Monday, April 5, 2010

My Favourite Sport : Taekwondo

Talking on sport, I wasn’t active in that field. During the primary school, I was involved in football and my position was either the goalkeeper or the defender. The greatest achievement ever was winning a silver/ bronze medal in 4 x 100 m. 

I chose Taekwondo as my favourtie sport. How about you?

Moving to secondary school, it is virtually hard to join any sports because there were a lot of elite sport player in my school. My school, Setapak High was famous for athletics and hockey. These were the prohibited clubs because you will be ‘tortured’ if you are beginners and plus ‘different skin colour’. Well, you get what I meant of which usually occurred in national schools.

Talking about myself, I joined Taekwondo Club since form 1 if not mistaken. I remembered my instructor name was something sound like ‘sam sung’ but was unsure the exact spelling. The name of the taekwondo association was Global Taekwondo Federation or GTF.


The good thing about joining Taekwondo is a healthier you and your body. We had a training session every Saturday from about 9 am to 11 am. Usually, the training started with a traditional bow top the instructor. Then, it was followed by a warm up session. Initially, we had to run through pillars to pillars of the school building. After that, senior members will move in front and guide the rests on simple warming up technique such a rotating your heads, hips, hands, leg and everything. The seniority is based on colour of your belts. For GTF, there are 6 colour of belts namely white, yellow, green, blue, red and black (in increasing order of level).

After warming up, members were taught on the basic techniques in Taekwondo such as standing and sitting position, punching, side kick, back kick and others. It is good to know such techniques such as to punch correctly to minimize injury to yourself. 

One of the most difficult stunt is jumping kick. If you do not aim well, you might be attacked once you landed down. It needs a good balance of your body as well as the power of projection.

Moving on was the learning on the grading pattern. As one move from the lowest belt which is white to another level, there is a grading pattern that one must be mastered and tested before you can advance further up. Grading means examination whereas pattern means a series of movements combining all important steps of Taekwondo.

And finally, the class usually ended with a sparring session. Sparring means like fighting between two opponents. During this session, you can do ‘free style’ or whatever techniques you wish to or invented by yourself so long as you did not do anything targeting to the face or the private parts as they are ‘FRAGILE’. I personally love this session though a bit scare because you will never know injury awaiting you. Even a simple sparring can possess risk of injury because accidents occur anytime and anywhere. Most of the time, when it comes near to exam, I will avoid myself involved in sparring because if my hands are injured, who are going to write for my exams? Haha. I personally do experienced slight injuries be it bruises on my hands, legs or even bleeding on the gum of my teeth. 

Though it looks like a simple front kick, you must be well trained before you able to raise up your legs and project towards the face of your opponents. If you able to do so, you will get 3 scores.

Due to some circumstances, the Taekwondo association in my school has changed to MITF which stand for Malaysia Taekwondo International Federation. If not mistaken we were being told that GTF no longer exist in our country. Then, after a short period of time, the club changed again to the WTF which stand for World Taekwondo Federation. This time we were being told that MITF only will be practised by the army forces and not the general public. It was indeed a nice experience with my Taekwondo Club.

The umpire in a competition wears a fully yellow coloured attire.

That’s all for now. If you want to stay healthy, consider Taekwondo as a sport. Not only that, it can help to build up muscle and make yourself discipline.


*This is one of the entries filed under Project Alpha Season 2 which is presented by Adidas Action 3 and supported by P1 and MAS.


15 comments:

ilyani said...

awesome! first one I found on taekwondo :)

arrived here from FB page, btw. come check mine

ilyani.net

:)

Nikel Khor said...

u really a taekwondo lover..

araleling said...

Hi, good luck on the alpha project :D

Jobless Girl said...

Ya Nickel I agree with you, we should address him as taekwondo man

atreyu strange said...

Are you kidding me? GTF/ITF and WTF are TOTALLY in different leagues!

The founder of GTF was a student of the founder of ITF. So, the patterns and sparring are the same (with some minor modification in GTF).

The founder of WTF - I do not know because I am a student of GTF/ITF. But what I do know is WTF's pattern and sparring are NOT THE SAME as GTF/ITF. Plus, WTF members focuses on the legs more rather than finding a balance between hands and legs. That's why you see WTF members more interested in sparring than pattern.

In Malaysia, we use to have MITF but it received some political blows (yes, unbelievable) so it then became MGTF (which is more or less the same with the previous since every ITF members moved to GTF).

Unfortunately for MGTF, we do not have the privilege to join the tournaments in SUKMA or KOMANWEL as representatives of Taekwondo must be from the MWTF league. But we still have our very own MGTF National Tournament which is held yearly.

Okay, hope that clears everything! And ouhh, my favorite sport is Taekwondo too. But I didn't write any post. Haha!

KwOnG FeI said...

@ilyani: that makes em different..haha..will visit u now~

@Nikel: haha.. ok la.. but it was last time..

@areleling: TQ

@Jobless Girl: =P

@atreyu: Are you kidding me too? Which line in my post mentioned these different taekwondo federation is the same? I never mention about the grading for all these are the same. It will be totally impossible since each emphasize diff things.

Perhaps you are confused with the changes of the taekwondo club in my school. Due to politic and management issues, the clubs changed and changed until we need to buy new uniform. Even the belts are different eg brown vs red.

Tan Lih Wern said...

Taekwondo rock :D been learning it since 7 years old :) Its a mad awesome sport.

Chloe said...

i tink i am WTF... red belt ad... i didnt take up to black belt.... keke... give up... >.<

Allison said...

im WTF too.. hahaha nv knew u noe taekwondo also. :)

Artificial Turf said...

HI GOOD WORK

Trish Stratus said...

I really like Taekwondo too.

siliconcrab said...

I'm learning TKD too!

Unknown said...

wow fantastic, me too love Taekwondo, I was doing WTF since 3yrs back, but when i got a scholarship to come to India for my studies I got no coaches here, bad luck for me, now i m doing it alone, what to do oh god, i m the one who exercise martial arts here in the city which i study what should i do, plz advise me....

jin@combatsportsfitness said...

TKD is an ok combat sport, but these days, martial arts such as muay thai and brazilian jiujitsu are the rage.

Unknown said...

I do agree with you. Taekwondo is indeed a sport that not only teaches great self-defense techniques, it also helps you stay fit and healthy. Martial arts exert effort and pressure on most of the muscles on your body and help tone them and burn unwanted fats.
Ari Maccabi

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