Foundations of Traditional Taekwondo - Sparring

This is the second entry in my post series on what I beleive are the foundations of Taekwondo training. I listed them as basic techniques, poomsae, sparring, self-defence and breaking. These are what I believe are part of traditional Taekwondo training. I thought I should go into some more detail on each of them. This entry focuses on sparring.

Sparring is often viewed as the most important part of training in the mainstream Taekwondo community. Once basics can be performed at a reasonably level of competence the students start sparring. Traditionally though, Taekwondo students would not spar until they been training for some time but these days students often start sparring at yellow belt or even white belt.

To most clubs around the world today the word sparring means "competition sparring" but to a traditionalist it can be any number of things. It could mean one/two/three step sparring, throwing even self-defence sparring. These are more fixed and formal types of sparring. They all serve different purposes and each can be seen as limited if you only focus on one part, but together they are good to have in your training regimen.

Competition or Olympic style sparring is what most people in the Taekwondo world today would label as just "sparring". That might seem strange when you think of just how limiting the rules are. Many critics label this as "leg fencing" and while in some respects it is very limiting, it also teaches a great deal of value and is relatively safe to participate in. You have full contact and you can really use those kicks that you have been training, but you can forget about hand techniques though. It is extremely good for conditioning and stamina as well as developing other attributes like distancing and timing.

Traditional style sparring is not seen as much in modern Taekwondo but was quite prevalent before the race to the Olympics began. Here you have kicks delivered at all heights, punches to the face, strikes and lots of other techniques are used at all the heights of the body. It is much less limiting then the Olympic style but can be more dangerous and this is often why it is not being taught.

Some clubs do a version of traditional sparring called free sparring. In this version you can do all manner of techniques however the focus is on safety and not full contact. It is a good aspect of self-defense practice and it encourages more diverse techniques like throws etc. Rules are not entirely ignored with this style as safety is important but you if your opponent kicks high, you kick low, if the opponent grabs your dobok, follow up with a throw? You don’t need to elbow the opponent in the face for them to know you did it so simulation is key. The partner must then acknowledge and respond as if he were elbowed in the face.

These last two sparring kinds are not done frequently by many clubs, but a Dojang that says it practices Traditional Taekwondo should spar in other formats than just competition style sport sparring. The most important part of all of this is that the instructor clearly identifies the training goal of each form of sparring so there is no confusion in the students mind. It would be catastrophic if the student tried using sports oriented sparring in a real life self-defence scenario.



Mark Underwood

Mark is a 4th Dan Master in both Taekwondo and Haidong Gumdo (Korean swords). He has also trained in other styles of martial arts. He is currently the owner and head instructor for Zone Martial Arts in Sydney, Australia