[quote=Brianterrel;2275403]I can’t say I know anything about these schools, but I’ll comment on what you’ve posted:
The guy obviously has a documented TKD competition record, so there’s no doubting that he knows TKD. The question I imagine you’ll run into around these parts is, “Why would you want to learn TKD?”
If you want to learn a striking art you’d be much better served learning one that incorporates regular hard sparring and competition under as non-restrictive a ruleset as possible. Your best bets in that regard are probably Boxing and Muay Thai.
The uncontested lesson of the history of mixed martial arts competition (going back to at least the 19th century) is that if you’re only going to do one thing you’re better off with grappling over striking. Unless you intend to crosstrain, you would probably be better off taking up something like Judo, Wrestling, or BJJ. As I understand it, you should shy away from Hapkido, which is often taught with TKD.
As to the “MMA” training on display here, their “bagwork” is terrible, the kids “sparring” are more or less dancing, and they show zero awareness of the prospect of being taken down, which I’d would guess means they are doing very little grappling. Putting on MMA gloves and taking off the body armor does not turn TKD into MMA.
Potential Bullshido red flags from their website:
*Master Michael Giampietro recieved his first degree black belt at the age of eight years old and “at the age of 15 was the youngest Internationally certified 4th Degree Black Belt in the United States.”
*“Michelle started as a white belt with NSMA in 1995 where she trained under Grandmaster Giampietro in Okinawa Japan.” and yet further down, “What year did you earn your Black Belt? And Where? 1996 in Okinawa, Japan”
So Master Michelle went from a while belt to a black belt in a single year?
*Michelle’s son, whose balls clearly have yet to drop, is a 3rd degree black belt.
*One of their instructors (Kathleen Garcia) has been training for just 3 years, and is “soon to be 2nd dan”
I would say all of that points to this being a belt factory.
Basically, if you are interested in learning to win TKD competitions, you might get decent training in this place. If you are interestd in learning to fight, it looks like you would be better served going somewhere else.
Edit: Woo, it took me two and a half years but i finally hit 10 posts![/quote]
Thanks a lot for this review, its quite well written and thought out.
But the video that I posted of him in the state championship, does show pretty good skill. His kicks look powerful and quick, you cannot deny that this is good fighting?
I hear a lot of guys on hear talking bad about TKD because its just kicks–while this is true, I can say the same for a lot of other arts–boxing is just limited to two fists, wrestling is just limited to grappling with no strikes, BJJ is just grappling with no punches or kicks. This is why cross-training is necessary and Michael Giampietro even told me that boxing is necessary to learn. He even told me that if I did not learn wrestling that I would never become a good fighter.
I have to admit that that MMA video is sloppy, but it was the only one I could find. But Michael teaches boxing and TKD every monday night, he then teaches grappling every wendsay night with the help of another man who competed in no-gi JJ. Michael’s uncle Matt Giampietro is a college wrestling coach for I beleive the Pittston area. Michael even brought Matt to do a seminar to help our grappling class (but this is before I joined the school)
I doubt the school is a mcdojo because TKD is $75 a month with training being everyday with the MMA classes included in the package (because he beleives that you must learn boxing and grappling in order to be a good fighter). MMA is $50 a month for three days a week (mon, wed, and thursday) and we are allowed to come to the school the rest of the week to hit bags, spar, roll, ect.
Monday night is striking night and involves lots of sit-ups, v-ups, russian twists, push-ups, pull-ups, hitting pads (usually for three to five rounds each student) and sparring (which will usually be boxing or kickboxing rules) Everything is trained alive and I garenttee you will sweat. The promise sparring you saw in the video did look sloppy but you must understand that some of those kids were new and like everything else need more training. Even Anderson Silva does light sparring:
YouTube- Anderson Silva UFC MW Champion with Kru Nestor
Am I saying that we are equal to Anderson Silva? No. But you see my point.
Also, every tuesday night the TKD class gets together and does full-contact, ALIVE sparring for the entire hour, high kicks to the face are allowed and you can go as hard as you want. Here’s a clip:
YouTube- NSMA Sparring Lesson July 2009
Anyways, back to the MMA:
Tuesday is all grappling with lots of foward rolls, backward rolls, bear crawls, partner bear crawls (those kick my ass), crab walks, 360 crab walks, shrimps etc. We drill the kimura lock, rear naked choke, arm bar, gotoplata, omnoplata, double leg, single leg, sprawls, scissor choke, traingle, arm traingle etc. We also do clock drills – full mount–>knee on belly—>side control—>judo side—>north/south position—>back to judo side—>back to knee on belly—>back to full mount (if I remember this correctly 
)
We then do drills from gaurd with one trying to pass gaurd and the other trying to maintain his gaurd.
Sometimes we do a sumo drill called “king of the hill” with two guys in a circle trying to push each other off the circle.
Another drill we do is two guys get into the standard wrestling clinch with one trying to maintain his position while the other pulls and turns him trying to force him to move–this is a good balance drill and also a great workout for your neck.
The class then ends with rolling, you roll with one guy for two minutes, you then switch to the next opponet and this can go on for a while.
I saw the entire Matt Thornton video on here and I agree with him totally on aliveness and my school’s training does not contradict this. Even our pad works is done with foot work.
Thursday’s class is open matt where we can do pretty much we want: boxing, rolling, kickboxing, tkd sparring, or MMA style sparring.
The MMA sparring is hard, light, to no contact to the face depending on what kind of gloves you have (thin MMA gloves or 16 ounce MMA gloves, Michael told us all to buy the 16 ounce gloves so that we all can go full-contact but most of the people have been slow to this, I for one bought a pair) If you have the really thin MMA gloves its light to no contact to face with full-as-hard-as-you-want-contact to body (and beleive me its pretty painful). But if both sparring partners have the 16 ounce gloves then we can go as hard as we want to the face as well.
The MMA sparring with thin gloves is very much in this fashion (but not equal to):
YouTube- Marcello Monteiro, Chris Lytle and Miguel Torres in 2003
Kick boxing sparring is like this:
YouTube- Miguel Torres WEC Bantamweight sparring at Miguel Cotto’s training camp in Florida
and kickboxing like this:
YouTube- Bullshido Throwdown muay thai vs san da clumsyninja vs question
I have not been able to go to class for 3 weeks now because of a brusied rib (body shot with 16 ounce MMA glove by a training partner who has four years boxing expierence, tkd blackbelt–I think from ITF, and about 60 pounds heavier then me) but I will be returning next week.
The classes are hard but very fun and the enviorment is quite open and freindly. If anybody hear on bullshido lives near the school, I would encourage any one of you to come by and train with us (Mike will give you a free class) and I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy it–if not–thats fine too.
Hope this helped,
Karateman911