Taekwondo athletes choose to compete in a weight category which is lower than their normal weight simply because it provides them with more advantage. They have longer lower limbs which will give them better chances to strike and hit the opponent thus earning them a point. It also makes their movement swifter because of their lighter weight. However, there are certain athletes who undergo drastic measures just to achieve a rapid amount of weight loss. Rapid decrease in weight done through fluid restriction, severe food deprivation, excessive exercise, use of laxatives and diuretics and even regular use of sauna will bring more harm to the body of Taekwondo athletes rather than good. It is a must that athletes should be fit before their tournament so they can properly execute their blocks, kicks and strikes.

These require maximum nutrition potential which can only be acquired through right combination of food and training. It is never wise to deter from eating nutritiously rich carbohydrate foods like pasta, whole grain cereals, rice, fruits and vegetables. The intake of protein rich food like lean meat, fish, chicken, beans and legumes holds vital nutrients that will help the body repair broken muscles and bones. What must be done instead of drastic weight loss regimen for these Taekwondo athletes is identification of the weight group category which they intend to enter on an earlier phase so they can safely plan their diet months before the tournament.

A training diet is not evil if and only if it can be planned accordingly. There is nothing wrong in trimming down on one’s weight but to do it in a flash will produce detrimental effects to the body. Nutritionists and heath experts suggest that Taekwondo athletes maintain a weight within 2-3 kilogram of their competition weight so they can minimize nutritional strategies which can drastically affect their body movements and coordination. Nevertheless, the following are helpful tips which Taekwondo athletes would wish to follow two to three days before their tournament.

If anyone talks about Korean martial arts people automatically assume that the talk is about the Olympic sport taekwondo. Many people haven’t heard of hapkido but it is also another martial art that originated from Korea. Hapkido means “the way of coordination and internal power” and the basic principle here is also the same as taekwondo that is the utilization of kicks and strikes however apart from kicks and strikes this style is more diverse and consists of manipulations techniques like throws, deflections and joint locks. It is believed to be more effective and better for self defense then taekwondo but it doesn’t have the same fame as taekwondo as it is not an organized sport like taekwondo.

There are several problems related to hapkido that I have noticed and one of them is that there are just too many organizations out there that give out the ranks and belts. What many of these organizations do wrong is that they give you the high ranks very fast. That eventually is not good for hapkido but they carry on with the practice because some organizations want to get the maximum number of member from all around the world. Because of the competition by so many organizations they don’t care about the quality that much awarding the higher ranks quickly on their members so they can keep them with them and attract new people from all over the world; this ultimately damages hapkido reputation.

Where you should get to the 7 Dan black belt after 30 years of hapkido training and to the 8th dan in minimum 40 years you end up getting their way to quickly while people don’t actually deserve that rank. So how to deal with the problem I did describe it a little bit in the end above and that is that if you want to start training hapkido you have to find out a good instructor and their training history. How long has he trained hapkido and for how long has he been training hapkido himself. If the internet age of today checking out the history and reputation of an organization is very easy via click of a few buttons. So if you want to learn hapkido get your research done and join a proper organization to avoid the problems later.