Anytime, if you’ve got any other questions I’m a trove of useless martial-arts related knowledge 
I did stage combat in college, does that count?
broadsword
rapier and dagger
quarterstaff
hand-to-hand
Broadsword’s my favorite. What a workout! And you can make real sparks if you’re up to speed.
(tries sucking in gut, gut goes nowhere) I was born too early. All the chicks in movies get to do combat these days, and here I am already too old an’ flabby for 'em!
No, not really - I think you mean Hap Ki Do.
Hwa Rang Do is actually a harder, tougher form of TKD, putting a lot of emphasis on heel kicks. It’s slower than TKD, too, none of the multiple fluttering stuff. More info here -> http://www.hwarangdo.com/
Ah, never mind, I see now that you were right with the Jujitsu thing- sorrysorry!
Quick history…
WARNING: boring history – skip this post if you don’t care:
One of the first big Korea martial arts was Soo Bakh Do – it was primarily a military combat style taht became popluar as sport. Several other martial arts styles influenced Korean martial arts, particularly during Japans “dominance” of Korea from 1910 to just after WWII. After Korea became independent, several distinct styles of “kwans” cropped up before they kind of united as Tae Soo Do. Which eventually became Tae Kwon Do.
TKD got a bit more “solidified” when General Choi Hong-hi required the army, air force and police to learn it, and at that time it was very heavily influenced by Shotokan Karate.
The Korean Taekwondo Union (later called the Korean Tae Kwon Do Association, KTA) came about in the early- to mid- 1960s, chaired by non other than Gen. Choi himself. The ITF was supposed to be an international branch of the KTA, but there were poltical squabbles (both in tae kwon do and world poltics) and Gen. Choi moved to the U.S. and started the ITF. It was not affiliated with the KTA.
The KTA remained as Korea’s governing Tae Kwon Do body and members of the governing body formed the World Tae Kwon Do federation in 1973.
There have been attempts to unify the ITF and WTF, but so far they’ve been unsucessful.
Bottom line:
ITF practies a more traditional version of tae kwon do and initially focussed on the patterns (poomse) developed by Gen. Choi.
The WTF started with the Palgwe patterns before switching to the Taeguks and put a much greater emphasis on sparring.
In competition, the ITF prefers a semi-contact sparring, whereas WTF perfers full-contact sparring (with rules designed to keep it safe).
The ITF is considered more of a traditional “art” and WTF is more of a “sport” – hence the WTF was recognized by the International Olympic Commitee in 1980 and WTK TKD became an official Olympic sport in 2000.
In my experience the art/sport line is seriously fuzzed depending on the individual club and the Master’s background. Unless you’re watching patterns the kicking and punching styles are nearly indistinguishable until you get to more dvance belts (ITF looks slightly more circular to me, but that could just be what I’ve seen of local ITF clubs.)
:smack: I could’ve sworn I had a subject line of Re: ITF/WTF!
The ITF is considered more of a traditional “art” and WTF is more of a “sport”
OK so I had it exactly wrong. D’oh!
I’ve seen a few of the early ITF forms, they were kinda circular compared to the taegeulks and palgues.
Not really wrong, I find a lot depend on the attitude of the individual club. There are few competitions where ITF goes up against WTF, but they do exist. There is one ITF club that is probably the very best fighting club I’ve ever seen! I used to dread going up against 'em 'cause I have an aversion to getting my little butt kicked! (Literally.)
I’m not familiar with the forms, but my club also taught HapKiDo. So occasionally both our arts would spar. HapKiDo uses both straight-line and circular self-defense. Fighting ITF opponents just “felt” like they were “round” like my HapKiDo friends. If that makes any sense.
i thought hapkido was more about the joint locking techs…
at least, that’s what we call hapkido
I’ve been training three times a week for the last year at a school that combines (I think WTF) Tae Kwon Do and Hapkido. I chose it because it’s free and conveniently located at my school; it was pretty spur-of-the-moment decision to take up martial arts at all. Before that, I was the most sedentary healthy person you’d ever seen, other than hiking/skiing a couple of times a year on vacation. It’s been fun blowing my family and friends’ minds, since this is both out of character for me and not a particularly ‘nice-religious-Jewish-girl’ pastime.
At my school, Hapkido is a very flowing art (we always here the speech about circles and water, and since this is a medical and science grad school, we also hear about vectors), in contrast to tae kwon do, which is very linear, with more defined motions. The forms are designed to teach you fluidity of motion, with one attack/defense flowing into the next, without the discrete units that you’d see in tae kwon do forms. There’s a bunch of joint locking techniques, mostly defenses if someone grabs your arm, along with a set of defenses involving throwing and being thrown (I just learned how to throw somebody this evening, and it’s still pretty tough, but all in good time :).) There’s certainly more advanced stuff that I don’t know about yet, as my class is intended only for colored belts, and I haven’t seen the master classes.
Interesting…I guess we must have just taken the joint locking techniques (defences against grabs, kicks etc) out of the Hapkido system and used them on their own. I’d be interested to see what else there is in the system but alas, I can find no schools in which to learn 
green_dragon the description as Gila explained it is pretty close to my experience too. There is often overlap in clubs that teach both too – as a TKD student, I learned a lot of Hap Ki Do self-defense joint locks, and they did a form of sparring.
If you watch TKD and Hap Ki Do (non-grapply joint stuff) side by side, it’s kind of like watching Karate and Kung Fu side by side (though Hap Ki Do isn’t quite that circular, and TKD isn’t quite that linear.) You can see the influences of the other respective arts quite clearly in the styles.
I personally think Hap Ki Do (the non-grapply stuff) is elegant and beautiful to watch.
I’m gonna have to find me a Hapkido class in the West Midlands area it sounds intriguing…don’t suppose anyone could help me locate one?
I’m an instructor at the Toas Kung Fu school. It’s a Persian style that is thouroughly diferent from most martial styles. You can check out our web page here (www.toaskungfu.com).
Wow 53 posts in this thread, and so far only 1 person looking into stusying western martial arts.
We need more people!
Well boxing is a western martial art surely? So that makes a grand total of two of us
You skipped her…she is post #5 or #6.
I studied Shin Go Ju Ryu Karate and Judo when I was younger. When I went to college I started Jeet Kun Do (Bruce Lee), Kali and Brazilian ju-jitsu. Here in Prague I have been known to be a very irregular-regular at a Thai boxing gym for the last 4 years. I also studied a little Escrima here at a na ll-Czech gym, but quit because I couldn’t understand them at all.
-Tcat
You mean, like, with cowboy hats and spurs?
ducks and runs
Don’t know about the cowboy hats, but I can just imagine spurs adding a whole lot of effectiveness to kicking arts like taekwondo…the hook (reverse turning) kick for example?
Owwiiiee!
Actually, in all seriousness, not enough martial arts teach you how to fight in street clothes. It’s a somewhat interesting experience–I actually rather enjoy sparring with sneakers on–the extra traction is rather nice. Of course, you have to exercise extreme control otherwise your opponent winds up with some interesting marks on his face the next morning. 
Cowboy boots and spurs. shudder That would hurt. That would hurt bad.