What's the difference between ITF and WTF? (International/World Taekwondo Federation)?

I did a Wikipedia but it confuses me a little. They seem to be two separate organisations with a slightly different take on the rules in sparring. That%26#039;s as far as I got.|||WTF is the Olympic style. ITF style was rejected into the Olympics because their sparring style and rules are too much like karate.





ITF tkd follow more of the founder%26#039;s style who studies multiple martial arts, including karate, thus has more hand techniques.





WTF uses more leg techniques, striking some similarity with Taekkyun.





No martial art is useless unless it is imparting bad values into their students. How good a martial artist is depends on how he is taught and how hard he practisees, now how bad that martial art is. The Vietnam Silat national team was said to practise tkd for leg techniques, thus their fast kicking in tournaments.|||WTF is board nations for sport rules. You can%26#039;t join the WTF. KTA is the Korea TKD Assoc at the Kukkiwon headquarters Korea. ITF is one of many organizations which teach variations of TKD for color belt to black. Only a fool like Hurricane below would bash TKD as not %26quot;affective%26quot; er, uh effective? Report Abuse
|||Hi





Ok let%26#039;s see.. I%26#039;m from WTF but went to a ITF class once! I went into the class and found out almost EVERYTHING%26#039;S different! ITF has written tests, different sparring etc. People say ITF is much more effective than WTF but i don%26#039;t believe it. Both are as effective! So yeah (: both are taekwondo and it%26#039;s just which one u choose!





Good luck!|||Honestly...Who cares? As a lifelong martial artist,instructor/school owner, and a cage fighter I%26#039;ve seen the TKD practitioners operate both in and out of the dojo and am not all that impressed. Truth is, TKD isn%26#039;t very affective unless a.)your opponent knows TKD and fights with TKD technique. Or b.) your opponent is standing completely still and promises not to move while you take your turn striking at them. Oh sure, they look cool though as they do all of that fancy stuff that gets people killed in the real world. You ask how this can be so if TKD was a combat art? You answered the question...it was a combat art, but now it%26#039;s all about money and looking good among your own piers. Don%26#039;t get me wrong, they have some good to offer, but if you want an efficient art that works in all settings...I%26#039;d think I%26#039;d look elsewhere.