The Friday before the 2014 National Festival in Salt Lake City, I spent the whole day with H.C. Hwang Sa Bom Nim, Moo Duk Kwan Jang (President), alongside the other master-level competitors preparing for something none of us had done before. We were the first group to compete under a sparring format Kwan Jang Nim Hwang had spent over a decade developing — one built to highlight the values that define our martial art, not just who lands more strikes. I was hosting that year in Salt Lake City, and I was also one of the competitors, which is its own particular pressure: you want the event to go well for everyone watching, and you still have to walk into the ring yourself and show, in your own sparring, what those values actually look like.
That format was called Moo Do Dae Ryun, or Martial Way Sparring. Twelve years later it’s still part of our national competition, and this year we’re hosting it again. You don’t need a Soo Bahk Do background to recognize what it’s asking for — any striker who spars in class, in any style, will know these qualities once they’re named.
Watch footage from that first event below.
History (Yeok Sa)
The first value asks a simple question: does your sparring show the range of your art, or just the two or three techniques you’ve found that work? It’s easy to lean on a go-to combination match after match. That wins exchanges. It doesn’t show what years of training actually built. History is demonstrated through breadth — a wide range of offense and defense, rather than the same hand technique and the same kick repeated until the round ends. Watch a match closely and you can usually tell within the first round whether someone trained for the exchange or just trained the technique that wins it.
Tradition (Jon Tong)
Every striking art carries techniques that are easy to stop using once sparring gets serious — the jumping and spinning techniques, the lateral footwork, the less common stances. Tradition is the value that asks you not to let those atrophy. In our art that shows up as advanced kicking attempted under real pressure, and defensive footwork that moves off the line rather than straight back. A spinning kick thrown in a form looks impressive. A spinning kick thrown at full speed against someone trying to hit you back is a different proposition entirely — and that gap is exactly what this value is measuring. Whatever you train, your art almost certainly has tools like this sitting in its forms that quietly disappear once people start sparring “for real.”
Philosophy (Chul Hak)
This is the value most people have to be taught rather than discover on their own. Our sparring philosophy comes from Um Yang — a balanced, flowing exchange of energy rather than a collision of two forces. Most instinctive sparring treats an exchange like a contest of who’s stronger. Philosophy asks for something closer to a conversation: you give energy, your partner responds, you respond to that. Practically, it means timing your attack to an opening rather than pushing through a guard, and treating distance as something constantly shifting between two people rather than a fixed line you’re trying to cross.
Discipline and Respect (Neh Khang Weh Yu)
Discipline shows up in two places — how you conduct yourself, and how you perform. Conduct means the bowing ceremony done properly, the right titles used with seniors and juniors, no arguing with the judges. Performance means avoiding unnecessary contact and showing strong intent (Ui Do) without needing to prove it through force — the spirit of Il Kyuk Pil Sung, one strike, certain victory. In a non-contact format that means something specific: your technique is precise and committed enough that it would end the exchange if you let it land — even though you never do. Outward signs of this include weapon discipline, distance control, and focus (Shi Sun). The strongest competitors I’ve watched are usually the ones who could clearly do real damage and visibly chose not to.
Technique (Ki Sool)
Good technique follows a chain of command — Huri (waist) first, then knee or elbow, then hand or foot. Skip a link in that chain and you get what every striking instructor in every style has corrected at some point: arm-only punches, flick kicks with no base underneath them, blocks that are really just slaps. A kick thrown from the knee down might still land, but it has nothing behind it — and a trained eye in the crowd will see the difference before the judges even score it. None of that is unique to Soo Bahk Do. It’s the same physics every art eventually has to teach, just with different vocabulary attached to it.
What I Hope You’ll See This Year
I still think about that Friday in 2014 — the first time any of us had to actually demonstrate these five values under pressure, in front of Kwan Jang Nim, with no real precedent yet for what “good” looked like. We did our best. I know I fell short of the ideal and have worked to improve my skill ever since. I look forward to seeing the next generation of competitors use this sparring format again in my hometown, where it all started.
This year, we’re hosting the National Festival again — July 16–18 in Salt Lake City — and Moo Do Dae Ryun will be part of Saturday afternoon’s Ko Dan Ja (senior black belt) competition. Each match is five rounds, twenty seconds each, with judges voting round by round on who better demonstrates both skill and the values themselves. If you’re near Salt Lake City, it’s worth coming to watch — even if your own sparring doesn’t look anything like this. You’ll see competitors scored not on who hits harder, but on who better embodies history, tradition, philosophy, discipline, and technique. That’s a different kind of contest than most people expect to watch, and I think it’s worth seeing at least once.
If this footage moved you even a little, don’t just watch from a screen this time. Come see it in person, or better yet, find out where these five values show up in your own sparring. The 2026 National Festival is July 16–18 in Salt Lake City — full details and registration are at soobahkdo.us/festival.
