How To Be An "All-Around" Athlete: Part One (grace and precision)

I have had some students who seem to have some innate ability to just be awesome at whatever sport they get into. These students are referred to as “all-around” athletes. You can pick them out in Taekwondo class; they are the ones that are striking targets with grace and precision, tend to have a smile on their face while moving and seem to be the most focused. This blog post is part one of three, addressing what makes the “all-around” athlete so good at sports.

            Controlling your body in sporting situations will undoubtedly be a foundation for success. When (most) students start their Taekwondo journey, their intentions are far from developing body control. They want to be able to kick high and kick fast, and jump and spin while doing it, just like their favorite characters on their TV shows (or movies). Although the intention is not bad, I would like to express an alternate view of the benefit in training in Taekwondo (particularly, this school’s programs).

            We can all agree that an “all-around” athlete is one who is good at whatever sport they take up. The belief that the athlete was born with a gift that allows them to excel should be challenged. Consider that the athlete is not be born with the athletic ability, but actually has developed, to a high degree, a large number of different motor abilities. In fact, this consideration has been a well-supported by many in the fields of motor development and motor control. When describing motor abilities, many people (as we will do) turn to the listing of perceptual motor abilities developed by Edwin Fleishman. This group of motor abilities includes multi-limb coordination, Control precision/Aiming, Response Orientation, Rate Control, Reaction Time, Wrist/Finger/Arm Speed and Hand/Finger Dexterity. To define all of these abilities would be exhausting and not the intention of this article. It is important to know that all of those abilities do contribute to an athlete’s ability to success in any physical endeavor.

            The wonderful thing about training in Taekwondo (actually Strickland’s Martial Arts program in particular) is it incorporates drills that help develop all of the motor abilities from low to high degrees. Let’s look at the weapons classes that are available to our students. These teach/develop certain abilities (Response Orientation, Control Precision, Hand/Finger Dexterity, etc.) that the Taekwondo class alone does not achieve. For instance, when we work drills in escrima classes, the abilities developed can be used to better control the swinging of a baseball bat or a golf club. Unfortunately, there are a number of students that do not express interest. This shrinks the range of the different motor abilities that can be developed. When working target (or bags) drills, we focus on aiming, rate control, or speed of arm (leg) movement. All of which transfer to other sports such as American Football (hand placement for linemen). If we take sparring into analysis, we see that a multitude of motor abilities are being developed and can transfer to soccer where players need to react to the other team.

            I want to take this time to mention abilities that relate to gross motor skills such as strength (static, dynamic and explosive), flexibility, gross body coordination/equilibrium and endurance. We could also mention balance (both static and dynamic), visual acuity and visual tracking. All of these physical proficiency movements (as they are called) can be better developed in Taekwondo class, as well as weapons classes (Bo/Chuck/Escrima).

            When all of these abilities are learned, and developed to a high degree, it helps to create the “all-around” athlete that we might want to be. The scope of this article was to briefly describe the physical attributes that make athletes successful in sports or any physical activity/movement, and how our programs at Strickland’s Martial Arts helps to develop those skills. However, the physical domain of human movement does not describe the success entirely. In order to do that, we further our conversation in part two and three of How To Be An “All-Around” Athlete.