Taekwondo is a discipline that requires a lot of training and preparation, no matter if you want to become a master or if you are looking for Olympic Gold. Either way, you need to set yourself and prepare to train and care for yourself the way it is intended.
Now, one of the things that are critical and one of the pillars of this discipline is agility. In Taekwondo you need to be as fast as you need to be strong. Meaning, a powerful punch is more dangerous the faster it can be thrown because after that one, another will be on the way. And let’s not forget about kicks. The faster you kick, the more dangerous you can be either in competition or in real life combat.
Now with speed comes something else and that is agility, now, agility is the combination of speed and balance, to know exactly how to move your body in a way that you can jump, duck, or move to the sides faster and accurately depending on what your opponent is trying to do while at the same time seek the opportunity to get to the offensive.
Let’s remember what the two pillars of Taekwondo are: Speed and Strength. And you can not
The first step to become agile as a Taekwondo practitioner is to become faster, and there are many ways in which you can achieve this:
- Do elastic band training, this is the best way to go as it will help you gain both strength and speed in the same sequence of exercises. This kind of training focuses on two parts of the body that are critical to become agile: arms and legs.
- Use concentrated exercises for legs and arms with weights in order to gain the necessary strength that will make you faster in the long run.
AND IN TAEKWONDO?
Also, in Taekwondo we can define agility as the ability to move part or the whole body in a specific way or direction based on a given stimuli. Meaning that you will learn to move, and move fast, depending on what your opponent decides to do.
Remember, either in real life combat or in Olympic competition, your movement is in a circle, not just back and forth, and this means you need to have the mindset and mind training to be able to learn (in seconds) and anticipate (in instants) what your opponent will try to do and based on that, you will move accordingly not just back and forth (as aforementioned) but to the sides and even up and down to see and opening for you to be offensive.
Learning to be agile in this discipline isn’t easy and it will take time for you to master it correctly, so we encourage you not be disappointed if at first, you don’t achieve it. Also, remember that for a taekwondo practitioner to be successfully agile, you need a taekwondo uniform that is comfortable enough to perform.