The Eternal Question

Funny, I was recently re-annoyed with good old well-known question I face since I ever started to train TKD: Why (or often "how") Taekwondo differs from Karate? This time, asked by my girlfriend who is better known for not asking something on the first ball, the question sounded like it (again) deserves a good answer.

Needles to say, unlike people introduced to martial arts by more than watching Jean Claude Van Damme or Jackie Chan or (The Legend!) Bruce Lee movies, most of others experience difficulties to notice reasons why there are different names for exercises that all involve punching and kicking.

The Internet (and Google in the first place) knows all, so I dig a little and here is best of what I have found: Article 1 and Article 2.

The Articles are somewhat "technical" so I must add some subjectivity of my own. How I used to explain the difference to my fiends. I will try to throw out competition, as it is obvious that rules and practices differ here and there is so much written about it.

Yes, both Karate and TKD use punches and kicks. Both introduce and develop self-defense. Both have forms (or patterns) - TKD has Poomsae while Karate has Katas. However, I found TKD's natural energy transformation and movement closer to my way of moving and using the body. If you take a look, TKD athletes will mostly perform TKD kicks with more softness, higher rate of limb extension and more round paths. Overall, there seems to be much more flexibility and smoothness than in Karate's hard and short techniques. It all seemed like dance to me and made me feel like performing in a ballet - although the last was often used by some Karate fans to mark TKD as "unusable" as real martial art (which does not keep the water because these "balette" kicks are performed with much strength and speed and are in fact far more powerful than short and straight Karate techniques).

The most important difference is probably kicks emphasizing in TKD over Karate. For all said in paragraph above, TKD's leg techniques are driven to perfection. There are lots of non-fighting techniques which are complex and impressive but will probably never be used in a real fight (liek 540 degrees spin kick) but also basic techniques are significantly more teatrical.

To be correct and fair I must say that I have seen many karatists who executed their kicks with flexibility and movement very close to TKD, and I have noticed too many TKD practitioners performing with more stiffness than worst karatist, but... well, that is why world is beautiful and fun.

Now, just to illustrate the subject of this post a little, some materials from almighty web, as one picture worth thousand words:

Karate (Shotokan) front kick
Taekwondo front kick

Karate side kick
Taekwondo side kick

Karate roundhouse kick
Taekwondo roundhouse kick

These are of course three main kicks. There are other less or more advanced techniques in both arts, but even if you don't practice any you can see differences while watching videos. YouTube sure has many more examples so whoever is interested, can find a bunch of examples from here on.

If after reading and watching you still think that difference is small or does not exist at all, I give you right. After all every martial art depends on performance of the athlete, and like my Master once said, not two people on earth are the same, so how could their performance even in the same martial art be. Let's believe him. ;)