I'm curious as to why you continued in a sport that is focused on fighting... if you don't like fighting.
It is equally curious how you managed to attain black belt: you should have had enough opportunities to spar so that you would be more comfortable with it than feeling humiliated and crying.
It seems to me that you are in it for the sport - and only part of it at that - and that this sport is not for you. Either you should work with your instructor and rebuild your confidence about sparring, or find another style.
Because otherwise, you are paying money to do forms, breaking (?), and drills. Since sparring is what puts it all together, it's sort of like making a cake without the baking part: you're developing all the parts, but you're not testing the results.
I'm not one to tell anyone to quit, and you haven't given a reasonable reason why you should; I think you should face your problems head-on, and start sparring. For what it's worth, your partners - even the ones who go hard on you - are NOTHING compared to the person who means to do you harm. So get used to getting hit and knowing what it feels like. That's supposed to happen. You WANT that to happen. You don't want to be taken by total surprise when/if you are attacked.
My advice is a life skill: Don't run away from your problems, or you run from things the rest of your life. You will then later look back and realize how little you accomplished. People have a tendency to regret the things they didn't do, more often than the things they did do.
So face your problems, stare them down, and resolve them. You don't have to be good at sparring, you just have to be comfortable about each sparring match with the attitude of "I can do this". Then do it.
A part of the idea of martial arts specifically is to learn self-defense, and how can you be sure you're learning that correctly if you never spar against an actual opponent? Sparring is when you put what you learn into actual practice against another living, breathing individual - otherwise, if you're in it just to learn moves and get exercise, you'd be better off taking a dance class for all the good it's doing you in a self-defense capacity.
My advice is to go and read over Possum's answer. He's given the best answer I've seen here.
Go to a new school and start over as a white belt. Being completely honest here. As others have said, you shouldn't be a black belt if you can't even handle the prospect of sparring (never mind how good you actually are). Try a different school that doesn't hand belts out like candy and that has responsible upper belts who don't wail on yellow belts.
Otherwise, your choices are to suck it up and deal with it, or quit.
Sorry to say that you shouldn't be a black belt if you don't want to spar. Its nothing against you. I think your case is a perfect example of the belt mills martial arts schools have become. It not all schools, but unfortunately its becoming the majority. Belts have become nothing more then a social status for parents to brag about at dinner parties.
I get that sparring can be scary, but it is an important part of Tae Kwon Do.
I think your best bet is to have a word with your instructor about it; explain that you don't like sparring much and that you find people hit too hard.
It sounds like your instructor might be a little too relaxed on control in his/her class, and I'm sure he/she would appreciate your input.
I am pretty certain that you are in a McDojo. Bottom line is change schools. You shouldn't be a black belt. From the sounds of it you don't have more than a couple of years experience and that is not enough to be a black belt.
How did you ever attain your black belt? Are you training at a McDojo and buying your belt?
You want to be sparring with people who are better, faster, stronger and more knowledgeable that you so that you will improve...
Are you sparring full contact or is this light contact (as it should be unless the object is to serious harm and hurt one another...)?
Where is your instructor while all of this is going on? What is he saying to you?
Either you have had the worst teachers imaginable (are you at an ATA McDojo franchise belt factory?) or your story is complete fiction....and it reads like fiction, to be honest.
Just leave.
thats because you are a wimp
I'm a girl, I've been a first degree black belt for a little less than a year now and I like taekwondo, I like the exercise it gives me and I love the poomsae. But I've always had a history with sparring, for example, when I was a yellow belt, this black belt was in a bad mood, and he took it out on me and completely beat me up. It ruined sparring for me, I think. I've been trying to avoid sparring, but it's so pathetic. And now whenever I do spar, there's only like 3rd degree black belts that I have to spar with. And it just makes me so nervous and my heart races and it makes me lose my breath easily. I don't know why I get so nervous. I also cry whenever I spar, AND THAT IS THE MOST HUMILIATING THING EVER. A black belt who cries whenever she gets beat up? So not only do I get extremely nervous I feel a ton of shame and embarrassment whenever I spar. What can I do? Please help me.
