How to improve your Pad Work in Taekwondo

April 24, 2021

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Taekwondo Pad Work

Martin Stamper and Tom Smith shared with us a great Taekwondo Pad Work where you get to see great combinations of roundhouse kicks which are very common in Taekwondo. One thing you might notice is that Martin only kicks, no punches or strikes at all. Taekwondo is a great Martial Art, it has great kicks which I consider very powerful.

What do you think?? Do you think I’m wrong??

On the other side if you look carefully Martin tends to drop his hands when he kicks, not all the time but is very easy to reach his face with a punch right after he finishes one of his kicks.

Taekwondo is a Korean Martial Art, is Korea’s National Sport. A recommendation to all Martial artists would be to complement their practice with other styles and see what other options are available to complement what they already learned

In a Taekwondo tournament, I am sure Martin would do great but in an open division at a Martial Arts Tournament he would face Kickboxers, Sport Karate fighters, and fighters from other styles who are used to combining kicks and punches all the time, they follow up right away.

Some of our readers would disagree with me, but it happens that I also trained Taekwondo for a few years, the training is hard, sparring is great but you see ZERO punches if you are 100% Taekwondo practitioner. I am a Kenpo Karate Black Belt and because of my experience in Taekwondo, I know how they are more and what they will try to do in the ring with me. My advice if you ever face a Taekwondo practitioner in a tournament is to stay close to him/her and don’t give them room to kick, since they concentrate their training on kicks they don’t get to train punches or blocks, they are not prepared to fall, in fact in their rank requirements they don’t have falls (Ukemis in Japanese) so if you sweep them, they will feel it, they will get hurt and they will fear you.

I am sharing these thoughts in order to help future Martial artists, not to trash Taekwondo. I love Taekwondo, but it needs to dedicate training time to punches and blocks, not just on the forms or KATAS.