Tae Kwon Do Tutors

Let me guess…

You’ve just started learning taekwondo and you really want to start fighting and breaking boards. But instead your instructor has you doing these blocks and stances, calling them “forms.” Perhaps your instructor has even told you that they’re an “important starting point.”

Boring! When does the fun stuff happen?!

First off, it’s good to see you’re excited, but let’s take a step back. How do you expect to do a flying side kick, when you don’t even know what a side kick is? That’s like starting college and asking the professor when you get to do heart surgery. Jumping ahead much?

That’s part of what a form is about. It’s about teaching you the very basics of taekwondo techniques, stances, and combinations. A good instructor will help you learn the form so that you know how to do the techniques associated with them. each part of a form is a knew stace or way of doing a particular technique. The idea is that, when you memorize the form, you memorize the combinations to the point that they become a reflex. That down block-punch combination in the form? Surprisingly handy when someone tries to roundhouse kick your chest in a sparring match. 

Guess what? Luckily, I will soon be writing some articles detailing various pieces of information about the Taeguk forms that you may find handy, whether you are a black belt, a brand new white belt, or somewhere in between!

But that’s in the future; let’s focus on the present. What are some of the other purposes of learning the forms? 

History. 

History? How could history be involved? Surprisingly, quite a lot. See, contrary to what the internet likes to think, Taekwondo is not a very old martial art. In fact, it only recently had it’s 75th anniversary. However, it is based on much older martial arts (such as Taekkyeon) that almost went extinct in the early 1900s. It’s a very long and complicated explanation for why the ancestor martial arts of taekwondo almost died off, but it nearly did. Worse, there were not many documents or patterns written out or memorized. (Fun Fact: UNESCO made it part of their Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage!)

As a result, once taekwondo started to be developed and adapted to fit more modern issues, their was a focus on creating ways to preserve and protect it from any future extinction. People started to realize that it needed to be formalized and defined. The various grandmasters of various schools did a number of things to create a unified taekwondo. One of these was creating the Kukkiwon, and under the Kukkiwon they created formalized patterns (called poomse) to help define what taekwondo is, and help other masters teach it across the globe.

It worked. 

The forms later went on to be applied not just in education and preservation, but in competition and evaluation as well. A student’s knowledge of taekwondo forms is also a very helpful way of understanding where exactly they are in their training. This can be particularly helpful when someone comes to the taekwondo school with past experience from another school. By examining a student’s knowledge of forms, instructors can get an understanding of their expertise and training.

The forms and the details about them have changed over the years, and been altered for various contexts, but the point, and the general techniques, remain the same. Preserve, protect, and teach taekwondo. As an example, a school run by an older instructor might be more familiar with older versions of certain forms. However, the forms performed by a younger black belt from a different school will still look nearly the same to most people. 

Hopefully that helps you see why instructors are teaching you these forms and really emphasizing their use. They’re teaching you techniques. They’re teaching you combinations. They’re teaching you history.

They’re teaching you taekwondo. 

So keep up the good work! The better students do on these forms, typically the better they do in the more advanced material. In my experience anyway.

Have a wonderful day!

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Note: This site is for informational and entertainment purposes only. All martial arts techniques and exercises should be supervised by a trained martial arts instructor in order to prevent injuries and to ensure the proper technique is utilized. The information on these pages and videos is meant only to reinforce and supplement the instruction given at your martial arts classes. To properly understand these techniques, you need to learn them from a martial arts instructor who can provide you with an in-depth explanation of the technique, help correct your mistakes, answer your questions and detail how the technique should be utilized. In addition, all martial arts techniques and training should be used safely and responsibly.