Everyone on here is from a different style, association or governing body. Let us know the strengths or weaknesses of your particular association.
OK, my association is the British Taekwondo Control Board. The strength of them is that they are the official British Member National Association of the World Taekwondo Federation (the largest worldwide taekwondo group). This gives access to the major world championships and Olympic games.
The disadvantage is that in order to compete in the world championships you need to have a Kukkiwon (World Taekwondo Headquarters-certified) 1st Dan certificate or higher. Yet to compete through the BTCB you have to have taken a BTCB grading. I think their line of thinking is that they can then maintain the quality standards, but I think that if the Kukkiwon will issue certificates if recommended by any UK 5th Dan or higher, then the BTCB should accept that the 5th Dan is giving out the ranks appropriately or request from the Kukkiwon that they rescind the 5th Dan with the specified reasons.
Anyway, I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not, personally I think it's just politics.
Over the 30+ years that I have been involved in Martial Arts, I have seen these organisations come and go. Why do you think that they all disintegrate?
To be honest, the reason most of them come and go is politics. For an ego-less-ideal sport/art there are a lot of egos that want to be the main man (better to be the big fish in a small pond than a small fish in the ocean sort of philosophy).
Personally I couldn't care, I'm loving being back at training and couldn't give a toss about politics :-)
