Poomsae Basics: How to Improve your Taekwondo Forms

I’m Master Adrian with W1 Taekwondo in Portland, OR, and today we’re talking about a few Poomsae basics. We’ll be discussing how to make your Poomsae forms better as a beginner, how to create snap on your techniques, and the most efficient way to learn the patterns.

Poomsae are a traditional way of training that, throughout time, were brought to an art level by finessing the details and the techniques. They’re also a full body workout commonly used in Taekwondo training. Whatever you do on the left side, you mirror on the right side and vice versa.

A few tips that will help you improve your forms:

Map out the forms in your head. Each form has three lines that you have to go through, connected by transition lines. These transition lines take you from Line 1 to Line 2, from Line 2 to Line 3, and back to where you started. The first 8 Taegeuks all follow the same pattern: three lines from left to right with transition lines in between.

Create snap with your hand techniques. The snap makes everything look better during your form. 90% of the blocks in your Taegeuks have a twisting motion. What you want to strive to do is create snap by whipping your hands into place towards the end of your block, driven by your hips and full body. Whenever you start a block, stay relaxed, then power up towards the end and release the twist in place.

Synchronize your movements. During your forms, your blocks should be in sync with your stances. For instance, if you do a back stance with a double knifehand block, try to land your feet at the same time you land your block.

W1 out.