TaeKwon Do

Fitness - Taekwon Do is very aerobic. You work with an elevated heart rate for the duration of a class which means that you burn fat and gain cardio vascular training. Cardio Vascular training (CV) is good for the health of your heart and lungs and it's the thing that the doctors and 'experts' keep saying we should do more of. Think of the famous martial artists - Bruce Lee, Jean Claude Van Damme etc. - they are all very fit. And that is something that you can achieve by training in Taekwon Do.

Strength - Taekwon Do requires you to perform exercises to give you strength and speed for your kicks and punches. This gives you strength and power. When you work your muscles this way then you get better muscle definition and lose body fat. It's simple, you feel great and you look great.

Reasons to Start

"I want to get fit so surely the gym is better?"

In many surveys over the years martial arts have consistently rated as the top calorie burning activities per hour. Some martial arts are slower and burn less but Taekwon Do is amongst the highest calorie burning activities you can do with only a few minutes exercise. If you want to shed the pounds then this is the way to do it. Recent new starters have all said "this is better than the gym .. treadmills are for hamsters"

But Surely Gym Work is Safer. No necessarily. We have an exceptional record for personal safety with little or no record for accidents in the years that we have been in operation. Everything you do is supervised by someone with over 22years experience of the martial arts. Down the gym you just get on with it on your own. What is safer supervised exercise or unsupervised exercise? By the way I've never known aerobics as being a particularly good way to learn how to defend yourself against personal attack. If someone's going to attack you then a couple of heel digs and a grapevine really don't help.

It's Bound to be Boring with all that History stuff going on.

Taekwon Do was founded in 1955 so there's not that much history stuff to do. Taekwon Do is a martial art and a sport that was founded with the intention of providing as much practical activity as possible. There are no dance movements, no pointless activities to do just because they have been done like that for a thousand years. Just good honest training in a sport that stimulates the body as well as the mind.

But I'm not Aggressive so I'll never be any good.

You do not have to be aggressive, in fact the more aggressive people are the less well suited they are to Taekwon Do. Taekwon Do works well for people who are less confident and are less aggressive. It gives them strength and confidence without making them aggressive. Aggressive people tend not to develop (as a person) as well and tend not to stick to it as well because the discipline of Taekwon Do stifles their natural tendencies towards violence. Taekwon Do develops people to feel better about themselves so if you are not aggressive then you'll probably find you are better suited to it than you think.

But I'm not .. err .. well co-ordinated shall we say.

That doesn't matter. If you can get from a to b then you have everything you need to start. Throughout the country we have hundreds of Black Belts and instructors. None of them were 'born' to do Taekwon Do. Every single one of them walked into the training hall with absolutely no knowledge or any natural advantage than anyone else. The only thing that makes them a Black Belt today is their love for the sport and their perseverance to achieve the coveted status of Black Belt. Even the children of instructors have no natural advantage so if we can all do it, then so can you.

But it's a lot of hard work!

True. I cannot disagree with that. But it's worth it. You will be leaner, stronger, fitter, more flexible, more confident and mentally stronger than before. You'll be amazed what it says about your character when you apply for a job and they see on your C.V. that you are a Black Belt. What does it say about your character? It says that you are determined, willing to work hard, able to take on a challenge and deliver, able to concentrate and get things done and able to push yourself beyond the limits that others shy away from. If you had two candidates going for your job vacancy, one had all of the above and the other one didn't which would you employ. So .. the hard work is worth it really isn't it.

But it's the same thing every time you go.

Oh No it's absolutely not. There is a degree of repetition in order to help you practice and get better, but no two classes are the same. As you progress the things that you do change. As the year progresses the things that you concentrate on changes. As the months progress you work on different aspects of your training according to what is coming up next. It follows the same format, but rarely if ever are two classes ever the same. If you have a grading coming up you practice for the grading, if it's a tournament you practice for that, when you start you practice the fundamentals of strength and technique, when you pass a grading you learn new things. It can never be the same day in day out. You develop so your training develops with you. You can't say that about the gym can you where everything is repetition. Can't say that about the T.V. either where it's the same things every week.