Intro
When Danielle reached out to me about coaching in July 2021 about the prospect of handling her squad’s training and nutrition for the European Taekwondo Championships in Croatia. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity.
Having handled a few powerlifters in the past, I was confident that I’d be able to support her and the team in not only making weight for competition but improve on their current nutrition and strength. All with the aim of getting all 3 squad members onto the podium.
Nuneaton Taekwon-Do had 3 contenders in different age groups, Billy in the veterans, Ella in her first Senior Women’s competition and George in the under 18s.
Having had a few close calls with athletes making weight before, Danielle asked me first and foremost to make sure that no big water cuts or sweating out was needed. It always sounds easy on the surface, but making weight is usually a close call for most athletes.
Along with this Danielle also asked me to support the team in opportunity areas of strength and conditioning, which I was more than obliged to do.
The Process
We started the coaching process in mid-January and with the team flying out to Croatia on the 25th of March, the timelines were quite tight to make improvements in those areas.
Spoiler. We managed to do it.
Naturally, the first step was to meet the team and discuss how we can work together to achieve those goals, whilst also looking for any quick wins.
Once we’d done this we started working together to add strength and power in the areas where it was needed, along with getting nutrition in check.
For Billy, this meant working with exercises that could help with his sparring and executing them at sub maximal load but with maximum power. Billy also trains a lot, so we decided that he needed to eat more to fuel the training.
Who doesn’t like more carbs anyway?
For George, we decided to build a bit of muscle all over to add some size before competition. Together we were confident that George’s Taekwon-Do training and cardio routine would keep him mobile, so we introduced a full body hypertrophy training program alongside a target protein intake to add some more muscle.
This was Ella’s first senior competition so we first wanted to make sure she would make weight comfortably and then also improve her core and unilateral leg strength. This meant we needed to dial in her nutrition a bit tighter than George and Billy’s as she needed to drop 2 kilos. Alongside this, there was some Covid thrown in for good measure, but Ella handled it really well.
Plan set. We then checked in one-on-one weekly together and adjusted where needed to get the best result we could. Constantly revaluating and improving. This process is always interesting and as a coach, the feedback on what works and what doesn’t is really valuable from any client.
The Result
Fast forward to competition. A nervous coach but a successful weigh in, with no water or food cuts and no sweating, the team progressed onto the 5 days of competition and the sole focus was on making sure the team were fuelled for the competition day after day. We utilised a variety of carbohydrate sources at different times every day to maximise energy availability for competition.
Making weight for competition is one thing, but making sure you can get adequately fuelled fast afterwards is especially important in all sports. In this case, the squad had a day until they stopped on the mats, so we had time to take a slower approach. Adding onto this that we needed no depletion or dropping of carbs before weigh in, things were much easier.
Unfortunately, Billy did not make it out to Croatia, but George and Ella managed to bag 1 silver and 4 bronze medals between them in both Sparring and Patterns, which was a huge success and exceeding expectations!
The learning? Training specifically for a sport is great. You can become an expert in the movements required to do well.
But when you extend your training and add resistances that aren’t within your normal regimen, alongside nutrition to improve performance, you can really exceed to a new level beyond other competitors.
Are you interested in getting strength and nutrition results?
Reach out to me here
Or alternatively drop me a mail at ConcentricNutrition@gmail.com
Thanks for reading!
Paul
