Interesting chats and these are issues all instructors struggle with. In addition, as a professional instructor, you need to structure the majority of your classes in a way that new students want to sign up. That means you can do neither contact sparring nor too long practice of patterns in a beginners session, because both distract new students. As a matter of fact, most students will never reach black belt nor compete in their lives, and to exclude those means not serving 90% of the population. In my club, I offer two types of classes. The majority of classes are beginners classes with focus on fun, getting physically fit, and learning kicking and patterns. Then we have a few classes for advanced students and competitors with focus on sparring and patterns. It's still not optimal for absolute beginners because the patterns are quite difficult to learn in itf, this is why most adults sign up in our kickboxing classes, not tkd!

This is something I battle with myself. I'm not the instructor in my own school yet and we have testings every 8 weeks for the color belts, black belts are every 6 months. I'm always debating on teaching what I'm excited about or just gearing towards the testing that's always coming up. This really cleared up the difference of a regular class and actually training a skill. Great video this week and I look forward to next week. Also, quick question or a possible topic in the future. Is it more beneficial to a student, who isn't naturally athletic, to work on strength and speed early in their tkd career or just hone in the tkd kicks and skills and maybe with that athleticism will come?

For me, Mira is a top dog. Absolutely unstoppable in both ITF and WAKO

Great analysis! Did you mention roundhouse to body? It's kinda fundamental part of blitz and front leg carry, isn't it. You can also counter side kick with switch round kick to body with back leg. I think that haxe is effective because of the (bad) rules. If you try to push forward into hax, leg will get stuck on the shoulder (of defender) and lead to "leg grab - minus point". This forces people to avoid hax by any cost. Anyhow, that final list is a perfect menu to plan task based sparring training. Start with top row and move downwards until its time to spar 😀

The lack of Korean fighters from the pre-split period is a glaring omission! Maybe Hwang Su-Il? They literally based the character of Hwarang off him in Tekken. I know there won't be many clips but surely there should be more Koreans.

I remember replaying over and over again the VHS tape of what I think was the 11th ITF world championships in Buenos Aires, watching David Kerr and developing drills based on his movement and combinations. I wanted to fight like him. Met him in Mar Del Plata and he was very generous and nice fellow.

Great video Small correction Julia cross 4x sparring WC 2x patterns WC

Lawrence Kenshin has a great video on KZfaq with over 500k views, his KZfaq channel called striking breakdowns, very popular channel…It’s called “The greatest Taekwondo fighter of all time.” An Argentinian ITF fighter by the name Ignacio Capllonch. He did very well in the ITF scene, transitioned into Dutch style and did very well, and even recently fought in Karate Combat. If you have a moment , I’d check out Lawrence Kenshin Video on that!

Hi sirs from my era 70s 80s and 90s my first instructor dorian bytom Kim Stones it be 70s 80s and 90s they competed won World championships British US open etc over the yrs and my idols itf 🎉🎉🎉🎉

Where is the front side turning kick? Like a back leg turning to the body in an open stance or a quick one from the front leg in a closed stance? I think those are worth mentioning.

Analyzing the hook (goro chagi) and the axe (naeryo chagi) we can see several problems with them in ITF sparring and the haxe basically gets the best of each, almost retiring them both. The axe protecs your body as it goes up, differently from the hook that usually leaves you open for a well timed blitz that allows your back to be taken. The haxe goes up in front enough as to discourage most types of approximation. The hook has a longer reach since you can project your hip more when compared to the axe that comes from a more squared stance. The haxe allows you to project your hip more, getting the range needed to score that makes the axe always fall short (literally). The axe can be used from both stances, even if primarily from a closed stance, while the hook will hit a high shoulder with tucked chin 9 out of 10 times. The axe can easily go over that shoulder. The axe also leaves you front facing as you fall closer to the opponent, which is important when trading punches in a close range while the hook, even if it hits, leaves you in a bad position, which kinda goes together with the first point, but more considering when you're using it offensively to close range and go to hands, which is an option that the haxe gives you and the hook doesn't. There is basically no follow up from the hook. Overall it's very hard to think of a situation where you would rather use either the hook or the axe instead of the haxe. It's a well deserved S tier.

Ride along, front leg carry and blitz is s class technique for the people with less flexibility like magomed naurdinov, Timothy bos. This tier list for fighters like martin finn, luke moriarty, ziga

I think blind turning kick similar with axe also when orthodox vs orthodox. It is just lead turning kick to the head. Lead turning kick is important kick like haxe. Because haxe doesn't work good at the orthodox southpaw positions. Lead turning kick for me is S class

You missed one Top Dog. Artur Kuzmin!

Kind of feels like reverse punch, side kick & roundhouse kick is the basics you need to nail down really. Rest is good to have.

Hello, it would be very interesting to have a video about which junior fighters are ready or prepared to move to the adult category. For example, this year Baha, Bian Nabernick or David Mario debuted with very good performances. How will the dominant champions of their categories fare? (Denys Lypotesvki, Alison Shane, etc.)

Three criterion for me why somebody is top dog: 1. Mentally stability and stability of result 2. Work against taller/smaller opponents. In team sparring he would be a in irreplaceable fighter. 3. Work in hard situations. Example, what do he do without front leg or without punches? Ziga is very good with mentally stability and results: 3 time European and 1 time world, once time lose in the world cup. But he work no good against taller opponents. And he is not good fighter without front leg. James tuite's results not good like ziga, but he can win taller/bigger opponents without problems. Also without front leg he is good, without punches he is good. But i think absolutely best fighter right now is Stefano vomiero. He can punch, he can kick, he can do a lot of spins. And he is stability in results and cold blood in sparring

Oh, thanks. It is very interesting

Well, I put Carl Van Roon in my one of the G.O.A.T Top ITF Fighters😊

Let's us know your Top 3 here in the comments 👇👇🤔

A great interview, congratulations Luke

I Choose : Karate : Karate Kyokushin, Karate Ashihara Kaikan, Karate Wado Ryu (Karate+Jiujitsu) Taekwondo : ITF (Internasional Taekwondo Federation)

Yes! Just what I needed!

Thank You

Could you do next time male junior -75??

Thanks for this. Thumbs up. Hope you make a video on how to fight a taller opponent in the ITF.

Guard up. Boxing and itf taekwondo

I would say that we should consider the amount of techniques being thrown each time they make contact, and, not only for this fight, how clear are those times when contact isnt done to the guard but to the body or head I'd say that the punches and the last sidekick that taylor connected in the second round were really clear so all judges could see that, unlike tyra's sidekick on the first round where only one out of four judges saw it clearly. From 5:24 to 5:54 of the video taylor switched the judges by a lot, and that may be a thing to consider, how many points away are the competitors when the judge's scores flip from one to another These statistics are very specific, may not be useful in as many fights but particularly in this one i would dig deeper and take other things into acount rather than the usual

Very interesting....Adrian please get a better microphone 🎤 🙏

Huge amount of useless warnings & minus without any explanation. Really world class players who would have needed no umpire work at all. Points doesn't make sense any bit more. 1:2 vs 10:0. Gotta be blind to see just 2 points in this one.

Bro instead of saying it make a reel showing it this is outdated

Hands up

That coach really needs to get a warning/deduction (whichever it is now) point for blue. Red coach is just hiding his yelling 🙄

Great tutorial, I have my first match this weekend so this helped a lot

There should just be overall less warnings. If we compare ITF to WT or WAKO, warning count is just insane. Not every little glitch should cause a warning. E.g. in this really high level fight _all_ 3 warnings in the first round were "ghost warnings", where no reason for stopping or warning exists. Not to mention the "ghost stoppages" where fight was stopped without reason

I believe that itf sparring is destroyed by the uneven application of the rules. Very often, the rules apply completely differently to one competitor. There are many examples. For catching in the same fight, one competitor receives only a warning, the other receives a negative point. Competitions are more and more expensive, and it is more and more pointless to go. At every European championship, judging is different, as if it is not the same sport. The coach's protest makes no sense, because the videos are not reviewed and the referees are trusted. It should be introduced that during the protest the video recording is taken into account, this would force the judges to work conscientiously.

Why stop the fight to give the warnings, collect them electronically and then deduct them at the end. It might as well be point stop sparring. Stop the action for a low blow, clinching etc., but let the fighters fight!

Why is the Jury President or one of the corners not intervene after that match in regards of too many warnings that shouldn't be called to have the center referee replaced? I can understand some referees using warnings and no-warnings to control the match with heavy contact or aggressive fighting between opponents, but there was non of that either.

Very interesting 🤔 . In that fight quite a lot of warnings for kicking illegal target (back) but were they actually kicks or just a consequence of the flow of the fight 🤷‍♂️ ….. Also most of those technical warnings probably even themselves out between the fighters over the two rounds, so just leave them fight.

There are so many completely useless stoppages novadays. When kick-fighters fight, there is always one leg below belt or behind back. This does not mean that figher was kicking below or behind. Basically all the warning in this fight, besides exits and the first side kick to tigh, were hard to understand. One option would be that umpire gives warnings without stopping fight. Fight momentum continues and umpire can give as many warnings as time just allows. Win-Win!

Definitely yes!! The current rules and the referees do not allow the fight to be dynamic and continuous, they are stopping the fight in each clash even though there is nothing to be paid. In the fight analyzed, the referee stopped the fight more than 15 times (there were 14 warnings and one foul) apart from the times in order not to collect anything.

How much interaction is there between the athletes, coaches and umpire committees? Surely there needs to be more collaboration especially when it comes to rule changes and implementing rules. It's an amateur sport. We need umpires and they deserve utmost respect for giving up their time and making sacrifices too. But they shouldn't be deciding rules in isolation. Maybe the athletes and coaches need to be more vocal in expressing their opinions and rule changes should go through the three sides.

Hi, what do you think: should heavyweights train and prepare in a different way than light weights?

Thanks again for the professional insight, gentlemen. Totally agree with your ideas about how to improve sparring rules. I really hope improvements could be made. The less the center referee needs (or is given chance) to get involved, the better, imho. Too often I had no idea why the fight was stopped, let alone which fighter would get a warning, if either. Punching the opponent 4 times resulted in a warning, so did getting kicked with a side kick... Sometimes the opponent got the warning for nothing, so maybe in the end it was even... There was also inconsistency between rings.

Im from an mma back ground but i think what you guys do is outstanding. Well done

team sparing slovenia vs ireland juniors