What Are Your Strengths and Weaknesses?

People often ask me, "am I too (old/young/fat/skinny/smart) to take taekwondo?" After determining what their motivations are, I might reply with two answers: 1) No you're not too anything to study it. And 2) It depends.

In theory, anyone should be able to study any martial art - but not every school's teaching styles are compatible with everyone's physiology. I know the TKD school down the block from me teaches Olympic taekwondo. The classes are geared around the older teen / 20-somethings, who can handle the extraordinary aerobic workouts.

I have asthma, and won't bother with it. Someone with a weak ticker should avoid it as well. Is this true of all schools?

No, of course not. That's what I often give a qualified "it depends", because I might know something of the local schools the person is considering, and I might know something of that person's condition. Of course, I recommend they speak with the instructor in case they can accomodate someone with particular needs.

But a school who is hell-bent on Olympics is not going to benefit someone who's only looking for self-defense and no competition. This isn't taekwondo's fault. It's not even the school's fault - it's an incompatible ideological difference between prospective student and school.

Conversely, two of my taekwondo students recently asked me if they can take aikido. When asked why, they responded because they thought it would be cool to get awards and trophies for doing the stuff that Steven Segal does. (I wondered then, why they are even in my classes...) But because Aikido doesn't compete, I had to tell them that they should probably look for something else, or change the reason they want to study Aikido.

Weakness is definitly in the student - and potentially in the instruction. But weakness is a subjective term. Someone who wants to study a martial art to get into the olympics will see all martial arts (except judo and taekwondo) as weak.

Humph!

I have found that the weaknesses in what I do are in my incomplete knowledge of what I do, and in my ability to do what I do already know. Beyond that I don;t see what I do as lacking, or needing anything else. That being said, I have and do learn things while working out or observing other styles.

The things that are common in most styles are almost always done slightly differently, and with a different concept of how it is used. I find it interesting and informative to listen to the way others describe techniques that they do that are like the techniques I do. Sometimes after many years, you run into someone that uses just the right choice of words to open up some understanding of something that you know, but not from that perspective.

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I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.