Asian Games 2010

The Taekwondo event for the Guangzhou Asian Games, came and gone. The Malaysian contingent ended empty-handed and the best performance was only one athlete who qualified for the quarter-final. They are supposed to be the best Taekwondo exponents in the country and yet they only rely on one athlete to contribute a medal.

The athletes took part in the India Open and Korea Open and came back with a couple of Gold medals. They went for intensive training in Korea prior to the Games. They have enough warm-up and training for the Games and yet there was no performance to show.

What went wrong?

Probably it's time to review the training program that they had gone through throughout the year. Why are the athletes couldn't perform on the big stage? Is it something to do with their physical, mental, technical or tactical? Had the coach done enough prior to the Games? How about they periodization plan? Anyhow, it's time to go back to the white board.

Open-Ended

In the last post, I've talked about closed-ended and it is just natural that I'll also talk on open-ended. Open-ended is the opposite of closed ended. It is when the training is conducted in an unstable or unpredictable environment. After going through closed-ended training, then the athletes will have to undergo open-ended training, where neither will now what techniques they will be doing.

Open-ended training is to get the athletes to be able to react the unpredictable situation just as in the competition. In the competition, nobody knows what going to happen. So by going through open-ended training, at least the athletes will get to understand the situation that they will be in during competition, so that they are able to response to it.

Closed-Ended

Closed-ended or closed-chain training is when the situation is fixed by the coach in order for the athletes to practice a certain technique in a certain situation. In this training, the athletes and their partner know exactly what each other is going to do, hence the precaution and preparation to face the situation is already set.

This type of training is usually done when a new technique or tactic is being introduced by the coach so that the athletes will be familiarized with that situation and 'hope' that the athletes know how to respond and react when the situation occur in real competition.

All of us coaches will have go through this process of coaching but a visionary coach can see beyond closed-ended training situation. How many of us had really look beyond this training in order for the athletes to perform in real competition mode?