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Woah buddy, Learn to type please. I mean, from you're Sig, it seems that you should at least learn to type correctly. And you're going to hit someone in the elbow? Not sure how much good that would do against someone who's conditioned themselves. "Manuvers like locks and throws" wtf? A gulliotine is a lock, pulling guard can be considered a throw. So really, everyone has at one time pulled a lock or throw. .. Maybe not a throw, but generally you take someone to the ground in fights. Anyway, I too took TKD, we were told not to primarily strike with the hands or arms. So on my own account of personal experience, I can say all TKD does is kicks. Am I wrong? Probably. Am I Right? Maybe. But due to the fact you based it on personal opinion and experience, you're no much in the right as I am.

I too trained in TKD. It was the damn Olympic sparring style so all we ever really learned to do was kick the mid section, hug, and kick again. Punching was present, every now and then....but generally my Sabom discouraged too much punching as it brought no points into the game. I remember one tourney, though when this dude pretty much wiped the floor clean with me with kicks and I was primarily punching his chest and mid section. He obviously felt it cuz homie was rubbin his chest like it hurt.

I'm still a kicker at heart, but I've learned to at least add some decent fists in with a kick combo. Oooo, how I love the low shin kick, though.

I base my idea of TKD around that one time when I asked a teacher of mine who was a black belt in TKD what it was like. According to her the arms were primarily for blocking-techniques, and she ought to know, since she's been practicing the art in several different dojos. Then again, somewhat later I saw a TKD blackbelt achieve the world record in breaking bricks with his fist on tv.

I think it may very well differ from dojo to dojo.

Hey Mirko, go easy on the feller hey, he did say he was suffering from extreme fatigue poisoning.
I agree with vincent, taught properly TKD doesn't just focus on kicks. It has a huge range of extremely vicious elbow and hand strikes. I know people in TKD that very rarely throw any kicks at all, prefering to get in there with their fists, which they are very good at. Yes TKD would fare very badly on the MMA scene, but against the average spod on the street it can be very effective. But as stressed it has to be taught properly.

On a side note I'm actually in the process of chucking in TKD and starting something new. I have no problem with the content of the classes but since being with his new missus my instructor has turned into a money grabbing, hipocritical b*****d. He makes some people pay through the nose, put in the full time between gradings and more and then has the cheek to double grade his crap cow of a missus and her shite friend after about a year of taking "private lessons" which involves standing around in their kitchen going through patterns in a half assed way... and we're not talking junior grades here, but grading his b***h up to one below black and her b***h two below black. So as you can probably tell I'm more than a little pissed off about this, so is my girlfriend and her entire family who all also train at the same place. So we're all going to leave and try something else. At the moment its lookin like southern mantis kungfu, I've tried his classes before and they are very good, apart from a distinct lack of sparring, but I was planning on starting a "sparring club" with my friends anyway. Kungfu isn't really on my list of things to try but the problem with around here is a real lack of a) decent arts and b) decent instructors. My current list of things I want to take up which aren't possible around here is:
Muay Thai/Kickboxing (there is a kickboxing club here but they seem to be better at putting people in hospital than making decent fighters)
Japanese swordsmanship (none around here)
Ninjitsu (nearest is 40 miles away and I'm not sure how good they are)
Kali/escrima/arnis (none around here)
Jeet kune do (none around here).

Personally if somebody kicked high at me (although the possibilties are limitless) my favorite is break their support leg or kick em in the nuts an watch em cry.

Its not in TKD officially but its quite often put in. I learnt some from this crazy scottish 3rd degree tkd blackbelt that taught self defence to the SAS, SBS and U.S. special forces. He loved limb destruction and putting people in extreme pain. Its from him that I learnt most of my applicable self defence, things like awarenss, psychology, the effects of adrenilin etc. He also taught us how to knife people properly... so that we knew what to expect and so take steps to defend against it apparently

Who's seen Enter The Dragon?

Well, Bolo or some such name (the big dude who breaks peoples spines) actually practiced Korean TKD and was actually HUGE in Korea. He seemed great with his fists?

As for Ninjutsu, Darkling, I suggest you drive down to the dojo one day and see what it's like. If it's not Bujinkan, Genbukan or Jenbukan (the X-kans) then it's probably fake, perhaps not, but who knows.