What I've found is each school is its own school; they will advertise and promote themselves how they want. The ones I'm familiar with don't even mention Olympic training or even sports for that matter. They have all discussed traditional training based on the fundamentals. And while some have had fight teams they were extracurricular and mostly for the teens should they want it; never expected or forced.
While I'm familiar with many WTF schools I actually only attended one ITF school for 3 classes; back to back. I went as a guest from an invite that I appreciated. It was hard for me to base any formal opinion on ITF schools and their inner workings. What few things I did notice different was:
1. For the ITF school, their classes were based on belt levels; this meant any age group could attend. For the WTF schools I was involved with or knew about, it was based on age with children, youth and adults a different times.
2. Patterns/Forms while different were much the same. I did not find any more lengthy then WTF, or at least not any great length for the ones I trained. The Sine Wave was different for sure and took some getting used as did the flow as I was used to WTF's more firm, stiff and strong pattern requirements.
3. Warm ups; I found rather easy and short for the ITF school; I was used to more intense and longer ones. I think this had a lot to do with the large age difference in class as compared to attending an adult only class where people can be pushed harder.
4. Application of techniques I found no different. Kick was kicking, punching was punching, blocking was blocking and so forth; it is TKD of course. And while ITF I found focused more on the fast front kick, WTF is more dominate with the power of the back leg kick. Both however practiced both but I think due to the sparring differences the front kick is more favorable in the ITF.
5. Sparring; we did not get much into this in these 3 classes but from what I have seen, it is my opinion that WTF is more full out and why punching to the face is not allowed. There is punching trained by both ITF and WTF and both punch during fighting, it is just WTF does not allow punching to the face; again my opinion as stated earlier.
6. One of the biggest things I found for difference, ITF follows "the book". I was shown it and told it was referenced quite a bit with anything you needed to know in it.
7. One of other thing. From here and talking to others, one can train at any ITF school and will find it the same as their own whereas WTF do not follow any such program with each school teaching their own syllabus.
These are based on
my observations and opinions of course.
As mentioned before about each school being its own, that was never more true in the school I attended. I can't answer ITFunity's question.
His TKD has some 3,200 fundamental movements, with approximately 2/3rds related to the hands & only 1/3rd related to the feet. I leave the Kukki or WTF TKD students to address what their TKD has as a breakdown & basis for those claims.
This is only because we did not train the same way nor did we reference stats. Our system was blended with TKD/Hapkido and heavily influenced by BJJ which we did once a week. And on sparring days many times we did MMA style sparring or even just boxing. And then one days was set aside for self defense. While kicking could be always present it wasn't the only thing nor was it the main thing taught. The whole training was based on what to do from a standing position to a take down position to a ground position. How to stop from going to the ground and if you are on the ground how to get up or if have to fight from the ground. The whole idea was to be complete by giving you the basics and then were encouraged to go elsewhere to also train to further strengthen those techniques. This seen many of us going to Judo and actually setting up a program with a Judo school to trade training amongst the students. It also seen us bringing in BJJ professors, wrestling coaches, boxing coaches and MMA fighters to further train us.
ITF and WTF are different as are many WTF different from other WTF; and possibly ITF and ITF. This is probably the only given.