Kickin’ It at Cowboys Stadium

DALLAS—Dressed in shorts and T-shirts, about 120 Taekwondo students from all over the United States lined up in the red zone of the same football field where Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott regularly throws touchdown passes against opponents. The students’ faces showed a mixture of excitement and nervous apprehension. While the stadium’s massive, 160 foot wide by 72 foot tall jumbotron above showed clips of past Cowboys games, the Taekwondo students bowed to their coaches and began a slow but increasingly aerobic warm-up. Within minutes, sweat rolled from foreheads to cheekbones and dripped from chins onto the artificial turf below. They progressed to agility drills, where 1988 Seoul Olympics gold medalist and coach Arlene Limas reminded them to have “fast feet.”

The students at the inaugural three-day sport Taekwondo seminar in Dallas came with different goals. Most athletes were there because they dream of standing on the podium at the Olympics wearing a gold medal. Some just wanted to test their endurance and build fortitude. Others, very young, were there because their coaches saw something extraordinary in their already swift-yet-smooth footwork. Regardless of the reason, the athletes all knew that they’d work hard this weekend.

D.S. Lee, USA Taekwondo (USAT) Juniors Team coach, organized the Cowboys Stadium Sport Taekwondo Seminar, pulling together 20 coaching colleagues from Virginia, Florida, Illinois, and all over Texas. Lee envisioned a gathering in which coaches could leave their egos on the sidelines and collaborate to build a stronger Team USA for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

“The reason why I hosted this event was for the athletes—to give them a training environment that will produce greatness,” Lee said. The event was also meant to “get the coaches to be open to training together with athletes so we can all raise the levels.”

The coaches didn’t disappoint, raising the figurative bar as high as the field goal post overhead in the end zone.

“Keep moving,” Limas, shouted at the students during agility drills. “Good! Very good,” she added encouragingly when athletes pushed themselves.

After the spirited warmup, participants separated into three pods for more personalized coaching. Limas led a group of older students through a series of drills to quicken reaction time, improve the ability to process verbal and visual information, and recognize distance—all in real time.

Athletes test their ability to process visual information in real time.

 

In other pods, younger students worked on balance-challenging front leg kicking drills—keeping their lead leg high in the air and thrusting it forward by pushing off with their base foot. Smiles emerged periodically from members of the group. Sweat continued to drip. T-shirts were well-drenched. These drills may have looked simple and fun to the casual observer, but they were deceivingly challenging.

Two hours later, the students bowed to their instructors, took commemorative photos, and left for a hotel shower, good meal, and an early bedtime. The next day’s training was moved up by two hours; they needed a good night’s rest.

Day Two: Twelve Hours of Taekwondo

Professor Victor Manuel Mendoza Guzman, a sports psychologist with the Mexican Taekwondo Federation, stood before a sea of athletes Saturday morning at Blue Sky Sports Complex in The Colony, careful to pause his message so that USAT Senior National Team Coach Lynda Laurin could translate his message into English. It was important to get the details right. Guzman, a leading authority in sports science, has had repeated success coaching athletes on Mexico’s national team, so Lee wanted him to share his experience with the athletes.
 

Victor Manuel Mendoza Guzman helps an athlete stretch.

Guzman’s work isn’t solely Taekwondo-based. He works with athletes of all sports, evaluating how they move and helping them improve by increasing efficient motion.

“I work on the entire development of an athlete,” he tells the students, “from the development at age nine to world champion—to Olympic champion.”

Guzman began his statistical presentation by humbling the athletes, who just two hours earlier were tested in a series of agility speed drills. He asked for a show of hands of those who considered themselves fast. Half the athletes raised their hands. Then Guzman wrote down a number on a whiteboard.

“Did anyone have this?” he asked, pointing to a time of 3.9.

No hands.

“Or a 4?” he continued.

One athlete toward the back of the room lifted his hand.

As it turns out, most athletes at first aren't fast—not as fast as they can be. Guzman said it’s usually because there’s a part of their body that impedes efficient movement. That’s where sports science comes in.

Guzman and his team specialize in evaluating athletes, finding their deficits, and then prescribing exercises to do everything from loosen tight muscles to build lactic acid endurance. Only then can an athlete truly make gains in performance, he said.

Guzman helps an athlete with resistant exercises to improve flexibility.

 

The students, previously seated on the floor in a semicircle, inched closer to the center of the room to get a closer look as Guzman performed resistance stretching exercises on an athlete to increase his flexibility. Within minutes, the athlete said with a smile that his hamstrings weren’t as tight and that his legs now felt supple.

Smart training involves specific levels of development over time, according to Guzman.

“Sometimes we think, ‘I’m going to do it the way I want,’” Guzman said. “But you have to do it a very specific way. It’s called goal setting.”

Before the students broke for lunch, Laurin gave the world-class athletes in the room a chance to share their experience with the younger, up-and-coming competitors.

Salma Castellanos, USAT Senior National Team member from Laredo, Texas, encouraged seminar participants to keep working hard.

“Even though it’s hard, I keep going and good things happen,” Castellanos said.

Fellow USAT Senior National Team member Ara White of Largo, Fla., agreed.

“You can never give up,” she said. White revealed that she lost a lot of matches earlier in her career. “Every single time, I got third place, third place, third place, third place. Then I started to win. I started to get first place.

“So you can never give up.”

After lunch, participants were back on the mat for another conditioning session. Many of the older athletes had taken seminars like this before—multiple two-hour training sessions a day, each one building on the next technique- and stamina-wise. So they encouraged younger students with smiles and high-fives.

The coaches rotated leading footwork drills to help the athletes move more efficiently. Periodically, Limas would stop a group to make technique adjustments.

“It’s muscle memory,” she said after stopping the participants during a sparring strategy partner drill. “It’s teaching your muscles good habits or bad habits. Put good habits into your training—quality stuff.”

The athletes continued the drill with a little more passion, their previously tired kihaps a little louder.

Two hours later, the coaches slowed down the pace by leading athletes in a series of stretches. The already quiet training area grew more still when a tall young man walked to the front of the room. Some of the younger students lifted out of their stretch a bit to find their parents in the bleachers and point to the man.

“It’s him!” one boy excitedly mouthed to his mom in the stands.

Dressed in black and smiling easily, Carlos Navarro stopped at the front of the room and surveyed the crowd of athletes, now thoroughly tired. Navarro, who represented Mexico in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, is a fan favorite of many Taekwondo students in Texas.

 

Rio Olympian Carlos Navarro and coach Greg Tubbs.

Navarro offered thanks to his fans for supporting his Olympic journey. To those with Olympic dreams, he advised that they keep training hard.

“It’s in the training that we actually win gold,” Navarro said.

 

After a short break, another session began—with more conditioning drills. Participants donned sparring gear and trades kicks. Before long, the last sparring session for the day was over, and a select group moved into a smaller room to perfect poomsae technique with an expert.

 

Elva Pai Adams, bronze medalist in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, doesn’t spar anymore since tearing a ligament in her knee. These days, she’s drawn to the more precise movements of sport poomsae.

Adams, a member of the USAT National Poomsae Team and an international referee, is well known for providing detail-oriented poomsae corrections—foot placement down to the inch and knifehand blocks at the precise angle.

She spent most of the time late Saturday demonstrating and correcting stances, basic punches, and proper presets to primary blocks. Adams encouraged students to progress smoothly throughout their forms, resisting the urge to rise up and down.

“Don’t bob,” she said, showing students how to maintain their stance between moves.

Elva Pai Adams leads a group of students through Taeguek basics.

She detailed the most current standards of poomsae, reminding athletes that sport poomsae judges take off big points for mindless mistakes like not tucking the fists when kicking.

While the pace of the seminar day’s final session was much slower, the precision was more demanding.

“It’s one movement,” Adams said, showing how to properly return to a ready stance. “Don’t give away easy points.”

Day Three: Mock Tournament Matches

As athletes tried to shake off fatigue and stretch out sore muscles from the prior day’s 12-hour training session, coaches gathered to assign ring duties. On the final day of the seminar, athletes sparred one another in practice matches, applying the drills and skills learned and developed the two previous days.

 

Arlene Limas readies to coach one of her students in a mock tournament match
while Brian Singer acts as head referee.

Athletes were encouraged to take risks—to try new techniques.

“We already know you can score with fast kick,” a coach told an athlete between rounds. “Now we want to try some other things. To get better.”

The athlete nodded and smiled.

Parents sat in the stands as the matches progressed. The majority had watched every minute of the seminar training from the bleachers, and many said they were happy with how the weekend went. Most confirmed that they would return next year if the seminar were held again.

Jody Miner of Florida said her family was determined to make it to Dallas because of the caliber of coaches present. They almost didn’t arrive in time, though. Their original flight out of Orlando was canceled due to Hurricane Matthew’s approach. So the family switched tickets, drove to Tampa, and caught one of the last flights out. Other families from their school weren’t so lucky.

“We’ve been to others (seminars) before,” Miner said. “The level of coaching (here) is unbelievable. It’s well-rounded. My kids are getting the same focus at 10 and 11 that the juniors and seniors are getting.”

Lee said the across-the-board treatment was intentional. He and his colleagues want to help grow Taekwondo in the future by offering athletes exposure to more innovative coaches, sports science, and high-level athletic training—“so we can all learn and grow.”

“I’m passionate about the sport and I know there are other coaches and athletes who share the same passion,” Lee said. “By coming together we all benefit.”