Category: Teaching

Principles of a Good Taekwondo Class – Split the Class

I’ve been teaching Taekwondo now – as a colour belt assistant, then as a black belt assistant instructor, and sometimes as a substitute instructor – for almost two decades. And I’ve been doing Taekwondo for even longer. In that time, I’ve noticed that there are many, very straightforward principles for how to run and teach a good Taekwondo class. In this series of posts, I would like to enumerate them.

A good Taekwondo class is one in which students learn effectively, covering not only the material from the curriculum, but extra material that often gets forgotten about. A good Taekwondo class is one that the students enjoy. And a good Taekwondo class is one that keeps the students active, and which progresses their fitness.

One of the most important principles for running a good Taekwondo class is: split the class. You should not have second and third degree black belts doing the same things as white and yellow belts. Sometimes they can do the same things – such as in the warm-up, and occasionally as basic line work – but for most of the lesson time they should be doing different things. A black belt who has been doing Taekwondo for eight years simply does not need to work on the same skills as someone who started Taekwondo only a few months ago – and if they do spend a lot of time doing only the most introductory material, then that’s time they’re not spending on the harder, more technical material.

The extent to which a class needs to be split varies a lot. If a school is relatively new, it’s likely that most of the students will be relatively junior colour belts. If a class is only made up of white, yellow, and green belts, then they can all do the same thing (except when training their grade syllabus of course), and the class doesn’t need to be split. With schools that have been around for a long time, however, it’s quite likely that some of the students there on any one day will have been going for years and years, and might now be first, second, third, fourth degree black belts – but, because there’s always a certain turnover of students, there are still lots of junior grades there. In such cases, the class really needs to be split – and doing so is quite easy because one of the black belts can take one of the groups.

Splitting the class is a very basic principle, but over the years I have often seen it not be followed. The result is often classes that are repetitive, and not interesting enough for the long-term students. (It can also be offputting for newer students, as they will often notice the homogeneity early on and lose interest in the art before realising just how much there is to it.)

So really it comes down to this: what is the spread of grades in any given class? If it’s a very narrow spread – all of the grades are quite close to each other – the class doesn’t need to be split. If it’s a very broad spread – you have lots of different grades – the class needs to be split – and it needs to be split almost every time. The exact divisions of the class can vary (and should vary some of the time), but I’ve found it usually needs to be something along the lines of: white belt to blue stripe (junior colour belt), blue belt to black stripe (senior colour belt), first degree black belts (generally there is a lot of new material that they suddenly need to learn upon getting to black belt), second and third degree black belts, fourth and fifth degree black belts. Splitting the class like this, and assigning students from the higher groups to teach the lower groups, ensures that the students get to focus on material that is relevant to their grade, and ensures that the classes remain varied and interesting. (It also gives students the opportunity to practise instructing – which is extremely important.)

5 ways to improve your kicking techniques in Taekwondo

Taekwondo is a martial art known for its impressive kicking techniques. Fast and complicated kicks are a part of every Taekwondo demonstration, and kicking techniques usually score higher in sparring competitions.

Performing kicking techniques well requires excellent balance, flexibility, strength, and precision. These are not physical characteristics that most people have naturally, so it takes a long time and a lot of effort to learn how to perform kicking techniques well. It also requires good training methods, and so here are five ways that you can improve your kicking techniques.

1. Practise regularly and often

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. The best way to improve your balance, flexibility, and strength for kicking techniques is to simply practise the techniques often. I have often found that a good time to practise kicking techniques is just before a regular training session. I often spend the 10 minutes before a class starts practising kicking techniques. If you do two or three training sessions a week, and practise kicking before each one, your flexibility and balance will steadily improve.

Similarly, I find that certain routines of kicking techniques work better than others. I find that the best routines gradually increase the difficulty of the kicks, and also don’t jump from one muscle group to another. The routine I often use is:

  • front rising kicks
  • front snapping kicks
  • inward crescent kicks
  • outward crescent kicks
  • side kicks
  • turning kicks
  • rising side kicks
  • reverse turning kicks

After that you can do any other kicks you like in any order. I tend to do about 20 of each kick before moving onto the next one. That might seem like quite a lot of kicks in total, but you don’t have to do the full list each time – I often just do down to turning kicks.

2. Stance holding

This is actually one of my favourite training activities, though I can imagine most people would find it boring. It’s quite simple: just choose a stance, perform it well, and then hold it for a certain amount of time – often 1 – 2 minutes.

That might sound easy – and for a walking stance it is – but for a low sitting stance (or the most difficult one – a low fixed stance) it’s harder. Doing this activity for certain stances helps improve your balance – in particular sitting stance, bending stance, and one-leg stance. This in turn helps to improve your kicking techniques.

When you start, you might only hold a stance for 1 or 1 ½ minutes, but over time, that will get easier, so increase the length of time you hold the stance for to 2 minutes, 2 ½ minutes, and so on.

3. Basic jumping

The most difficult kicks to perform in Taekwondo are jumping kicks. One of the brilliant things about Changheon-yu Taekwondo, and the patterns that Choi Hong-hi designed, is that the training for jumping kicks is partially built into the patterns. The first jumping kick in the Changheon-yu patterns appears in the black-stripe pattern Chungmu, and then the next ones appear in Gwanggae and Gyebaek. But also in Chungmu is a move consisting of a 360-degree jump and spin on the spot. This technique is just one of several fairly basic jumps that are good for improving your jumping kicks.

The basic jumps are:

  • ‘l’ stance, jumping on the spot and landing in the same stance
  • ‘l’ stance, jumping on the spot and changing from a left to a right stance (or a right to a left)
  • ‘l’ stance, jumping on the spot and turning to face the opposite direction, landing in the same stance (180-degree turn)
  • the same as the above, but spinning in the opposite direction
  • ‘l’ stance, jumping on the spot and spinning 360 degrees in the air, landing in the same stance in the same direction
  • the same as the above, but spinning in the opposite direction

If you’re just starting out at learning jumping kicks (or you are an instructor looking for some basic jumping technique exercises to give your students) these exercises are excellent for improving your balance through a jump. They get you used to landing correctly after having jumped and spun in the air.

4. Slow kicks

This is probably the most effective method for improving your kicks. Try performing kicking techniques much more slowly than usual, holding each of the important positions of the kick. For example, if you were doing a side kick, first bring the foot up next to the opposite knee, then hold for 5 seconds, then lift the foot up so that it is at the height of the kick, but the knee is still pulled in, then hold for 5 seconds. Over 5 seconds, extend the leg to the position of the side kick, then once the leg is fully extended, hold it in position for 5 seconds. Then over another 5 seconds, lower the foot again.

As you get better at the exercise, increase the amount of time you hold each position for.

This technique is excellent for improving your balance, strength, and the precision of your kicks. It’s probably the most effective method for doing so, but you have to do it often – probably at least twice a week – with a wide range of different kicking techniques.

5. Foot shape exercises

A lot of students find it difficult to get the right foot shape for different kicks. A side kick is usually performed with the foot-sword, thus the foot-sword must be pushed forward (so that you don’t hit your opponent with the sole of your foot). A front snapping kick is usually performed with the ball of the foot, thus the toes must be pulled back.

Practise moving your feet into these different shapes – practise pulling the toes back or pushing the foot-sword forwards. This is an excellent exercise because you can do it even just while lying down watching television.

Four more principles for teaching a good Taekwondo class

1. Don’t substitute actual Taekwondo with general fitness

I’ve been to a lot of Taekwondo classes where, instead of doing line-work, or sparring, we’ve just done very general circuit training – the aim of which has just been to improve students’ fitness.

But when people go to a Taekwondo class, they want to do Taekwondo – they are enthusiastic about Taekwondo. Taekwondo, when done correctly, IS incredibly physically demanding – doing 10 fast, powerful, high-section turning kicks along a line is a physically intense activity. There should be no need to do general fitness activities instead of Taekwondo, because Taekwondo itself should improve students’ fitness. And Taekwondo is why the students are there – that’s what they want to do.

This is not to say that general fitness exercises can never be done in a Taekwondo class, but they shouldn’t be a large chunk of every lesson.

2. Plan every lesson

Planning a lesson will give it structure, and you’ll be able to focus on a specific aspect of Taekwondo training – for example: jumping kicks. Planning a lesson prevents each lesson from being the same, and makes sure that your students cover everything they need to between gradings.

Now this doesn’t mean that you have to plan the lesson in the same way that secondary school teachers do – you don’t have to spend hours thinking of and writing out your plan. Often all you need to do is come up with a few unique or interesting ideas ten or fifteen minutes before the lesson starts, and then just make those ideas the theme for the lesson.

3. Speak in Korean often

Students generally have to learn Korean terms for gradings. A lot of students find learning Korean difficult, but one way that you can make it easier is by using Korean terms often throughout a lesson. By doing this, students learn what words mean in context, which makes them easier to remember.

Always give instructions in Korean in a Taekwondo class. When you mention specific techniques or stances, give the name of the movement in English and Korean (and if it’s a very easy movement that everyone knows the Korean for, sometimes only give the Korean, and let students work out what you’re referring to).

4. When students are training in pairs, shuffle students around so that they aren’t always training with the same person

A lot of activities in Taekwondo training are pair-based: set sparring and free sparring are the main ones. In these kinds of activities, students tend to choose a partner who is either a similar grade to them, or is one of their friends (often both). This means that, if they’re always left to choose who they pair with, they always train with the same person.

The problem with this is that students don’t learn as much when they always train with the same person. This is especially true with sparring. If students always free-spar against the same two or three people, they will get used to how those people spar – what techniques they use, their speed, where they tend to leave openings. If students spar against lots of different opponents – opponents of different grades too (it’s fine for a green belt to spar against a black belt, as long as the black belt sees it as a training exercise for the green belt and doesn’t go all-out) – they will have to adapt to different sparring styles, and they will also see new techniques that they can use that they didn’t think of before.

So whenever students are doing pair-based activities, mix the pairs up every few minutes. Often the simplest way to do this is to have the class do a ‘circular change to the left / right’, where students are facing each other in pairs, and each student steps to the left to face the next person along (and those at the ends move around onto the opposite side of the line).

Five general principles for teaching a good Taekwondo class

I’ve been training in Taekwondo for more than 13 years now. In that time I’ve attended classes as a student, and I’ve also taught as an assistant instructor and instructor. As a student I’ve seen which classes are enjoyable and interesting, and I’ve tried to distill what it is that makes a good Taekwondo class. And as an instructor I’ve tried to use these ideas to teach interesting and effective Taekwondo classes, and through trial and error, have found what works and what doesn’t work. Here are five general principles that I try to follow when teaching a Taekwondo class.

1. Students shouldn’t be standing still for more than 30 seconds.

I’ve been to too many Taekwondo classes where students have been left standing around with nothing to do for several minutes. You can see them getting bored – it doesn’t take long. While I don’t think that the primary purpose of a Taekwondo class is to keep students physically fit, it is something that should just happen incidentally – students should be doing enough exercises to become and remain physically fit. Many people do attend Taekwondo classes for that reason.

2. Never do the same class twice.

I’ve also been to too many classes that have just been exact copies of previous classes. This is a sure way to make your students bored. Variety is essential for maintaining your students’ interest and enthusiasm.

This doesn’t mean that no two lessons can be alike in any way – if you were to try to make every single lesson completely different from every other one, you’d quickly run out of teaching material. It just means that no two lessons are exactly alike. There should always be something different about any two lessons, even if it’s just doing a different warm-up exercise.

3. In every class, teach your students one thing they haven’t heard before.

This relates to the point about variety, and that no two classes should be alike. An easy way to make sure that no two classes are exactly alike is to try to teach your students one completely new thing in each class. This could be almost anything to do with Taekwondo: it could be a new sparring technique, it could be how to score points when refereeing sparring match, or it could be something about the history of Korea. There is a lot to know in Taekwondo, and most students only ever see a fraction of it. Teaching your students one new thing in every class not only adds variety and keeps your students from becoming bored, but it might introduce them to some aspect of Taekwondo that they find particularly interesting.

4. Always give higher grades something harder to do than the lower grades.

Again, I have been to too many classes where the class consists of a wide range of grades – from white belt all the way up to third degree black belt – and because there are white belts in the group, the entire class does white belt (or often yellow belt) line work. While black belts do need to practise basic techniques like punches and knife-hand strikes, they don’t need to do this all the time, and they DO need to practise the more advanced techniques that they’re learning for their grade. If you always give black belts white belt exercises to do, they will get bored.

If there are a large spread of grades in a Taekwondo class, the class needs to be split into groups. If there are black belts (and if there are enough of them), they almost always need to be split off into a separate group, and given very hard, physically demanding exercises to do – they are black belts after all. If the group of colour belts is large enough, they should be split too – normally around green or blue belt. If you only have one or two black belts in the class, one of them can instruct one of the colour belt groups.

And even if the class is not large enough to be split, if you’re doing something like line work, you should still give the higher grades some harder line work to do.

5. Get the senior grades to teach the junior grades.

This is something that we did a lot in the Taekwondo classes I go to 10 years ago (and which we still do now, though not to the same extent). If two green belt students need to learn the pattern Wonhyo, and there is a blue belt in your class who knows their own pattern quite well, get them to teach the green belts Wonhyo. It gives the blue belt something interesting to do; it helps the blue belt ‘revise’ Wonhyo, and think about it in a different way as they have to describe the moves to someone else; and it frees you up to monitor the class at a higher level – to make sure everyone is active, rather than just concentrating on teaching two students in your class one pattern.

What is the best age to start Taekwondo?

This article is going to look more at younger age ranges – i.e., for young children, what is the best age to start training in Taekwondo?

For a number of years I taught junior Taekwondo classes. I mainly taught 7- to 12-year-olds, but occasionally also taught the 4- to 7-year-old class. I still regularly teach students aged 12 to 16.

The first thing to note is that in any of these age ranges, students are not taught ‘full’ Taekwondo – they are taught some of the aspects of Taekwondo that are appropriate to their age. ‘Full’ Taekwondo includes activities such as board breaking, joint locks, take-downs, and full-contact sparring – these activities are NOT taught to anyone under 16.

Taekwondo students aged 12 to 16 are taught forms (which are choreographed sequences of movements which have a variety of uses), general techniques in line work, some set sparring (which is a choreographed form of sparring), and some non-contact or very light contact free sparring, as well as aspects of general fitness such as flexibility exercises.

Taekwondo students aged 7 to 12 are taught a much reduced set of this. They will still learn forms and general techniques, but a much lesser variety of them. Sparring is replaced with non-contact games that use similar skills.

Considering that students in these age ranges are not taught full Taekwondo, one might ask: is there any point learning Taekwondo at this age? If you’re not going to learn ‘full’ Taekwondo until you’re 16, why not just wait until then and start at that age?

Even though under-16s do not learn some aspects of Taekwondo, there is definitely a huge advantage to starting at a younger age. Students who have been training since they were 8 generally remain better at Taekwondo than someone who started when they were 12 for several years (i.e., when both such students are 15 or 16, the one who started younger will still be a lot better).

When students start younger, they learn body co-ordination (the ability to move one’s arms and legs in a very specific way, as demonstrated by an instructor) much sooner, and this ability sticks with them for a long time. As people get older, they get used to certain ways of moving. People who start Taekwondo in their 30s or 40s often have to spend longer unlearning the way of moving that they’ve become used to, and learn to move how a Taekwondo practitioner moves. Students who start Taekwondo when they are 8 or 9 will often be very skilled black belts if they continue training in Taekwondo into their 20s and 30s.

There is a lower limit to this effect, however. Students aged 4 to 7 learn a VERY reduced set of Taekwondo-related activities. They will learn only the most basic forms, do a limited amount of line work, and will do no sparring of any kind. 4- to 7-year-olds will spend most of their time doing general, simple fitness activities, and fitness games. (At this age range, children aren’t really taught Taekwondo at all – classes that teach this age range tend to be general, martial-arts-themed, aerobic activity classes.) As such, they do not learn body co-ordination to the same extent as older students.

So I would say that students should not start training in Taekwondo younger than 7 or 8, as below that age there is little value in it. While students younger than 16 will not learn about all of the aspects of Taekwondo, they will be given a very good grounding in body control, stances, basic techniques, flexibility training, self control, and forms, which is very valuable when they are older than 16.