Episode 20 - Power Training for Taekwondo

     Strength and Conditioning for Taekwondo on the modern age of wearables and technology is very exciting. How to analyse your athetles, monitor and plan for an injury-free success.

  In this episode, Coach César Valentim will share his knowledge and his methods on S&C training.

  His modern approach with scientific backing has been recognized by several teams around the world, chosing his training center in Vienna to be one of the places to visit in Europe. Listen to his insights on Power Development, S&C and what tools he uses on his daily job.

  This podcast is supported by Hawkin Dynamics, Firstbeat Sports and Athlete Analyzer! 

 Visit our Instagram @taekwondopodcast and Facebook @taekwondocast 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Have you been looking for a TaeKwonDo podcast with qualified people who know what they're talking about? Who help you keep up with everything going on in the TaeKwonDo world? Well, you found it. This is the TaeKwonDo podcast, Tew do news competitions and other events, training and sports science, keeping the fans, coaches and high performance athletes up today with the latest news and trends on Olympic Tew. Do let's do this. This is the TaeKwonDo podcast. And now your host coach Caesar Valenti team and Peter Nestle.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Hello and welcome to the Tedo podcast. We are a podcast based on Austria in English language for everyone out there, like in these episodes, I will talk to you about conditioning for specif athlete, importance of the power training and the physiology of Hello and welcome to our podcast. I'm coach ER Valentine. Today, I'm here alone talking with you about strengths and conditioning training for TaeKwonDo. I'm discussing some of the key aspects that people have been asking on the common sections on the Instagram, on our Facebook pages. So this is a, a monologue. It's not something that we're used to at this podcast, but, um, considering all the events recently and what we're planning to do on the next episode, after the grand Prix, I saw that was important to talk about TaeKwonDo KGI, the Olympic discipline, also known as sport te Kondo as a combat sport. We are characterized by being a Fest and a powerful like techniques and shortened intermittent cycles. It's basically an opposition game played between two athletes with, for three or before even. So four rounds of two minutes would score powerful kicks on the electronic body and head protectors of the opponent while protecting their own equipment. Despite the rounds being of two minutes, the ratio of work and rest period is unique to every athlete and even the high weight visions or at at different bouts will have different times and different player profile. Even the same athlete will have and different work and rest ratios, depending on the competition on their opponent. Since most of the sessions in terms of training, strength and conditioning are group sessions, the ever values of these work and rest ratios have to be identified, allowing the group training to be inside of the thresholds that suits the general ALA and match type. These values are constantly evaluated with the same markers through video analysis. Since small changes in the competition rules will have, uh, some change in the recent past changing the dynamic of the sport, basically in terms of physiology, sports TaeKwonDo is essentially a very high intensity sport with very short periods of work and short periods of active rest. While the evolution of modern equipment and competition rules, the players spend around two minute rounds in high intensity levels with an average heart rate around 95% of their maximum heart rate frequency reaching between 10 and to 13 millimoles for a kilo of lactate concentrations in their system. At the end of the third round, when they get to the third round, of course, there's different analysis. You can see that 49 players females will be very different from the 68 or from the minus 80 males. And you can see that the heart rate dream warm up and the matches are not the same as, uh, um, the real, uh, event in the real competitions. And if you have the chance of user heart rate monitor, if you talk to the event organizer and they let you use one, you will be able to analyze the matches. And of course, you'll be able to measure the lactate, uh, in the end of each round. And after the match, 15, 30 minutes to see also the, um, lactate deconstruction on the body. Uh, funny enough to last weekend at the Austrian opened the national team, uh, had some athletes being picked up for those kind of tests done by the sports Institute of Austria and many, many studies out there show different levels of athletes. The, the L thresholds to measure basically their energy, um, thresholds in, in terms of power training that like aid for me is not so important because tech sports TaeKwonDo in terms of power has two big technical needs. At first, the Atlas must kick the opponent with high enough force to activate electronic system. Most of those times in a very high range of motion and they have to have very high speed techniques in precision. The second set of the important skills is the clenching where the Atlas need to push each other, trying to gain the distance or control the position inside the competition area. And this is a very high demand of trends to be prevent being pushed by the opponent nowadays with the new rules, the rules that started well now day in June, the competition, um, will have longer, um, active kicking moments and a little shorter clean techniques because you're not allowed to stay so long in the clin without kicking. That means that the, the, the demand of strengths of prevent being pushed by the opponent is important, but the power on the, uh, incoming into the clin needs to be way more explosive training in sports technology needs to consider that a powerful leg training needs to be complimented with isometric and explosive strength training also for their upper body. One can only consider also considered rotational anti rotational training to prepare the players. We stand all those forces produced by him or herself in their opponents, identifying those force baselines of the athlete and raise the force development are important steps in the training process. In my training facilities, in Vienna with the help of the force place from haw dynamics, wireless accelerometer from output or from push, we were able to identify several parameters for us. The most, uh, common parameters to be analyzed are of course, uh, force velocity profiling, uh, reactive strengths index, and rate of force development. And the on the first cycles of the strength training for the Atlas transitioning into the competition team are transferring from other Austria clubs that have no tradition in strength and conditioning. The athletes go through an introductory phase that can last up to two years in this phase of strength and conditioning players work on building muscle components of hypertrophy training and maximum strength training that usually of the general reactive strength training. So depends of course, in each club and which level levels you're talking when you're talking a high performance level. And if the app plus come from a base group in your club, or they come from other clubs or from other countries, other regions, you have to consider that training background. We've talked about this several times in other podcasts with other strength and conditioning coach and other Techon coaches. And that's in this phase that most of the exercises are bilateral with moderate loads, some exercise they include even transfer to the sport specific techniques, but with very, very small volume and intensity while they experienced athletes that have a solid base and knowledge of strengths training will have primarily unilateral strengths exercises, big transfer effect to the sport, higher loads. These athletes also have a builder, a busier competition schedule. Most of the players, they have to gather all these points to qualify for the grand Prix or to have national qualifications to qualify for the national team so that they can later go to continental and world championships. And of course, with these busi easier competition scheduled with higher demands and of other training solutions, mostly due to weight restrictions, nutritional aspects, and time restrictions will remove many of the training possibilities in the competition. Season older athletes tend to have more availability due to the flexibility of combining university or work schedules than the juniors and cadets. Um, myself, I don't consider cadets high performance. Therefore I will not include, uh, very high loads of strength and conditioning outside of the normal, uh, technical techno training that they will do once a day. But, um, the older, younger athletes usually limited by the amount of time they have outside of their school, the schedules that they have with their family, all those things need to be taken in consideration. And that makes the strength and conditioning part of a Teon training. Very, very interesting to measure the, the different ages, developmental, um, strengths and conditioning phases, developmental ages. There is work schedules, school schedules, so makes the, the complexity of a te trainer, uh, training and our work a little more interesting in my, um, system, I tend to divide the cadets from the others. Um, I think most centers do that and some centers don't even have the, uh, higher level athletes, or they just don't work with the beginner athletes. Um, they will have one or the other group. It happens a lot in north America in Europe. It hits the tradition that most of the clubs or centers will begin with the base level all the way to the high competition level. In some countries, of course, uh, the national federations will absorb the high performance athletes into their own program, removing them from the clubs. It's the solution that works for, uh, clubs or centers that don't have the financial availability to either implement a full time program or to invest, uh, on competitions and all the costs associated with also the travel and competition of Teon do, but also the associated with the equipment and, and venues and SSR for the strength and conditioning training. So the, those materials and those methods are a key part of the strengths and conditioning training special on the power part of te Kondo. The transition into sports specific strength training follows the data principles of sports training with the general and technical last demanding component. A big focus on intermuscular coordination on muscle fiber recruitment for building strengths in the first cycles, building SC strength, and then transferring it to Teo specific power that is done over a period of two to three years. We did cycle lasting between eight months to a year. So my preferred methadone on the first cycle, when I talk with the beginners that have no background on S and C or they're young age is the same, the simple ATR periodization similar systems where you get accumulation phase, a transition phase realization phase with a big emphasis on muscle growth, increasing the maximum strength and endurance capacity. The second third cycles of course, are focused on development of powerful spar, specific motor skills. The focus is on speed and explosive strength, a big component of unilateral reactive strengths, movement patterns, and unilateral weight lifting derivatives. While later in my third cycle, there is an implementation of VBT training. Velocity based training is a very powerful, uh, method seeking to work on the optimal speeds and lows with the optimal rate of force development. For, of course, for that, you need to know, um, the exercise, you need to know the athlete and you need to test them. And usually there's in, in VBT training, there is no guessing you have to assess, you have to have the devices and these days there are really affordable devices for you to use it. Of course, if you can get in your force plates, we will, uh, add immense value. Once again, shot out to our sponsor hockey dynamics. They have the best ones out there for us and it's wireless and helps us a lot to do this. And, um, maybe I can go through some of the exercises we do on the first cycles in case you want to hear them, like on the first cycle of the general strength exercises, bilateral and unilateral, we do weight lifting derivatives, especially on bilateral strength exercises, some general biometrics, general agility, drills, simple Teon displacement, simple Teon techniques, time oriented Teon drills, car oriented Teon drills that have allowed to, to combine the strengths training with the technical part of Teon do so that you are basically allowing a good transfer and also muscle build. And the second part, uh, aspect of first cycle would be the hypertrophic muscular development. Basically, I focus on isotonic exercises, usually traditional machines. You find in the gym transitioning to functional movement patterns with bigger loads. In this cycle, we focus on rotation, extension, anti rotation and extension and sensor exercises, basically the plyometrics and metrics, and having all those machines allow me to work on a linear movement, not allowing the player to escape from the, uh, a clean and, um, correct muscle, uh, workout. If you go into functional with higher loads and you don't, uh, you, you, the players doesn't have the doesn't dominate, doesn't control the technique. It's not so productive, especially on muscle building. It's easier to go with the machines, training, exercise, normal gym exercises for them to build those squats, those bench presses at end, and build the lows and build the muscle recruitment, and also the synchronization of their muscle fibers, allowing them to increase, uh, the technique with, uh, less, uh, uh, injury risk on the second cycle. When you go to the specific trans exercises and at transfer already to the sports techniques, introduction of Teo techniques into the strength program, with the transfer exercises in connection with the strength exercises, we started unilateral mainly one leg strength exercise, because Tedo is standing on one leg aching with the other followed by Teo movement patterns, either in the exercise build or just adjacent to the exercise. So you do a strength exercise together with a, a Teo movement, allowing the transfer, um, of the training into the technical training. Of course, the introduction of resisted or assisted Teo exercises, the development of strength in the sport specific movement pattern either by grading op opposition to your kicks or to your punches. You, we all do these, uh, working with rubber bands, working with weights, um, working with the, your partner. It's one of the best ways of introducing a C te exercises for strength in the sport specific, uh, um, techniques while my third cycle that's when I go into the VPT training, he get velocity based training power, all these, um, Instagram videos that everybody likes to see of the players using those, um, minds, uh, uh, barbells and the land mines and, uh, the jumpings and all these things on unilateral changing of the direction. So basically I go to maximum strength, exercise in connection with Teo specific movement patterns, and they're used more, much more frequently than before promoting bigger muscle fiber recruitment and synchronization, and also bigger transfer to the sport specific technique that is done in almost every exercise. Then that's the secret that transfer of the exercise exercise have to be. Um, when you do strength training, it's very hard to create a transfer to Teo. Something that you building doing a big and heavy squat does not necessarily transfer you to a powerful kick unless your strength and conditioning training is associated with the Teo training. The trend these days is actually to have strengths and conditioning and Teo integrated, not to have someone else do your strength and conditioning training that is not more specific. And then later on the te session, it's good in, as I said, in the first cycles in the beginner athletes, when we go to the, um, higher development, uh, athletes, you should actually consider doing both of an integrated approach. And the second part of the second third cycle will be the exercise that are con connected to the conducted on the optimal force, uh, sorry, optimal velocity thresholds, minimizing the fatigue and looking to increase the force velocity profile from the athletes into both the strengths and speed access. So when you, uh, have force plates, so you don't even need force plates, you can have, um, these camera apps that will allow you to identify speed and, uh, together with different thresholds on the way you put on them back squads. For example, we are allowed to, to create a force velocity profile, and that's, uh, something that is very easy to do. The other part is to identify the rates of, uh, uh, of effort rest for individual outlets, and that with Alet analyzer analyzing the videos from the matches or even test matches, you have, you can identify that islet has their own fighting style. And with some way divisions having more dynamic matches and active peers than other lighter weight divisions tend to have a higher movement load than heavier players, ATLA analyzer with the video, um, tool allows you to actually measure exactly the active and rest and what kind of techniques on which kind of round which kind of match. Um, of course, uh, the size of the field of play is the same for every weight division. Therefore, the distance and durations of the active periods are also relatively different with heavier athletes because they're being bigger, interacting more with the opponents and technical change than in technical displacement will, uh, allow them to have different kind of, um, action. And to put it mildly, they have less space and time to move closer or away from the opponent resulting in more time in their clean positions. When you plan the group sessions, you have to take these into consideration. So technical teams, especially during the recent pandemic restrictions, have to work with smaller groups at the same time, having the difficulty of training with other athletes or on the technical and technical sessions, the fact that you have different ag visions, different weight catches, and they need to work with each other. Um, there are, you have to find the common denominators on the effort rest time. So that's important to identify all the athletes create one, two groups, or even a, a pattern if you're like enough that works for all of them. And with the video analysis you might in my club, I came to the conclusion that most of my team, the team one, um, has like an active, uh, uh, effort rest periods of six seconds for active kicking, six seconds for clenching and six seconds for active displacement without techniques that allows me to build a complex high intensity interval training. So instead of just having a, a tab or whatever, like, um, high intentionally and pause or, uh, work, pause, work, pause, interval training, my heat trainings are mimicking the video analysis. So I can have a very high intensity, uh, intensity the interval. Then I have a lower intensity interval that would be the clin. And then I would have a active, uh, uh, rest interval. So instead of having a, a heat training that has active and, or high and low, I will actually have a very high, high, and low, um, and training. And it will allow me to allow the player to have the, the training that will basically compensate and mimic their competition style. This podcast is supported by Hawkin dynamics. Hawkin dynamics believes that technology's most useful when it stays out of your way. That's why Hawkin developed the world's first wireless force plate system with extreme usability. It is the quickest, easiest to use and most robust solution on the market. It is trusted by all sports organizations, large and small, as well as tactical military and rehabilitation environments around the globe. It's forced testing in the Palm of your hand here at Vintech center, we use Hawking dynamics to test and monitor our team. The cloud-based platform allows us to access data and publish a variety of reports on the go. My favorites are trend reports, and of course, weight reports where I can monitor different metrics to view progress and identify performance indicators, or to compare weights to a baseline data range. I use it on a daily basis to identify readiness. A simple jumping test takes me less than a minute to assess the entire team, having my own Hawking dynamics force plate allows me to test reactive strength. Maximum strength rate of force development is symmetry and so much more. The realtime feedback on the app is useful not only for testing, but as a training tool, making it more accurate. And at the same time, more engaging for the athletes. If you're interested in learning more about Hawkin dynamics or getting your own, the team can be reached at info, head dynamics.com or on Instagram or Twitter Hawkin dynamics.

Speaker 3: 18:50

This podcast is sponsored by first beat sports. First beat sports combines the most comprehensive analytics in team sports with the customizable interface to support real time monitoring recovery, monitoring, performance management, and much more the result, data driven decisions that support your athletes and team training, recovery and performance goals. First beat sports is trusted by professionals over 23,000 athletes representing over 1000 teams around the world, rely on the solution to train and plan with confidence on a team and individual level using HR-V based insights. For more information, please visit our website. First beat.com/sports.

Speaker 2: 19:32

When talking about Teon training, we need to talk about ATLA analyzer. ATLA analyzer is the first Techon specific outlet monitoring system. It is used by both national teams, regional squads and small clubs to maximize performance, prevent injuries and communicate with both athletes and trainer teams, outlet, analyzers, a cloud based system with a friendly smartphone app. You can plan and monitor every aspect of your training. Even when you are not in the gym with your team. The easy to use video analysis tool is not like anything you've seen. It helps you understand your athletes and even their opponents making this app. The only tool you need to manage your team before I used Alet analyzer, I spent an absurd amount of time in front of the computer, creating spreadsheets and using half a dozen software solutions. I have athletes in my center, but also abroad and with Alet analyzer, it's much easier to communicate plan and monitor their development. Now that I have extra time, I can focus on what matters training my athletes, and it still leave me some room to do other stuff like this. Teon podcast. Alet analyzer offers you a two weeks free trial, visit them@atlaanalyzer.com to sign up or click on the link in the episode description to get the most of your free trial. I recommend you first book, a free personal demonstration with Nicholas. It'll give you a great insight of whatlet analyzer has to offer you and your team. It is well worth the time

Speaker 1: 20:54

You're listening to the tech one do podcast. Now back to your hosts, coach Caesar, Valenti team, and Peter Nestler.

Speaker 2: 21:05

Welcome back. So when identifying the optimal force velocity profile of the athletes, the force places or optical devices like smartphone cameras can be very, very useful in strength testing. We use dynamic plates and software to identify several parameters, allowing us to create these horizontal and vertical force velocity curves, or our players for both monitoring and planning of trends training. We use the push device, a wireless accelerometry that we can use for monitoring and identify optimal speed and power values, values that guide our training program. We move then since then to, um, output sports. It is a little, um, more dynamic allows you also to, to enter into the rehabilitation, um, training. And if you already do the planning and the training prioritization somewhere else, you don't really need the push, uh, platform or the cloud platform. The device is still very good. I still use it for barbell velocity. I just don't use it for, um, all kind of, uh, um, T trainings that I use with the, with in the, in the club, because it's, you can attach it to the ankles. You can attach it, um, to your feet. Actually, I will always have one of those output devices in my backpack when I travel to competition, even to monitor just fatigue, because a simple counter movement jump will measure if your athlete is actually, um, uh, tired or not, and that's something that you can, uh, always travel. It's so small, smaller than, uh, Bluetooth headsets. And you can, um, carry to do all the time on the battery lasts a long time. So when the other part, uh, it's also to identify the rate of force development. Some studies say that, uh, rate for Sebel that has the right correlations to the maximum speed development of the players and using tests like an isometric mid type pool test on the forest plates, we can identify honest peak outputs and RFD in different moments of the exertion, timeline, coaching cues, and regularly conducting these tests allows me to monitor strengths development in the easier and faster way than just a simple one repetition max testing. And as you guys know, I'm, I'm a very data driven guy. I collect as much data as I can. Um, as long as I'm not, uh, getting too much data to sync, uh, on it. And the data that I find that is actually more important. And that was the first equipment I start using a long time ago. Of course, besides one RMS at the time was the heart rate heart rate in training. And later on heart rate variability using the sensors, especially the first bit sensors that do have very accurate, uh, data allows you to interpret the training and the level of training, and also the recovery from the players. It allows you to also to, to monitor stress and fatigue. It's, uh, one of those things that allows you to plan and monitor your players to avoid burnout later on in the game. And, uh, when it comes to strengths training, interpreting the results from the strengths testing and all the data needs a long timeline since the first perceptible changes need to be discarded due to the fact that the technical acquisition of the movement is the first reason for the increase of every, of almost every value in the metrics we analyze. The players are not getting stronger. After four weeks of training, after four weeks, the data can be interpreted with cleaner values because the first data was the player learning how to do the movement. Therefore being able to recruit the muscles correctly, to make a stronger bench, press a stronger back squat, stronger front squad. So after those four weeks, you have a cleaner data allowing us to start monitoring and programming accordingly, and it can be seen if you use, uh, acentric utilization rate, uh, reports from force plates. Again, data is a lot of, uh, important stuff, but knowing your athletes, planning the training for them not getting a copy paste plan from everyone else is what's gonna make you and get better in the game. And if you have any questions, if you wanna see some of my data, if you wanna see some of the testings I do, if you wanna have interpretation of data, or if you wanna actually know how to use some of the software I use to reach out, um, you can reach me at, uh, Tedo podcast, gmail.com on the at Teon podcast on Instagram and at Teon cast on Facebook. So thank you for listening. I know I speak a lot. I know it was almost like a lecture very fast in a very complicated terminology, but it was important to answer some of the questions you guys had. And it was a pleasure being here with you and with everyone who's listening out there. This was a techn podcast. If you haven't already listened to our other episodes that are available wherever, listen to your podcast, we are releasing new episodes. Every Tuesday, stay tuned, subscribe to the podcast, leave us a positive review and share it with your friends. See you next time

Speaker 1: 25:41

You've been listening to the Tew, do podcast, keeping the fans, coaches, and high performance athletes up to date with the latest news and trends on Olympic Tew. Do your host coach Caesar Valenti team has almost 20 years of experience with high performance Teon DOE and has worked all around the world. As a TaeKwonDo trainer. Peter Nestler has been teaching Teon dough for more than 20 years, and he is currently one of the top referees in Europe. We hope you enjoyed the show, make sure to like rate and review and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, find us on Instagram at tech. One do podcast on facebook@techonedocastandthewebsitetechonedopodcast.com. See you next time.