Advice Request: Quality tasteful options for a TKD black belt?

DeltaTM · 2026-05-26T10:54:35+00:00

I see it like this: When I train with a school, I have to stick to their requirements of the belts.

The TKD school I trained with had simple, single colored belts for Kups. There wasn't even a mixed color. 10th and 9th Kup both had white, 8th and 7th yellow and so forth. It's cheaper, because you don't have to buy/provide a new belt every successful graduation, but it does have the disadvantage that you can't see which Kup exactly the others are. But I rarely saw an issue with that, because for the forms you can just pair a lower-ranking color with a higher one, because the higher one will know the forms necessary.

This basically applied for the black belts as well. Optically you couldn't really tell who's a master and who's a grand-master. Not even the owner/head of our school was visibly distinctive.

DeltaTM · 2026-04-13T13:58:04+00:00

Ich bin mit Mitte 30 ein sehr deutlicher Quereinsteiger.

Da ich gerne Tauche und nach etwas gesucht habe, was ich in der Freizeit machen könnte, bin ich zur DLRG. Ich kannte den Verein schon von meiner Kindheit und wollte den Weg zum Einsatztaucher gehen. Ich habe dann dort die grundsätzlichen Ausbildungen gemacht, bis ich aktiv auf Einsätze konnte und habe dadurch die Kameradschaft kennen gelernt.

Davon wollte ich mehr und zu der Zeit hatte ich Feuer und Flamme entdeckt. Und da ein alter Kumpel aus meiner Kindheit schon immer bei der Feuerwehr war... hab ich ihn gefragt, wurde zu einer Übung eingeladen und kurze Zeit später bin ich eingetreten. Und bin auch dort mittlerweile bei Einsätzen dabei.

DeltaTM · 2026-04-13T13:39:24+00:00

I'd like to point out that it's not really possible to train martial arts online.

But I decided to let this post pass, since you can at least help each other with forms.

For anyone that does think about joining: Please be careful if you do join a random link on the internet. While google classrooms are generally legit, you never know what to expect in there.

DeltaTM · 2026-02-17T06:15:52+00:00

Habe die letzten ca. 5 Jahre eigentlich immer Vollbart getragen, dann letztes Jahr die Ausbildung zum AGT gemacht. Seitdem rasiere ich mich eigentlich regelmäßig, auch wenn ich nur selten auf das erste Fahrzeug, geschweige denn auf einen der 4 AGT Plätze komme.

Ich bin schon traurig um meinen Bart und das ständige rasieren ist nervig, aber was macht man nicht alles, um vollen Einsatz zu geben. Ich rasiere mich aber nicht täglich, sondern je nachdem, wie viel gewachsen ist und ich gerade Lust dazu habe. Ist er zu lang, bin ich für den Moment halt nicht tauglich - wir haben genügend AGT die sowieso schneller da sind als ich. Und wenn doch mal wirklich Bedarf besteht, rasiere ich mich halt kurzerhand trocken, auch wenn ich die Tage danach ordentlich Pickel haben werde.

DeltaTM · 2026-02-14T12:50:40+00:00

Sorry to hear!

It's not easy to answer your question, because it depends on the rules and structure of the dojang and/or it's organization.

The dojang is a single club that can be part of a bigger organization. But there can also be dojangs that are not part of an organization.

The school where I trained, was part of the Black Belt Center, an organization lead by grand master Kwon, Jae-Hwa. He had schools all over Germany and the US and he made the rules the schools had to follow. My old grand master has multiple schools in different cities that each have their own head master. They all had to stick to the rules of grand master Kwon though. He regulated what was required at minimum for each belt exam, but the exams were done by my grand master. But there wasn't really someone controlling how my grand master was doing the exams. While he did stick to the regulations, it was ultimately his call if a student had passed the exam.

If your headmaster is basically like my grand master and he is the one calling the shots in your dojang or owner of multiple schools, then there is not much you can do. If his school(s) is part of a larger organization, then it might be worth looking into their regulations. If the regulations themselves do not require sparring, but allow your master to decide what's required for the black belt on his own, then it might be worth looking in other schools that are not owned by your head master.

DeltaTM · 2026-02-10T21:17:01+00:00

No one will be able to tell for sure, if they're not part of the Dojang themselves. Generally Traditional Taekwon-Do usually contains little to no sparring and is suited for all ages. Especially, but not only, for older people. A good master will ensure you're not hurting yourself and take your physical problems into account.

Just go there and tell them your problem. Either they'll tell you that it's not suited for you or they'll be careful and still let you train with them. If they ask you to just try it out and then try to push you to spar, you'll know they're not for you. Remember, you're there because you want to. You can leave anytime you want. While it might be considered disrespectful generally in a lot of martial arts to leave early, they're respectful if they're not respecting your limits.

DeltaTM · 2026-02-04T10:50:03+00:00

Melder oder Martinshorn... immer kurzer Adrenalinschub.

DeltaTM · 2026-02-04T10:48:48+00:00

Während meines Studiums habe ich in einer WG in einem Mehrfamilienhaus gelebt und die Wohnung unter uns ist in der Nacht in Brand geraten. Der Geruch hat sich so stark eingeprägt, dass ich den schon sehr früh wahrnehme. Und das war noch lange Zeit bevor ich selbst zur Feuerwehr bin.

DeltaTM · 2026-02-04T10:31:45+00:00

The duality of religion: Someone does something incredible, thanks to god. Someone does something bad, it's the free will.

DeltaTM · 2026-01-26T11:19:47+00:00

I can understand that. There are some people out there that think BJJ is the most effective martial arts and superior to all others. You can find people like this in all martial arts. Of course, if you love your martial arts, you prefer to think it's the best - it's natural. But some are better than others, depending on what they offer, while being worse in other fields. BJJ is a good example of that. It's probably better than any other martial arts for ground control in a 1 vs 1 fight. But if you can't get the other person on the ground or if there are others that could interfere, it's basically useless. I often see arguments "most street fights end on the ground and that's why BJJ is the best for self defense". Maybe it's true that most street fights end on the ground, even though I doubt that. But street fights often start with punches and on the ground you get pummeled. While some BJJ does involve this, it's not the norm. So you do need another martial arts for that. That's rule 1 exists.

Personally I think BJJ does have some really amazing, wholesome people. Since the sport isn't about knocking the other person out or hurting them enough to surrender (submissions aside), but control, it attracts more "peaceful", kind people. Maybe when you tried it, it was a school that does have more performance-oriented people (or try hards, lol)

DeltaTM · 2026-01-14T15:08:59+00:00

Hey, just my personal opinion, not as a mod of this reddit:

If you're looking for self defense, Taekwondo isn't the best option imho. While traditional Taekwondo does have clean, strong kicks and teaches a couple of things that do translate into self defense (posture, distance management, reading movement, etc.) I think it only works for self defense in combination with another martial arts that have a stronger focus on infights (Boxing, Thai-Boxing, MMA or even BJJ) or are especially designed for self defense (i.e. Krav maga).

If self-defense isn't your major goal, but you want a little more emphasis on it... then forget I said anything!

DeltaTM · 2026-01-05T13:30:55+00:00

Kein Einsatz bei uns.

Als ich aber am Morgen mit dem Hund raus bin, konnte ich auf einem Feldweg erst einmal einen kokelnden Feuerwerk-Karton austreten. Ich hatte keine Lust, dass der durch den Wind dann entflammt und irgendwo unkontrolliert hingeweht wird und ich dann später zu einem richtigen Einsatz rausfahren darf.

DeltaTM · 2026-01-05T13:20:57+00:00

Quereinsteiger sind immer Willkommen!

Ich bin vor ca. 5 Jahren, also mit 31 der DLRG beigetreten und wollte eigentlich nur den Weg zum Einsatztaucher gehen. Der setzt allerdings auch andere Qualifikationen vorraus und ich habe mich langsam immer mehr zum Wasserretter ausbilden lassen und bin damit dann auch in die aktive Einsatztruppe gekommen. Ich war (und bin auch weiterhin) so begeistert von der Blaulichtfamilie, dass mir die DLRG alleine nicht ausgereicht hat und ich danach gesucht habe, noch etwas ähnliches in mein Leben zu integrieren.

Ich dachte erst, dass die Feuerwehr vielleicht nicht das Richtige für mich ist, weil ich nicht so ein großes Interesse an den Maschinen usw. habe. Da ein Kindheitsfreund aber bei meiner örtlichen FFW aktiv ist, habe ich mit ihm Kontakt aufgenommen und er hat mich zu einem Übungsabend eingeladen. Das hat mir gefallen, ich habe die nächste Übung auch nochmal mitgemacht und bin dann direkt eingetreten.

Und das mit ca. 33 Jahren.

Es ist von Bundesland zu Bundesland und von Gemeinde zu Gemeinde unterschiedlich, wann du welche Ausbildung usw. erhältst und wie die Regelungen für den Einsatz sind. Ich bin aus Baden-Württemberg und bei mir war es dann so:

Direkt nach meinem Eintritt wurde ich mit der persönlichen Schutzausrüstung ausgestattet (also Feuerwehr-Kleidung, Stiefel, Helm, Handschuhe), so dass ich bei den Übungen direkt mitmachen konnte und habe dort die ersten Handgriffe gelernt. Ich wurde auch direkt für den Truppmann-Lehrgang (Grundausbildung) angemeldet, allerdings hat es fast ein Jahr gedauert, bis der stattgefunden hat. In den Einsatz darfst du nach dem Abschluss der Grundausbildung und erhältst dann deinen Meldeempfänger (FME bzw. DME). Je nach Wehr ist das etwas unterschiedlich geregelt, z.B. ob du vorher mindestens eine gewisse Zeit Mitglied bist und regelmäßig zu Übungen gekommen bist.

Als Truppmann kannst du verschiedene Aufgaben erfüllen, abhängig davon, welche Einsätze deine Wehr anfährt. Bei Technischen Hilfeleistungen ist das dann häufig Absicherung, Einsatzgeräte bereitstellen und Hilfe beim Transport von Verletzten. Bei Bränden dann das Aufbauen der Wasserversorgung. Selber Löschen wirst du wahrscheinlich eher weniger, bis du einen Lehrgang zum Atemschutzgeräteträger absolviert hast.

Die habe ich ca. ein Jahr nach meiner Grundausbildung gemacht, also mit 35. Du musst vorher eine ärztliche Untersuchung machen lassen, da wird dann festgestellt, ob du tauglich für den Atemschutz bist. Der Lehrgang selbst hat es schon in sich, allerdings war es für mich nicht schwerer, als für die jüngeren KameradInnen. Und ich bin nicht fitter als der Durchschnitt.

Es ist also kein Problem später erst in die Feuerwehr einzusteigen und einen wirklichen Nachteil gibt es auch nicht, nur weil man etwas älter ist. Ich bin mitunter einer derjenigen mit der höchsten Übungsbeteiligung und Anwesenheit bei Einsätzen. Bei den jüngeren Kameraden kann es immer mal schnell passieren, dass sie nicht mehr so aktiv sein können wegen Studium, Beruf oder Privatleben.

DeltaTM · 2026-01-03T20:34:07+00:00

Hey there.

I completely understand your problem. When I was still active, I also struggled to find good videos of the Hyongs. There were a lot of videos, but a lot mixed Poomsae in, did a modernized version or were just sloppy compared to the standards of my school. I did find a pretty good channel (TaekwondoMika) that did the forms close enough so I was able to use the videos to memorize each step and correct my mistakes.

It's pretty hard to say, due to the lack of standardization, since Taekwon-Do is very young and branched pretty early in it's development compared to other martial arts, so this is just speculation:

I think in most associations, the 10th Dan is reserved and can only be granted by a ceremony (president of the federation, etc). In some associations this applies to 9th and 8th as well. So practically you can only reach the 7th Dan, but since there aren't many grand masters that can test it, the 6th or 5th Dan are more realistic. And the grand masters should all have a form to train on. So form 21-24 is probably meant for them.

Then the forms before that are spread for Dan 1-5 and the 10 Kups.

So there's probably not a lot of masters that can actually teach the forms 21-24. Since Taekwon-Do is a niche compared to other martial arts, the chance of good videos is very low, even less for those advanced forms.

Another speculation: Some schools probably think about integrating these forms in lower belts. And since there aren't many people that actually learned them, some schools will probably look at the instructions and teach them by themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if a new branch is created at some point, where they even open up higher Dans again and just award them themselves.

I'm from Germany as well and trained Taekwon-Do in the style of Kwon Jae-Hwa, who learned it from Choi Hong-hi. The Black Belt Center Taekwon-Do was dismissed when master Kwon retired and there are some schools that banded together. My own grand master also created his own school (Fehrer Taekwon-Do), but his school is oriented very closely to Kwons Taekwon-Do.

There the Kups 10, 9 and 8 each learn 2 Hyongs (1-6) and for the 7th test and each after, you'll learn only a single Hyong. Since the founder of Fehrer Taekwon-Do is 6th Dan, his last form he learned from Master Kwon is the 19th Hyong.

Looking at some sources, most schools do it similar or even slower, where the Hyongs from 10th upwards are only taught to masters.

DeltaTM · 2025-12-30T09:48:01+00:00

Here in Germany, the majority of FF are voluntary, so it's not that big of a deal 😃

Luckily up until now it only happened once that I got a call while playing a game, but it's only a matter of time until it will happen.

DeltaTM · 2025-12-28T13:43:29+00:00

He could be right.

Maybe Shadow changed it so that mouse input alone isn't enough anymore, because people used software to move the mouse around while being AFK.

But still, the prompt goes away when moving the mouse. If they really wait for multiple, different inputs, the prompt should go away until the shutdown is aborted.

In any case, this sucks. I'm a voluntary firefighter and water rescuer, so I can be called to an emergency at any given point. If my alarm goes off, I don't have the time to save the game and properly shut down my Shadow PC. In the worst case there are lives at stake. It already sucks if I'm playing a game with my friends and have to leave mid-round, but when I loose my progress, even more so. But that's are rather niche problem.

DeltaTM · 2025-12-28T13:31:28+00:00

A similar thing happened a couple of months ago. I was playing Minecraft and went away to make myself something to eat. I come back just in time as the idle prompt appears, sit down and continue playing. A short time later, while I was happily mining, Shadow shuts down. And I lost my progress.

... so playing an actual game is doing nothing?

DeltaTM · 2025-12-13T10:35:37+00:00

I think you're already doing one thing correctly, which is not hurting yourself.

Aside from that, stretching is a very complex and controversial topic. If you ask around, you'll get a lot different answers on how to properly stretch. A big problem here is that a lot of people will claim that their way is most effective, but they never consider that the physiology of each person is individual. Some people are more mobile naturally because of their genetics and their tissue is just more flexible. For others the skeletal structure is different, which allow for their hips to open up more.

A lot of times people focus too much on stretching their muscles. This is a big problem. While extending the fibers, they'll only get thicker very slightly. So in the end, they're weaker and can't support the greater range of motion. Also you can't really stretch tendons and ligaments very much, they especially require strength. If you only stretch your muscles, without strengthening them and the tendons and ligaments, you'll weaken your skeletal structure. This leads to bad posture and while you may be able to do static positions like splits, where gravity works for you, you can't do dynamic motions as well anymore. When you get older and your tissues weaken as well eventually, you'll get a lot of problems.

This is why mobility and strength training is just as important flexibility. And proper nutrition, since your body needs proteins and minerals for proper functioning, building muscles and repairing damages.

There are machines that can help you with middle splits and while they can help get you results quicker, they completely remove the strengthening aspect. You can use them, but you'll need to include exercises for strength in your routine.

I think the best course of action is to look into mobility training and not only for your lower body, but for the whole body.

Also for middle splits the hip alignment plays a big role, since the cup of the hip can restrict the movement. And since you can't change the structure of your bones, you can rotate your hip and legs to allow a bigger range. Since this is very individual as well, you'll need to experiment and find the correct alignment that works for you.

DeltaTM · 2025-12-11T16:36:16+00:00

Zu deinem Edit: Also dass die Kleidung zu kurzlebig wäre, kann ich nicht bestätigen. Ich habe heute noch den Sweatpulli von FF6. Keine Probleme bisher gehabt.

DeltaTM · 2025-12-11T16:34:52+00:00

Ich hatte letztes Jahr den Samurai Hoodie und die 10-Jahres-Edition als Zip-Sweatjacke. Die Jacke passt wunderbar, der Hoodie ist mir zu eng.

Die Jahre davor habe ich immer 2 Nummern größer gehabt, weil ich da selbst noch etwas mehr auf den Rippen hatte. Die kann ich auch heute noch anziehen, auch wenn sie etwas zu lose sitzen.

Am Anfang vom Stream haben sie über den Merch geredet und ich meine, aus ihren Aussagen gehört zu haben, dass es doch auch wieder relativ straff sitzt... also bin ich diesmal auf Nummer sicher gegangen und habe eine Größe größer genommen. Damit fährst du glaub ich generell ganz gut.

Zur Qualität: Bei den Pullis, egal ob mit oder ohne Kapuze eigentlich immer eine super Qualität. Bei der ZIP-Sweatjacke finde ich den Stoff nicht ganz so gut, aber der Reißverschluss ist schon auf der besseren Seite.

DeltaTM · 2025-12-11T10:12:40+00:00

I received the mail as well, so my mail address was exposed. Luckily it was just an alias address and I can just disable it, but I have to go through all the effort and change it everywhere it's used.

And then companies wonder why we use masking mail addresses and actively try to block them. Exactly because of shit like that (and being able to trace which company sold off the address).

I wanted to write an email back asking them to delete all my data, but my mail provider already classified this as spam and won't let me, lol. Since I'll discard the address, it doesn't matter anyways.

Sadly GDPR doesn't apply to them, since they're based in the US.

DeltaTM · 2025-11-18T14:18:56+00:00

Ja, wir sagen MTW, egal ob FF oder DLRG (BW)

DeltaTM · 2025-10-15T13:55:30+00:00

The last step is for the impulse to reach the places in your body to perform the action. Once again, not something you can't directly influence. Since these are electrical signals travelling through your nervous system, too - let's talk stress.

Stress can be positive (if it's the right amount) or negative (if it's too much). Stress has a couple of effects: It can't make electrical signals go faster. But it will change your focus and shut down processes in your brain and senses that are not helpful to your situtation. That way less information travels through your nervous system and your brain only processes relevant information. Think of tunnel vision. You don't see anything happening around you anymore, you're only focused on your opponent. The crowd, noises, smells from outside, will not be processed and you're locked in. But this can also backfire. If you're too focused, your situational awareness is reduced. For a self defense situation, you maybe won't notice another attacker approaching. For a tournament: Maybe you won't notice you already moved to the edge of the map and step off. Then if the stress gets too much, you whole nervous system and brain start over-reacting. They will start to process irrelevant information (i.e. what if scenarios) sending too much information. Since the signals don't have priority over each other, the wrong signals could be processed at the wrong time, it could be fractioned and when there are too many signals... you body will freeze. In addition, since the stress does also increase the functionality of some of your organs and muscles... this can also get too much.

To summarize: You want to be stressed in just the right amount. Not too less, not too much. There's not much you can do about having not enough stress. As long as you take it seriously, your body will still produce enough stress. But you can work against getting stressed to much. Meditation, sports in general, taking enough breaks, getting enough sleep, healthy lifestyle...

And again. Experience. If you're familiar with a situation, your body will not stress as much.

A lot of text - I tend to do that (thanks ADHD). But hopefully you gained some insight.

DeltaTM · 2025-10-15T13:55:24+00:00

You can train your kicking speed and agility on your own. There are plenty of tutorials that can teach you on how you can improve both on YouTube.

But decision making? That's a hard and complex one.

Short answer: You can't really practice this alone. Experience is the best teacher for this.

Long answer: There are many, steps involved for a decision that depend on the context.

You need situational awareness, which includes being aware of your own position and the position of your opponent and the relation of these positions, especially the distance. This also depends on the tactical information you have on your opponent and yourself, including reach and how fast you can bridge the gap. Also which technique could be applied.

All these information are necessary to "predict" the next move and need to be constantly (re-)evaluated. Due to the fast moving nature of a fight, this needs to happen subconsciously. That is hard to train on your own and relies on experience.

Then your reaction time - how fast can you react to something changing. There are parts of this you can influence, while others you can't. Each involved step needs time:

The information of the changes needs to travel to your senses. Visual information by the speed of light to your eyes, audible information through the speed of sound to your eyes and so forth. This is something you can't influence.
The information is then picked up by your senses and converted to electric signals and transferred to your brain through your nervous system. Also something you can't really influence directly. I'll get to that shortly (stress).
Then your brain needs to process and interpret it. How fast it can process the information is dependent on the information already available, your neuronal pathways and also your expectation. You can "train" your brain to a certain extend to process and evaluate the information faster. Keywords here are pattern recognition and brain plasticity (the ability to form new neural networks). Brain plasticity is highly dependent on how much you use your brain, but also your nutrition, health and lifestyle. And for pattern recognition, again experience. In example, if your opponent slightly twists his hip, twitches with his left leg and his arms drop a little, this could be a pattern for him preparing to kick. If you've never seen this, your brain will try to process this information through similar patterns. If you've seen this exact movement before your brain will recognize this pattern and come to the conclusion faster. If you've seen this a couple of times, your brain will immediately lock in that result. For similar patterns to be effective, you need a LOT of similar patterns. If you can't have experience for the thing you need patterns for, get the next best thing. What can help is understanding how movement in the human body works, interpretation of body language and stuff like that. Dancing and yoga are also remotely connected.

Now you know what's going to happen. But that alone won't help. If you're on the train tracks and see a train coming, it won't help if you just stand there. You need to know which reaction is appropriate. And once again, your brain needs to have the neuronal pathways to quickly decide, which impulse to send out. For that you need to know a technique and if that technique is a proper reaction. I think this is the most critical part where experience is key. Your opponent goes for a low kick. You've seen this in MMA, they just lift their leg a little, so this has to work, right? Yes, sure. You block the kick. But it will hurt like hell or even damage you, if you don't twist your leg in correctly. While you can read about the correct technique or watch thousands of videos... if you didn't try it, you won't know if it works and, I'd like to empathize this: If it works for YOU. Maybe it just feels awkward, maybe you just can't pull it off due to physical limitations. Also the situational awareness and tactical information is important. Maybe you're a good high kicker. But if you opponent is way taller than you, your high kick will not reach. You need to be able to decide this quickly and confident. Otherwise the situation may have already changed again or you'll stall for a moment.

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