Progression

I have planned a progressive program beginning of this year and up to now, I can see improvement in their performance. The way they perform poomsae and kicks have improve beyond my expectation. This is the progression that I am looking forward to but this is much better.

Not only their performance is improving, their training attitude has been affected as well. The students are training better now. They really put their effort and heart into it. Let just hope that it can only get better....

High Intensity Workout

It is not easy to incorporate high intensity workout into a normal taekwondo class. The workout has to be functional and specific to the taekwondo training. However, recently, I managed to come out with a series of high intensity workout to be incorporated in the taekwondo class.

The workout comprises power, speed, muscular strength and endurance and energy system. So far the students are adapting well but of course for initial part, muscle soreness is unavoidable and only a matter of time before their body can take it.

Also at the ending, they have to do at least 3x50 crunches and 2x50 back extension before we do some static stretching to end the class.

Squat-Knee-Raise

Until now, I am still going through the basic but now with more intense physical training. Many times coaches conducted physical training in Taekwondo but not able to transfer the physical training to Taekwondo techniques or movement which then affect their performance.

Functional training is when the training is able to transfer to taekwondo performance. As Taekwondo stress a lot to the lower body, then it is just logical that we have training to the lower body which consequently able to transfer to taekwondo movements. For lower body training, I am doing squat knee raise which more specific. In squat-knee-raise, in the extension process, only one leg will be extended while the other sill remain in the bent position. The extended leg is to push the other knee up.

Then combine this exercise into a kick, it can be either front kick or roundhouse kick from the guarding block position. This squat-knee-raise is to exaggerate the stretch-shortening cycle of the quadriceps to enable the execution of a more powerful kick. Also this require the movement from the hip to lift the knee of the back leg while pushing from the front leg. The power from this training is totally beyond your expectation.

The Core

Most of the time the physical training that we do when we coach a session is mostly push up, sit-up and sometimes squats. This is not sufficient and do not have direct transfer to taekwondo performance. Anyway, today I would like to post about core training.

Our core is the most important part of the body especially for taekwondo athletes as our movement involve the core. The power of the kicks is generated from the core to the leg and not just from the leg. If you think that the power of your kick is from the leg then you do not understand the technique well.

Core training is a very important or should I said vital as many of out taekwondo movement generated power from the core. Therefore, if you have a week core then you would notable to generate much power to be directed to your kicks. Also eventually you will suffer from back pain.

The core needs to be trained in order for us to be transfer the power to our kicks.

Coaching Basic

Since it is just basic training, one will think it is easy to coach or to teach. On the contrary, it is not as easy as it seems to be. For the beginners, they have not have any knowledge on the technique so you have to break it down to step-by-step. Similarly to those who have been learning. This is because, those that have been training, especially black belts, they have somewhat developed bad habit in executing the technique without them realizing it. So coaching black belts is actually much harder as we need to break their bad habits. This is also partially the coaches fault as we did not rectify their bad habit earlier.

Nevertheless, the coaching method for the juniors and seniors are the same. Break it down to step-by-step and correct them step-by-step until they are able to perform the technique flawlessly.

Basic Training

Many times when we reached black belt, we like to think that basic techniques are easy stuff. How wrong can we be? The truth is when we attained our black belt, our basics should be very solid or strong as in the structural foundation of a building. Without a strong structural foundation, the building will collapse easily. Just like in Taekwondo, without a strong basics, then the balck belt is meaningless.

At the black belt level, our basic techniques should be flawless as in close to perfect if not perfect. There should be any bad habit that can hamper the execution of the technique. When we raise our knee for front kick, it is not about how high one can raise his/her knee, but how close the heel to the butt when raising the knee. When punching, do we just punch or do we concentrate on the push/pull element?

Martial Art Vs Sport

Since the inception of Taekwondo being made the official medal event in the Olympics in Sydney 2000, Taekwondo has began to lose its martial art roots. This mean that the practitioners train Taekwondo for the sport values which is gyorugi or free-sparring instead of focusing on the martial art.

When we talk about martial art, the practitioners have to practice all aspects of Taekwondo such as Poomsae, Hansinsul, Gyorugi, etc and not just focus on one aspect which is Gyorugi.

However, as gyorugi is the more popular and appealing to the public, many coaches only focus on it with the hope that his or her athletes will be able to make it to the Olympics. With this in mind, the athletes do not train anything else in Taekwondo except gyorugi. Hence their training is sport-oriented from the physical, mental, technical and tactical.

As the shift towards sport is much greater, Taekwondo is slowly losing its martial art values...