Taekwondo went back in time and gave birth to Shotokan. Taekwondo therefore derives from Taekwondo. KMAers win again.
You can't use the time travel defence. That's reserved for Ninjas only. You know that! C'mon, play fair! Also, you just admitted TKD is inbred. Dude.
It's also its own daddy, which means we simply can't take it seriously, and Shotokan was the cousin/son/uncle that tried to rise above it, ergo making it awesome.
TKD is THE daddy, shotokan is yo mommy, and we be riding her nasty. As I believe the young folk say. Mitch
There was no mother. It was an immaculate conception by The Force. Yes. I see the contradiction. But it doesn't count because TKD is AWESOME!!!
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyuvLsxgCS8&feature=related"]YouTube - Yamaguchi Sensei Mae Tobi Geri[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6DPIJPs_po&feature=related"]YouTube - Yamaguchi Sensei Kicking Drill[/ame] you like kicking, you say?
A second cousin of mine, names Chis Mulville, at Canterbry Christ Church University, Dojo, of JKA, Maybe a bit far out.
something interesting kinda related to the way this thread has been going lately... a guy that trained shotokan with me for almost 20yrs also took up tae kwon do maybe around 12yrs ago (he did both hardcore at the same time til this day)... well he entered into amateur mma and at first he just killed his opponents with standup... he did end up losing eventually after a few fights but it was because he got taken down and choked out (he has no ground game pretty much)... if you watched his standup, you'd think he's a shotokan fighter but his kicks are obviously tkd... it's ridiculously fast and comes off of crazy angles... he blended the two almost perfectly in my opinion... he hates training bjj though lol, so he wont be in the UFC anytime soon lmao... but the way he fights is pretty awesome to watch... it looks like a cross between JKA karate and WKF karate... his style seems traditional like he'd only throw punches, and then almost out of nowhere will come a kick that's as fast as a punch... i swear he throws them off of stances that looks like it's impossible to throw a kick... for example, he'd get into a deep, fully commited gyakuzuki where it looks like there's no way in hell a kick would come but then "BAM!" mawashigeri/ura mawashigeri out of nowhere... he also trained muay thai for a few yrs as well but when you watch him fight you wouldn't be able to tell
i don't but i'm pretty sure there's someone who trains with us that filmed at least one of his amateur fights... i'll try and see if i can track down some footage... he claims that the key to kicking like him is leg raises over and over... i didn't believe him when he told me he does 1000 leg raises a day (seems like he's exaggerating to me lol)... i never took tkd so i'm not sure if that's part of their training or not but in our shotokan dojo we only leg raise as a warmup, nothing like how he describes and i always wondered if tkd does leg raises as much as he claims
Before my legs got chopped up by docs back in October I'd do dozens of slow leg raises (with ankle weights) each day -- for hip strength, not dynamic flexibility. I'd also do several hundred slow kicks (knee up, extend over a count of five, hold for a count of five, retract over a count of five), followed by -- literally -- a thousand full speed kicks. They weren't all at once, but done in sets of 50-100 repetitions, often in several workouts spread throughout the day. But yah, I think what your friend claimed is definitely possible. As far as using deep stances goes, I think that Jap stuff you said is similar to a walking stance in TKD (feet x 1 shoulder width wide, x 1.5 shoulder width long, weight 50/50). My wife taught me the benefit of using an exaggerated walking stance, up to x2 shoulder width long. Her theory was that it gave your opponent a false sense of range, and as they enter to strike, she would return to a normal walking stance (or even narrower stance), causing them to miss. This was most effective when combined with a rear leg counter roundhouse kick (front foot draws back, rear leg comes through and hits the target). I swear she hit me every time with that technique. Still does, when I don't wash the dishes -- though she aims more for my nuts or liver than my chest!
re: long gyakuzuki followed by a kick, the trick is to use the momentum caused by the reverse punch's lunging step to make your center of gravity keep going, so you can pull with your lead leg, leaving the rear free to execute kicks. jab-cross-rear roundhouse is actually a quite popular combination in karate.