The Ultimate Guide to Taekwondo Training: Exercises and Fitness Regime
Regular training and fitness are important for taekwondo players to harden their bodies by consistently practising various attack and defence forms. Additionally, this sport demands speed, agility and, most importantly, a display of power and strength without losing control over the body.
A well-rounded exercise and fitness regime helps in excelling in your chosen sport while helping players maintain focus and inculcate discipline. To skilfully land your punches, jumps, and kicks, read on to learn about a well-rounded fitness regime for taekwondo training.
Warm-up and Stretching
Never make the mistake of beginning your main taekwondo workout without proper warm-up exercises. The science behind this will tell you why. Warming up increases oxygen availability for your muscles and raises the body’s temperature. This is key to preparing the cardiovascular system for intense physical activity. With proper oxygen availability, your muscles can easily perform high-intensity taekwondo exercises. Moreover, warming up also reduces the risk of injuries during an intense workout session. When adequately warmed up, your muscles can withstand the strain put on them during intense exercises.
Warm-up exercises consist of intensity-increasing exercises, which can set the tone for your training session. Dedicate 10–15 minutes for warming up with:
- Neck rotation
- Shoulder rolls
- Hip rotation
- Jumping jacks
- Shadowboxing
- Push-ups
The idea is to increase the intensity gradually.
Also important is to include stretching exercises for an effective taekwondo body workout:
- Hamstring stretch
- Butterfly stretch
- Open leg stretch
- Short stretch
- Long stretch
With proper stretching, you can perform a punch, a stance, a block, a kick, or any other taekwondo movement with sheer balance, flexibility, and strength.
Strength and Conditioning Taekwondo Exercises
Strength and conditioning exercises are essential for training. Landing powerful strikes and punches without losing balance requires a mix of speed and agility that can be built with proper strength and conditioning taekwondo exercises.
Powerful kicking
For stronger taekwondo kicks, the key muscle groups to work on include the hamstring, calves, and quads. To improve your kicking power, include these exercises in your set:
- Hamstring exercises
- Lunges
- Calf raises
- Lateral jumps
- Leg press
- Leg extensions
- Squat thrusts
- Barbell squats
- Barbell lunges
- Knee extensions
- Leg lifts
- Plyometrics
Powerful punches
Players must focus on exercising the stomach, lower back, and lateral oblique muscle groups for stronger punches. Boost your twisting power with these core-focused exercises:
- Crunches — bicycle crunches, reverse crunches, exercise ball crunch
- Leg raises
- Planks — side planks, Spiderman planks
- Russian twists
- Sit-ups
- Bird dog
- Captain’s Chair
Powerful blocks
For more powerful blocking and punching, focus on the biceps, forearms, shoulders, and triceps muscle areas with these taekwondo exercises:
- Push-ups
- Pull-ups
- Triceps extensions
- Dumbbell fly
- Bench press
- Chest dips
- Bicep curls
Cardiovascular Training
Taekwondo is a fast-paced martial art that needs bursts of high energy, quick movements, and consistent effort throughout a session. But where do the athletes get this sort of sustained energy? It is through cardiovascular training.
Since cardiovascular exercises aim at an effective supply of oxygen to the muscles during intense training sessions, they are a must for taekwondo players. An effective set of cardiovascular exercises engage in the fast-paced movement of the body along with high-intensity kicks and punches.
Taekwondo’s high-intensity motions can cause metabolic byproducts to accumulate, impairing muscular function and contributing to tiredness. Good cardiovascular fitness promotes effective circulation and waste product disposal, allowing faster recovery between rounds or sessions. It also improves the speed and agility required to deliver peak performance.
The best form of cardiovascular training is high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts. These comprise multiple rounds of exercises, alternating between several minutes of high-intensity movements to considerably raise the heart rate, followed by brief periods of lower-intensity motions.
For example, your taekwondo exercise protocol can include a sprint interval where you sprint for 20–30 seconds, then take a minute or two to walk and jog to recover and bring down your heart rate. You can repeat this several times. The intensity and repetition should depend upon the fitness level of the individual athlete. One can, however, increase the intensity over time.
Your taekwondo fitness regimen should also include cross-training exercises to improve endurance while building strength and introducing some variety to your routine.
A few cross-training options include:
- Running
- Yoga
- Swimming
- Cycling
- Pilates
The blend of the aerobic activity from these exercises and taekwondo’s dynamic movements can help you build a workout that consistently increases cardiovascular endurance.
Plyometric Exercises
Plyometric exercises include explosive movements to build muscle power that help you “explode” from a static position. With this blend of power and speed, taekwondo players can excel at sparring while developing powerful punches and taekwondo kicks.
Since martial arts trainings for taekwondo focus on quick and explosive motions such as punching, throwing, kicking, pushing, and hopping, plyometric training helps to develop the power required to perform them.
Include these plyometric exercises in your routine to build strong, explosive power:
- Lateral box jumps
- Long jumps
- Vertical jumps
- Stair jumps
- Clap push-ups
- Jump squats
- Burpees
Do note, that if not performed correctly or without some level of conditioning, these exercises can injure you. Here are a few safety precautions and proper techniques for practising plyometric exercises-
- Do not overdo your plyometric exercises. Overtraining can potentially cause serious injuries. Instead, perform fewer repetitions focusing on form, precision, and power. When it comes to plyometric exercises, quality trumps quantity.
- Focus on posture. Good posture and form help avoid discomfort and injuries during your taekwondo fitness session. If, at any point, you feel tightness or discomfort, reduce the number of reps and the intensity. To achieve good form, you can engage the help of a taekwondo fitness manual or a personal trainer.
- Perform plyometric exercises on an appropriate surface that absorbs shock, such as a gym mat or a rubberised floor. Additionally, wear quality sporting shoes with sufficient cushioning and support to lessen the risk of impact-related injuries.
Agility and Speed Training
Due to the highly competitive nature of top-level taekwondo, even a minor improvement in speed and agility makes a difference in winning a game.
Taekwondo training includes agility and speed drills, closely tied to the sport’s dynamic nature and fast motions. These training practices help the athlete improve their reaction time, which is handy while approaching an opponent. These also give a tactical advantage in outmanoeuvring opponents, creating attack opportunities, and dodging incoming strikes.
Speed and agility are closely tied to each other; improving one will positively affect the other. Some excellent taekwondo exercises you can perform to improve your speed and agility are:
- Sprinting
- Skipping
- Deadlifts
- Squats
- Plyometrics
- Power cleans
- Agility ladders
- Dynamic stretching
Regarding weight training, focus on developing your core, glutes, hamstrings, and lower back. Without the use of weights, you can perform the following:
1. Reaction drills- Practicing these drills helps players respond promptly to an approaching attack by evading or counterattacking. These drills include quickly moving your feet to catch an unpredictable response ball, using agility ladders, etc.
2. Quick kicks and punches- A set of quick kicks and punches can help improve a taekwondo player’s agility, speed and balance. They must practice punching (reverse punch, rare-arm punch, etc.) and kick at an increased pace.
Flexibility Training
For success in taekwondo, athletes must have maximum flexibility to maintain strength and speed, attack and defend, use coordinated techniques, minimise injury, and recover rapidly. Without developing flexibility, players may fail at performing strong and targeted strokes.
With proper flexibility training, taekwondo players can move more freely and increase the motion of their joints, which ultimately helps their performance in a match. Additionally, flexible joints and muscles are better able to withstand the sudden strain, thus becoming less prone to taekwondo injuries.
To increase flexibility, include dynamic and static stretching techniques in your workout. Yoga and Pilates are also excellent for improving flexibility and aiding post-workout recovery. Both protocols help in toning the body, improving core strength, and building muscle strength.
Cool-down and Recovery
Cool-down exercises are as crucial as warm-ups. While warm-ups help increase the body’s energy levels for an effective and intense session, cool-down exercises prepare the body, both physically and psychologically, to return to its normal state effectively. Cool-down exercises include intensity-reducing activity along with static stretching.
Cool-down exercises also reduce the chances of fainting or dizziness and assist with the breakdown of waste materials, such as lactic acid, that are formed in the body during a training session.
Often overlooked, cooling down has a crucial role to play in post-workout recovery. Martial artists often perform light activities like shadowboxing to cool down, along with active and passive stretching.
Do these cool-down exercises to prevent taekwondo injuries from an intense session:
- Stretching — Toe-touch stretch, quadriceps stretches, hip flexor stretch, upper back stretch, hamstring stretch, standing shin stretch
- Seated forward bend
- Butterfly pose
- Spinal twist
Apart from cool-down exercises, here are some tips for post-training recovery and preventing taekwondo injuries:
- Include exercises that target vulnerable areas, including the knees, ankles, and shoulders — for example, knee, ankle and shoulder rotation.
- Get enough sleep to aid your recovery. Take a nutritious and balanced diet to fuel your performance.
- Regularly visit healthcare professionals, such as sports physicians or physiotherapists, to detect injuries.
Organisations like the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF) are actively engaged in promoting the growth of the sport.
SFA Play Designs your Taekwondo Fitness Regime
Your search for a taekwondo coaching centre near me ends with SFA Play. We at SFA Play understand the need for a personalised taekwondo training plan to unlock maximum performance, be it a black belt or a white belt.
We understand that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all taekwondo fitness programme. So, we carefully assess each athlete before designing a fitness regimen for young athletes. To design the most effective athletic training programme, we consider the athlete’s height, weight, current fitness level, strengths, weaknesses, injuries, and sport-specific requirements.
We believe that setting an aim is essential for a successful training programme. And so we design your taekwondo fitness regime based on the specific goal of the athlete. We also go a step ahead by religiously tracking the athlete’s progress.
To help young athletes reach their fullest potential, we create a training regime amalgamating different workouts and proven fitness protocols.
