life or death. Let's face it we are all involved in a contact sport here and accidents and injuries are going to happen. But we need to do everything we can as Instructors to minimize injuries. If your injured, you can't train and that's not good for anybody. I mean when I started in 1969 we didn't use any gear, so you better be able to control your technique. Every instructor who is worth there weight in puppy chow knows how to teach control without having to go in and knock the stuffing out of somebody. It's simple, controlled repetition, repetition, repetition. Ranger1100ky talked about balance in his last post and he's absolutely dead on point. Balance is the key to all our training. Not just weight distribution balance, but balance of our minds and hearts as well. Be sure to check the philosophical mission statement of the school and instructor before you start training at a school. If their heart and mind is about knocking the crap out of people, you might want to check out other schools if that's not what your about. I hear there is an Instructor in Cuba that has this philosophy who will be available to train you, as soon as he gets out of jail.
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"Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible and suddenly you will be doing what you thought was impossible"
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| POSTED BY: sabumnim on 09/01/2008 22:23:24 |
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In my lifetime I was always taught technique is the key to everything. That's why basics is so important to the study of Taekwondo and any other martial art for that matter. Sparring is not a tool for teaching kids to brawl and to injure one an other. However it should be treated as a game of chess. It's about your knowledge, experience, technique, speed, balance and of course power. However power is secondary to my teaching of sparring. For me it's all about speed and accuracy and you can not attain those things without learning proper technique. As long as students have a strong basis with their technique they will adapt themselves with that in their sparring. Kid sparring should be fun and injury free. If you don't make it fun for the kids, then they will never show up for sparring class. I teach my kids that sparring is not an important part of TKD but the must learn it as sparring is part of our TKD culture and part of the art. When students promote for belt changes they have to spar. Since sparring is unavoidable, it is encouraged that students train in it to get a good understanding on how to spar even if they are not out for competitive purposes. As my Grandmaster has always said, in sparring not many competitors care about technique, they just care about throwing their leg to hit something. That's where a lot of competitors succeed and fail. When I spar, I concentrate on speed, with my technique. However there are times when I have sacrificed technique for my speed. Usually that ends up in a bad or not so bad result in my sparring.
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"Practice makes perfection. Mastery takes a lifetime"
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