Reply. Question 1. It is always more difficult to do physical things as you age; not impossible, just more difficult. Stretch every day. Do not bounce; perform a stretch and hold it for a minute or so. You are not actually stretching anything; you are not making anything thing longer, you are relaxing. When you perform a stretch, the muscles tighten. What you are trying to do is train the muscles to relax when you stretch; so do not concentrate on stretching but instead concentrate on relaxing. Stretch the entire body for overall speed and flexibility, but, to perform better kicks, concentrate on stretching the body and legs in positions that are used when performing the kicks. Use a yoga book or website to find stretches that will best benefit the areas you want to stretch.

Question 2. You get better at something by doing it many times. To get more power in kicks and punches, you must kick and punch every day, as many times as you can, using perfect technique. Cross training by lifting weights and such can help, but it is not a substitute for practice. Baseball players do not become better hitters by running or lifting weights, they get better by hitting hundreds of baseball every day.

Do pushups on the fists; some with fists held vertically, some with them held horizontally. Use a variety of hand positions. Instead of pushing up, thrust up so the fists leave the floor to build explosive strength. Punching power comes from the hips more than from the arms. This is explained more in the punching section of TKDTutor.com.

You can have flexible legs but not enough strength to lift the leg as high, fast, and powerfully as needed to be able to score. You can have tremendous strength in your legs but not have the flexibility you need to get a kick to a viable target effectively. If you want to be a good kicker, concentrate on things that will make you a better kicker. Perform many, many, many kicks everyday to a heavy bag while concentrating on using perfect form. Do not worry about speed and power. If you concentrate on perfect form.

Reply. Every organization/school/competition has its own rules for what type of sparring equipment is permitted. Some organizations require the equipment to be a certain color and marked with the organization’s official logo. The official story is that this insures everyone is using high quality equipment that has been officially tested for safety. Of course, the “official” equipment is expensive. In fact, the exact same equipment may be purchased on the Internet for much less money. Requiring the equipment to have the official logo is just another way for organizations to get more of your money.

Most official sparring equipment is made from molded foam. When I used to spar five nights a week, the best usage I could get from a set of hand and foot pads was one year. During the year, I used a lot of vinyl glue and colored plastic tape, and did a lot of suturing to reattach the finger loops that pulled loose, so sometimes I was not able to get a year of usage from the equipment. Sometimes equipment is inspected at tournaments and rejected if it is taped. Covered foam would cost a bit more but it would be more durable and last much longer. This would mean you would not have to replace the equipment every year, which would mean you would save money. However, this would also mean the organizations would lose money; therefore, for most organizations, only foam equipment is allowed.

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Reply. Lots of questions but I think I can answer all them in one response. In choosing any martial art, you want to find one that best serves your purpose and fits your body type and personality. As an example of what I mean by body type, if you are big and powerful, then a soft, graceful style would probably not be a good choice for you. As an example of what I mean by personality, it you are a quiet, non-aggressive person, then full-contact fighting would probably not be a good choice for you.

As to your purpose, you state that you are looking for a martial art that concentrates on self-defense. All types of Taekwondo are sports oriented, and most traditional styles of karate concentrate on the budo, the way of life of the martial arts. These arts may be used for self-defense, but that is not their primary purpose. Some people think kickboxing is good for self-defense, because it uses full-contact, but it is still a sport and uses safety rules and equipment. One could still argue that, on the street, it is better than Taekwondo, but self-defense oriented martial arts would argue that it is a poor replacement. The same arguments may be made for the mixed martial arts. All these arts train against likeminded opponents; whereas, in self-defense situations, you will most likely be defending against people who untrained in any martial art, they are just evil, mean people who will risk their own lives just to hurt you.

If you only want to be highly effective at self-defense, then you should choose a self-defense oriented martial art, such a Krav Maga. However, a problem with these types of martial arts is that you do not get the enjoyment of physical competition against other people that you get in other martial arts. If is near impossible to find a martial art that has competitive sparring and also is self-defense oriented.

Cross training is an option, but cross training causes problems when in self-defense situations where you must make instantaneous decisions and actions. When you cross train ,and are in this type of situation, your brain takes too long to access the situation and take action. For example, let us say you are a businessman who travels frequently between the United States and Great Britain, and you drive a lot in each country. Everything about driving in the two counties is about the same except you drive on different sides of the car and the road. After awhile, you will probably be able to drive effectively in both countries, but when a child suddenly runs in front of the car, how will you brain react? Will it have the correct foot press the correct pedal, or will you swerve in the correct direction?

When you spar with kick boxers using their rules, you feel awkward. If they spar with you using Taekwondo rules, they will also feel awkward. Football and flag football are played basically the same, but they are different enough that players from one will feel awkward when playing the other.

Self-defense skills are a good thing to have, but for 95% of the people, they will never be needed. Most martial art masters who have trained their whole lives in their arts have never had to use their skills on the street. If this was their only goal in their training, then all the training would have been a waste of time. However, they trained in the martial arts for other reasons that made their lives better for it. There is still a possibility you may need to defend yourself. If this occurs, you may not have the best techniques for it, but you will have techniques that are effective.

You just have to decide what it is you want to do in the martial arts and then do. You can be a subject matter expert at one thing, or be generally knowledgeable about everything but an expert at nothing. Just make decision on a martial art, an instructor, and an organization that best suits your purposes and is available to you, and go for it.

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Reply. It sounds as if you talking about WTF (Olympic, sport) Taekwondo. There are general differences between WTF Taekwondo, ITF Taekwondo, and traditional Taekwondo, which are discussed in detail in various topics inside TKDTutor.com. As for your specific questions:

1. I see a lot of Taekwondo students using a low guard when sparring, is this advised and why?

There is a low guard and then there is no guard. Olympic style sparring uses no guard; two opponents just dance around and throw continuous kicks at each other. Any type of martial art that is involved in competition is heavily influenced by the rules used in the competition. The art adapts itself to the rules so that there is more of a chance for victory while competing under the stated rules. If you want to sin, you must use techniques that the judges will give you points for using, and avoid techniques that do not earn you points.

Traditional karate fighters use a low guard in competition because someone in the past determined that that was the way it should be done. Since both competitors use a low guard, any disadvantage to using the guard is equal for both competitors. Olympic Taekwondo rules discourage the use of hand attacks and kicks that do not hit vital areas with power do not score, so Olympic style sparring has evolved into foot fencing with the arms hanging at the sides, similar to Irish river dancing.

As a general rule, for close range, use a high guard, and for long range, use a low guard. In close, hands are deadly so you need a high guard. In addition, in close, kicks are difficult to see coming and they are fired from a high chamber so a high guard protects the head. At long range, hands cannot reach you without the opponent closing the range so a high guard is not as crucial. At a long range, kicks are fired more from the floor than from a high chamber, so the kicks are rising from the floor and are easily stopped with a low guard.

As with everything else, the guard you should use is the one that works best for you under the circumstances. The guard that works best for me is a high, extended, open-handed guard. With the arms extended rather than close in, I can pick off attacks easier, and the hands are closer to their targets.

2. I am very close combat oriented (hockey player) and I throw knees and fists a lot. Do I get points when I punch the dot in a match?

What constitutes point depends on the rules of the competition. Your instructor will be able to tell you what is a permissible scoring area and scoring technique under your completion rules. I too am a close in fighter. Close in fighters like to use counterattacks. Learn to block and then attack, such as blocking with an arm and then letting the arm continue into an attack, and learn to simultaneously block and attack, such as blocking with one arm while the other arm simultaneously attacks. When the opponent initiates an attack, you immediately close in with an attack. I will chance getting hit with one point when I rush in if I can get two or more points in my counterattack. Use legs for blocking. From a high guard, when a kick fires, lift your forward knee to your elbow. Then the arm is blocking high, the leg is blocking low, and both the arm and leg are chambered for a counterattack. Opponents find that kicking your shin hurts them more than you.

3. I would like to combine TKD kicks with a strong upper body style, any suggestions?

Back in my earlier years, I used to visit schools of different styles and spar with them. When sparring karate fighters who used a low guard and mostly hand attacks, I overwhelmed them with Taekwondo’s powerful kicks. When sparring Taekwondo fighters or fighters in other styles that concentrated on kicking, I would stay on them as white stays on rice and overwhelm them with hand attacks. When blocking kickers, do not just block; instead, knock and pushing them around with your blocks. Instead of hard blocking a kick, block and push the kick to knock the attacker off balance. When they kick, you rush in and slam into them. Make them feel as though they are being pushed around by a bully. Make them afraid to kick and throw them off their game. When you do use hard blocks, make them attacks. Instead of blocking the kick, attack the leg. The opponent will quickly learn that kicking at you is painful for them, and their kicks will become more tentative.

4. Do you have any good stretching advice?

Do it every day. Do not bounce; perform a stretch and hold it for a minute or so. You are not actually stretching anything; you are not making anything thing longer, you are relaxing. When you perform a stretch, the muscles tighten. What you are trying to do is train the muscles to relax when you stretch; so do not concentrate on stretching but instead concentrate on relaxing. Stretch the entire body for overall speed and flexibility, but, to perform better kicks, concentrate on stretching the body and legs in positions that are used when performing the kicks. You can have flexible legs but not enough strength to lift the leg as high, fast, and powerfully as need to be able to score. You can have tremendous strength in your legs but not have the flexibility you need to get a kick to a viable target effectively. If you want to be a good kicker, concentrate on things that will make you a better kicker. Perform many, many, many kicks everyday to a heavy bag while concentrating on using perfect form. Do not worry about speed and power. If you concentrate on perfect form, speed and power will just happen.

Reply. Sometimes grabbing the cylinder of a revolver and applying pressure to spin it will prevent the gun from firing. Placing something between the hammer and the firing pin will prevent a revolver from firing; usually this something will be a body part, such as a finger or the web of skin between the thumb and index finger. The finger will not be broken, and you will probably not feel the pain due to the circumstances. The web of skin will probably be punctured and will hurt a lot, but it will not be incapacitating and it will heal later. Pain is better than dead.

Any account of someone cutting their throat to stop choking on something is something of which you should be skeptical. Cutting your throat to stop choking on an object is similar to cutting off your arm because your finger hurts. First, if the object is below the cut, then you now have two serious problems: you will still be choking on the object and now you will also be choking on blood from the cut. Emergency tracheotomies work better on television than in real life. 

If a person were choking, he or she probably could not even sign his or her name, so how could the person make a precise cut to his or her own throat. If you are choking, you cannot get oxygen into your body, so, even if you stay clam, you only have a few seconds to do anything before you pass out. Finding a sharp instrument, finding the correct place to cut, and then cutting to the right depth would be practically impossible, even for a surgeon, since they are trained to operate on others, not themselves.

When you are with someone who is choking, use the Heimlich Maneuver on him or her. If you are choking, you can do it to yourself by leaning over an object such as a chair.

Reply. Changing martial art schools is similar to changing jobs or churches. It is a tough thing to do, especially when you are not changing because you are displeased with the school or the instructor, but out of necessity. Since you like your present instructor, he or she must be doing things in a way that pleases you; so now you know what to look for in a new school and instructor.

I am a traditionalist, so I favor traditional martial arts. I believe that, for a martial art to be a martial art, it must first be “martial” fighting system and then that it must maintain its “art” aspects. The term “martial arts” has become a generic term for any type of physical endeavor that involves punching, kicking, or grappling. Modern Taekwondo has evolved until it is now merely a sport. Sport Taekwondo is to traditional Taekwondo as flag football is to football; it claims to be similar to the real thing, but when a player faces the real thing, it is very painful.

Karate is following the same sport path as has Taekwondo, but there are still many traditional karate schools around. A school may teach more than one martial art, but a blended martial art is just that; it is nothing in particular, just a mixture of many things. A blended martial art claims to use the best of each art, but instead, it loses the true meaning of each art. Football, basketball, and baseball all have teams that throw a ball, but no one tries to take their best aspects and blend them into another game.

Good luck in finding a new school. Since you have not been in the martial arts very long, you will not have much of a problem fitting into any new art or school. Just choose the art, instructor, and organization carefully. If you stay in the martial arts for years, you will be committing a lot to time, effort, and money to the endeavor, so, if at some point you become displeased with your art or instructor, changing will be an even more difficult decision. Choosing a martial art and instructor, are similar to choosing a spouse—you had better make a good choice for you will be together a lot for many years.

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Reply. As you have probably noticed, the size and strength of the breaker have little to do with successful breaks. Many times, small people perform spectacular breaks, while large people go away broken.

Anyone may easily break one board. Breaking two boards requires more power and concentration but they are still not too difficult to break. To break three or more boards requires everything to nearly perfect and occur at the precise moment required.

The quality of the boards may affect the success of breaks. When the same problem occurs with different batches of boards, or when others are not having the same problem with the current batch of boards, your problem is probably not because of the boards.

The holding technique of the board holders may affect the success of breaks. One person may hold one board, maybe two if the person is big and strong. However, for two or more boards, two holders should be used. If others are not having the same problem with the same holders, or you are having the same problem with other holders, the holders are probably not the cause of your problem.