ITF Taekwondo
태권도The older of taekwondo's two main branches, founded in 1966 by General Choi Hong-hi. It has its own patterns — twenty-four tul — and more hand technique.
Quick Facts
South KoreaCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
Catalogs & Databases for ITF Taekwondo
About ITF Taekwondo
ITF taekwondo is the line founded in 1966 by General Choi Hong-hi as the International Taekwon-Do Federation. It is the older of the two main branches; the Olympic WT arose later around the Kukkiwon, and the two now differ in rules, patterns and movement. The patterns are called tul and there are twenty-four of them — by Choi's account, one for each hour of the day, because a human life set against eternity is like a single day. They are named after Korean historical figures and events. Technically ITF is recognisable by its sine wave motion: the knees spring down and up with each technique, so the body rises and falls. Choi introduced it in the 1980s as a way of putting body weight behind a strike — and it is at the same time the most visible difference from WT, where the head is kept level. Competition differs as well. ITF uses light contact with points for landed strikes, permits hand strikes to the head, and is fought in gloves and foot protectors rather than a chest guard. The bout is therefore closer to classic kickboxing than the Olympic version is. Choi died in 2002, after which the federation split into several organisations that all use the same abbreviation.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.