I live in the Southeast Michigan area and I feel like I couldn't find a decent karate school after checking about 4-5 schools out. I was looking to do Shotokan or Kyokushin but the only decent school was teaching Tang Soo Do. The dojang I now attend is a part of the International Tang Soo Do Federation.
So the first thing I noticed right off the bat is that the self defense stuff is seriously full of ****. You would get dropped just trying to do any of the things they teach you, but I think a lot of karate has bad self defense techniques in general.
I was told by others I would be doing most of my kicks with the ball of my foot, which sort of worried me. I was pleasantly surprised that the kicks they teach there are more "proper", compared to other TSD schools. For example, two TSD schools I watched were doing roundhouse kicks with the ball of their foot, ours is more of a TKD kick. I was told to focus more on power than speed with kicks, and I don't know if that's a bad thing.
We do full contact sparring as well.
I don't see any child black belts, but I did see a kid that couldn't have been older than 8 with a blue (black belt candidate) belt. I don't know the minimum age for testing.
I see a lot of TSD bashing here, and I'm curious as to why that is. Is it just because it's Karate? What is exactly wrong with TSD compared to say, TKD, Shotokan, Kyokushin, Goju Ryu, etc.?
So the first thing I noticed right off the bat is that the self defense stuff is seriously full of ****. You would get dropped just trying to do any of the things they teach you, but I think a lot of karate has bad self defense techniques in general.
I was told by others I would be doing most of my kicks with the ball of my foot, which sort of worried me. I was pleasantly surprised that the kicks they teach there are more "proper", compared to other TSD schools. For example, two TSD schools I watched were doing roundhouse kicks with the ball of their foot, ours is more of a TKD kick. I was told to focus more on power than speed with kicks, and I don't know if that's a bad thing.
We do full contact sparring as well.
I don't see any child black belts, but I did see a kid that couldn't have been older than 8 with a blue (black belt candidate) belt. I don't know the minimum age for testing.
I see a lot of TSD bashing here, and I'm curious as to why that is. Is it just because it's Karate? What is exactly wrong with TSD compared to say, TKD, Shotokan, Kyokushin, Goju Ryu, etc.?