I recently attended the Varsity Tae Kwon Do match between Cambridge and Oxford University. I noticed, more than ever before, a very common flaw that was uniform across the 20+ bouts I watched.
There seem to be a total neglect toward guards while people are fighting. In fact I had the impressons that fighters were in fact unaware that their arms could actually be kept in a convenient position to maximise guard and protection of their scoring areas while eventually blocking their opponent’s attacks. Kicks were thrown without any attention about where the arms were and even when punching with one arm the other seemed to be totally forgotten that it existed.
Let’s face it it’s not easy to keep a decent guard while fighting; being a big fan of proper guards I spend more that 50% of my coaching time reminding people to keep their guard where it should be. However yesterday I was seriously disappointed by the amount of scoring that Oxford managed to achieve by simply kicking unguarded torsos and faces.
Some Tae Kwon Do fights are full contact but likely not in this occasion; given the average skill I saw I believe it was mostly because of lack of performance and real power training. If any of those scores, particularly to the face, were delivered with real power they would have needed some serious medical attention.
The kickboxing teach is very much based on kicks so I feel confident I could teach one thing or two to these young men and women if next year they perhaps want to actually beat Oxford.