Taekwondo is the Scientology of Martial Arts
Taekwondo is the BIGGEST crock of shit that I have ever witnessed in my life, specifically kids doing Taekwondo. I will admit, my 8 year old son does Taekwondo, not because I signed him up for it, but because my son’s mom did, and she makes life altering decisions without me sometimes, fair enough, I did alter her life with one of my decisions, if you catch my drift…
First, I get it. Taekwondo is a great tool to teach young impressionable minds discipline, respect, confidence, working towards a goal, blah blah blah, BUT IT ALSO TEACHES THEM HOW TO GET THE SHIT KICKED OUT OF THEM IN A REAL FIGHT AND GIVES THEM THE MOST DANGEROUS CONFIDENCE OF ALL, FALSE CONFIDENCE, AKA THINKING YOU ARE A BADASS WHEN YOU ARE FAR FROM IT..
Let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, repeated weak high kicks and out of control spinning kicks do not win fights, and that’s what Taekwondo is, that’s essentially the definition of the art…. Basically a wrestlers dream opponent in a fight.
See for yourself
Those are are HIGHLIGHTS
Taekwondo is essentially Scientology. You keep doing it long enough, listen to your teachers, pay the money, and you can progress to the highest level of BULLSHIT that money can buy. In fact it’s exactly like Scientology, just less expensive. My son’s teacher is a 50 something, very short, middle eastern guy, who is a blackbelt of some degree. He could be lying to us all, but man that guy has a great high kick, so we all buy it. Yet, in that same class as my son, there is a kid who is literally 10 years old and also has a blackbelt of some degree. How the fuck does this make sense? Just because the kids family started paying to progress this kid in belts at the age of 3, he’s allowed to be considered a master? The kid is not a master of anything except telling all his 4th grade classmates that he is a blackbelt in Taekwondo, everyday.
My point is that the Taekwondo community literally puts a 10 year old on pretty much the same level as a man that has been practicing for a lifetime, how insulting to the teacher..no? I can’t even come up with a good analogy to that situation. Its like blank being a blank and having as much respect as a blank, help me out here in comments.
The adult classes that meet after my son’s class are also full of out of shape, inflexible, fat asses with high ranking belts around their bulging waists, it is a fucking insult to the origins of Taekwondo what America is doing to the art in the name of profit. I’m not even sure Korea knows the severity of the disrespect, but they have bigger fish to fry right now. Pretty sure the originators of the martial art would not want someone who can literally not touch their toes standing up, to be receiving a black belt, and that’s exactly what is happening everyday. They absolutely should instill some kind of physical assessment, along with simply memorizing bullshit forms/dance routines in order to progress in belts. If you can’t do 10 pullups, run a mile in under 8 minutes, touch your toes, AND know what masturbation is and have completed it, you should not be allowed to be a blackbelt, period. Basically all the things I could not accomplish due to having AOL and an unsupervised basement during elementary school. I also ate two dinners regularly.
The belt ceremonies of these youth “dojos” are also incredibly hilarious. First, you spend the majority of the time watching other kids you don’t give a fuck about get their belts, all while parents are shoeless and sitting on mats around the studio taking shitty pictures with their phones. Second, the instructor spends a ton of time telling you about other programs that are worthless to your kid. Like learning how to be a master of nunchucks or the long stick thing. Congrats parents!! Your kid can twirl those sticks around their bodies better than any other kid, money well spent. You would literally being doing them a bigger favor by teaching them how to swallow fire, or how to train a dog to take dollar bills out of tourists hands while doing shitty magic.
Finally, the instructor must prove themselves to the parents who are shelling out hundreds of dollars on their classes. So, this old motherfucker does an array of “forms” aka elbows and kicks with loud noises meant to fool you into how good they are, to show that they are in fact worthy of teaching your child. The teacher is out of breath after doing this for only 2 minutes, and his final yell is met with applause from all the idiots around him who are drinking this Taekwondo potion. Me on the other hand, Im convincing myself I could do everything he’s doing if you gave me 2 weeks of working out, and quarantined me from booze.
My point is this. I want my kid to do whatever the fuck he wants, and I will support him no matter what, but at some point I feel like its my parental duty as a father to tell him everything he has worked for will only get him hurt in a real fight, and relentlessly made fun of in high school if he talks about it too much.