What Exactly is Do?

We promise every training session to observe the tenets of it, but what is it? Money?

Yummy stuff that makes biscuits? Bambi’s mummy, a female deer? A long extinct bird?

It means Art or Way, but it’s not the sort of art you do with paint and pencils. And to find your way, don’t you need a map or a compass?

General Choi once said: “All the years of hard training in Taekwon-Do will be nothing without paying attention to the ‘Do’”

He saw most of the people around him did not think enough about how to live a good moral life, and wanted a way to change this. Taekwon-Do was his answer to this problem.He used the wisdom of various philosophers and religious thinkers to show the kinds of people we should be trying to become; if you like, to give us a map for living a ‘good’ life.

To make it simple to remember, he came up with the five Tenets of Taekwon-Do to summarise the ‘Do’. He also based his patterns around important people in Korea’s history, because he felt these people were good examples of ‘Do’.

One of General Choi’s greatest wishes was that teaching of Taekwon-Do in the 21st Century would include teaching all students about ‘Do’. The ITF decided to make the teaching of ‘Do’ one of the most important aspects of Taekwon-Do training for the next few years, so you’ll be hearing a lot more about it in the future.

In these pages we will be looking at each of the tenets, to try and help us all find a bit more ‘Do’ in our everyday lives, as well as in our Taekwon-Do.