Letter to Coaches

Dear Coach,
 
The beauty of Taekwondo is in our footwork, our power, our speed, and our strategy. Sadly, these facets of our sport are now missing. This is why 20/20 Armor is introducing Energy Scoring, similar to the scoring methods used in the world’s most popular fighting video games.
 
Here’s the game in a few key points:

• You win a match by winning 2 out of 3 rounds. You win a round by having more health on your “health bar” than your opponent’s at the end of a timed round. If you deplete your opponent’s health bar before the round time is done, you win the round.
• For any single attack to the body, the impact energy will be removed from the opponent’s health bar.
• Kicks to the head score for double the impact.
• Attacks delivered in succession (i.e. combinations) will deplete the opponent’s health bar more than their simple sum.
• Penalties will be given by the center referee and simply add points to the health bar of your opponent. A minor infraction costs 10% health, and a major infraction, 25%.
• This means that a player may choose whichever style and strategy they prefer without having to conform to a rigid point system. The key difference here is that 20/20 Armor’s Energy Scoring doesn’t tell the fighters how to fight, unlike the current tiered point system. It gives an even and open platform for each athlete to fight the way they want to, and to be measured based on their effect on the opponent, not on arbitrary style requirements.

 
Energy Scoring and round based fighting favors speed, power, footwork and strategy while minimizing non-action. In a round based system, you must win 2 out of 3 rounds to win the match, therefore the win or loss of each round is critical. Since a round is only 2 minutes, athletes will be very motivated to take control of the fight and deplete their opponent’s energy first. It will be important for a fighter to set the tone and deplete the most energy first or always have more energy than the opponent in case the time runs out. As a result, speed, power, combinations, stepping and aggressive fighting will have a higher chance of winning. Therefore, your physical training should include drills that specifically focus on these areas.
 
It is very important to us at 20/20 Armor to allow all techniques to have a fair chance of scoring. This allows fights to have many strategies when more varied techniques are thrown (as opposed to one strategy today – how to address the cut kick) and each are scored fairly by their own merit. This system lends to a more interesting clash of strategies, which makes fights engaging to watch and play. This is one of our founding motivations for 20/20 Armor; true fairness, not just an equally limited playing field.We want to see coaches applying new and interesting strategies and fighting styles with their athletes, and it is our goal to enable that.
 
Here are the answers to some of our most common questions about Energy Scoring:

• The competition model for 20/20 Armor will have a “hit validation” system (more on that soon!) that will look at the motion of the body to determine a valid punch or kick.
• If you block with your arm, you will still lose energy (it will be less energy – whatever your arm absorbed) so it is best to block correctly with your arm out or move out of the way completely
• A kick with the shin will score (similar to before electronic scoring – a deep kick with the shin was more effective, and forced the athlete to commit more)
• There will be a head gear for the competition model that will detect impact
• You will not be able to punch continuously in succession to deplete the opponent’s energy, as we can tell a punch from a kick and limit the number of punches you can throw in a given time
• There are no extra points for the difficulty of a kick – the difficulty will be naturally rewarded by the force of the technique. For example, a back kick and a 360 tornado kick are stronger kicks by nature and will deplete more energy as a result.
• A referee can never make another athlete lose the match (for example, in current rules a referee can give a fighter 2 warnings in overtime and determine a winner). A referee can only make it harder for an athlete to win if they commit an infraction by giving the opponent more health. This is similar to professional sports like basketball – the referee calls a foul and instead of giving the other team a point, they give them a chance to score a point.

 
Welcome to the New Era of Taekwondo!
 
William Sexton,
Founder & COO
20/20 Armor