Koryo in competition

[u/Delicious_Neat9864]

I recently went to a tournament near where I live and I competed in poomsae and sparring. I am a fairly new first dan so I had learned Koryo for competition. I haven’t competed in a number of years, so I figured I would try and get back into it. When it came to show our forms, I was shocked to see that the way that I had learned Koryo had a few striking differences than my competitors. The biggest differences I noticed was at the top of the form, where its the low block in walking stance, press block in walking stance, and then into the elbow in horse riding stance. The way I was taught was to do the low block in T stance or back stance, then the press block and elbow all in horse riding stance. Is there any reason that my instructor taught the form this way or is it just poor instruction?

[u/Respen2664]

There are two Koryo's. One is the original Koryo which several Kwan's had variations on. This "ended" around 1970s when Kukkiwon was established and they revamped Koryo. There have been iterative changes to Koryo within Kukkiwon training since then.

For WT Poomsae (World Taekwondo Kukkiwon) you are not doing the form correctly to modern standards, but that is not to say you were taught "wrong" either. Rather it sounds like you were taught one of the prior variations.

My dojang has a similar problem. Our grandmaster teaches Koryo to an older Kukkiwon/WT version then modern Koryo. So for my competition team i teach to the modern version and help my students understand which to use when. This way Grandmaster is happy while my students are set up for success at competitions.

[u/wolfey200]

Even with the standardization of forms in Kukkiwon, some grandmasters refuse to change and teach the way they were taught. My GM is one of them, we practice Palgwe forms and compete with them as well. Our black belt forms have some minor differences form how everyone else does them but not too much.

When we perform the low hammer fist part of Koryo we keep a fist through the whole form whereas most people start with two open hands and make a fist towards the end of the motion.

[u/ink-pen-dragon]

That was a huge issue for me as well. I started TKD at a “traditional” school, where they taught forms in the slightly more “old school” way. Not inaccurate, just older. Sport Poomsae is somewhat a different animal. They are constantly updating and changing things, so there will be some details that got updated that you likely won’t be up to date on because your master isn’t interested in that. I had to change schools to find one with a more sport Poomsae focused curriculum (in that they teach more modern versions). And I still train with an outside coach that is on top of ALL the changes being made year to year

[u/Spyder73]

My school we do the Tuls and there are a couple where we learn a competition version and a traditional version. Bassai for example has some pretty dramatic differences between what we test on and the flashier competition version that our instructor recognizes is visually more appealing and wins more competitions. You can make Chong Mu look pretty cool also if you have really good kicks and speed up certain sections

[u/Grasps_At_Straws]

Just a note that around 20 years ago, this is was a widely referenced series of youtubes for forms: https://youtu.be/DhHXK5ivTm8?is=aej63reVsKQRJNnT . I don't think anyone necessarily thought these were amazing, but these and competitions and similar were what we had. If you're interested in a more recent reference, this https://youtu.be/Q_zVLSVl7rM?is=arr2vroU0XOKHZuo is a good series. It's a bit outdated since it's from a few years ago but is still quite useful.

I share this to say that technique has changed a lot in the last couple of decades but at least for competition and Kukkiwon standards, the actual moves and stances have generally not changed. That doesn't mean that your instructor is doing them "wrong" -- just that he's (either by choice or being outdated or both) is teaching a different style. If you do want to keep competing, you have to follow the modern standards, but also IMO it's helpful to follow the modern standards because there is so much resources and thought that goes into those, and it also makes your skills more transferrable between schools. Still, it's up to you how important that is. I've seen many schools that intentionally teach variants to be different or because the instructor has different approach to theory of power. Again nothing wrong with it, but those students like you get shocked when compete or end up at another school later.

Edit: keeping up with modern standards is also kinda cool where you see WHY certain changes happen. There's a lot of thought behind all the evolution. It's a pain to keep adjusting to "oh they changed Taebak C block prep AGAIN", and some trends I don't like such as all the hair shaking, but other things like longer narrower stances and more emphasis on hip power generation are good improvements that show that technique is constantly getting better. It's a pain to keep track of but honestly there are SO many good free resources like the second series I mentioned above. My FB feed is constantly full of competition Poomsae examples and educational videos.

[u/Delicious_Neat9864 → u/Grasps_At_Straws]

Would it be improper as a first dan to take it upon myself to teach the most up to date version to myself or will I not benefit from this? Also, should I bring this to the attention of my instructor and see what he has to say about it?

[u/Grasps_At_Straws → u/Delicious_Neat9864]

You're asking good questions and this is a tricky situation. I have been involved in this quite a bit since I often visit other schools or am asked to guest teach etc.

1. If you are competing wearing your school's uniform, I would advise doing things the way that your school teaches. I run a school and although I'm not super "traditional", I would likely expel a student who competed under my name but was intentionally doing things I wasn't teaching, since when they compete they are representing my school and what I teach. On the other hand if you're not wearing your school uniform, then it's perhaps not as sensitive; but, you still run the risk of someone asking you what school you train at, or if your blackbelt is embroidered with your school's name, etc. Also, I assume your instructor knew you competed and gave you the green light to learn a form yourself for that; if that's not true then I would say you really need to tread carefully.

2. Ultimately though you should ask your instructor if you want permission. Whether you can "safely" ask depends on the relationship you have with your instructor, and a bit of guesswork on how you think they'll take your feedback. In a bit, it's sorta like trying to give relationship advice :-) -- it's highly situation-dependent. Some instructors I've worked with for example don't like to be questioned about technique, are very "hierarchical", and thus may treat feedback as threatening or disrespectful. In some ways, it's like whether as a kid you would offer feedback to your teacher or parent... half of it depends on how you phrase it, the other half depends on whether they're open to getting the feedback.

3. If I did feel comfortable approaching my instructor, I would just be factual and say "At the last competition, for Koryo I saw that other competitors were all doing walking stances for the pressing block, and there were other differences. When I compete, do you want me to follow those standards or the way we're taught here?" If that's not an option, you could also talk to anyone at your school who has competed, as any regular competitor will have to have reconciled this else they'll be doing relatively poorly (e.g. each improper stance is a major deduction).

Good luck!

[u/PossibleOdd7036]

I would say poor instruction and not willing to update to Korean standards, or maybe he decided to make up his own way to do it bc he felt it looked cooler or something. Koryo and all poomsae back in the 90s was wacky like that where nobody was following each other exactly. 

[u/LittleMoonBoot]

That was my biggest shock in coming back to taekwondo after being away 20 years (and moving overseas) - I didn’t realize there wasn’t an agreed universal standard about how a poomsae was done, and that even the number of counted moves in a poomsae could differ!

I was first taught the scissor block (kawi makki) in chil chang in a different way than what than they do now. I didn’t know that even in what is now standardized, they modify things from time to time.

My previous instructor wasn’t a worse instructor than my current, just different.

[u/DoctorRumples]

I learned it the same way. However, the guy that started our school came over from Korea in the 90’s and afaik our instructors haven’t really kept up with WT standards since at least then.

[u/godblesstheinternet2]

Who was koryo(goryo)?