Among diet experts, there is a rarely mentioned adaptation of the body that prevents a diet program from achieving the maximum results. This adaptation, the Weight Loss Plateau, can be tackled in a variety of ways.

Most of these involve changes in your training or diet regimen. While keeping your metabolic rate elevated can be a difficult process, it can be done.

Now, we all know that drinking water is an absolute must for every single Taekwondo athlete there is. We can’t get away from it. We sweat so much during training, we have to replace those lost liquids.

But, apart from replacing that lost liquid, what else does drinking water do for us?

In this post I’m going to show you the many other things that happen when we drink water, and not just during and after training…

When we drink water, a number of different things happen in our body.

In the previous article we learned about Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) the body’s “energy currency” and how the body uses certain sources to replenish this.In this article we will look at how ATP is actually produced by the body and how this is important for Taekwondo.

There are actually three separate energy systems through which ATP can be produced. A number of factors determine which of these energy systems is chosen by the body, such as exercise intensity.

Recently I was asked to review an Strengh & Conditioning programme written for a full time Taekwondo athlete, by the athlete’s full time coach. Within the programme the coach was making the athlete do swimming a few times in a week!

I queried as to why swimming had been included within the programme, and the coach said to make the athlete “fitter” for competition… It was very apparent to me by this point that this coach had completely no idea about effective training and had really missed the point… Most importantly they must have never heard about the Law of Specifity!

Before a Taekwondo match even starts the first thing a Taekwondo player will do is position themselves into stance. Stance is a hugely important component for a Taekwondo athlete as you send at least 80% of your time in a match in that position. Even during basic traditional Taekwondo training, stance is a major variable which is practised over and over again.

A key question that I always get… Continue reading

We have all seen it… especially back in the old days… minutes and minutes of bouncing in a Taekwondo match!

One of the most common questions I ever get asked by people who don’t do Taekwondo is ‘Why are they just standing there bouncing around doing nothing? Why don’t they kick each other?’ To people who do Taekwondo this seems like a tedious question just like ‘Why don’t they… Continue reading