Every sport has its principles and so is taekwondo. If you want to excel in this martial art game, there are top principles also referred to as tenets you need to instill in your classes and real life. What are taekwondo tenets? The tenets refer to the opinions, principles or even doctrines that all the taekwondo students must hold and master to excel in the game.
They guide them on how to play the game, how to relate with people, teammates, and opponents; plus how to remain true to themselves when practicing the martial art. The tenets are classified into five categories although teaching in different schools varies. In this article, we are going to review the top five best taekwondo tenets taught all over the world.
1. Perseverance
Perseverance is one of the traits that involve a person encouraging and motivating themselves to keep ongoing. Being perseverance means moving forward even if your spirit and body wants to quit. Taekwondo may be a fun game to watch but it is not an easy game to practice. It is even worse when it comes to competition levels since one may even incur injuries from the blows thrown by the opponent. It takes perseverance to want to continue with the match even when you get an injury, or even when you are tired.
Perseverance extends to attending to classes even when you feel completely exhausted or bruised from previous exercises. Taekwondo requires one to continuously exercise and practices to understand all the moves. Also, you need to remain fit to be able to keep up with your opponent. All these self-motivation moves are what we call perseverance and they eventually pay off.
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2. Courtesy
One of the best and most crucial traits the taekwondo teams must practice is being courteous towards each other. This means being nice to other people and respecting them all the time. This is a game that requires total respect ranging from the couch, the referee and even towards your opponents and team members.
It draws back to the golden rule that you should treat others as you would like them to treat you. Note that all these principles are also taught to the young kids in taekwondo classes. Unlike adults who can easily understand what is expected of them when it comes to being courteous, the kids are taught through demonstrations for better understanding. How?
- Helping around their homes with chores such as, cleaning dishes and removing trashes
- Being thankful when given something or when someone does something for them.
- Addressing elders as ma’am and sir
- Helping someone to pick up something they have dropped.
3. Self-control
Self -control means knowing how to tame your emotions even when provoked or when in a delicate situation. Practising self-control is not an easy attribute that you can easily learn in a day, it takes time and that is the reason it is taught in taekwondo classes. You need to exercise patience when working with your teammates and relating with other people out of the arena. This also extends to the couch.
As a coach, you can’t react or express anger towards your team members every time they do something not pleasing. You need to learn how to suppress your anger and deal with each individual. We all have different personalities and knowing how to accommodate different personalities is what keeps us moving and excelling. How can exercise self-control?
- Don’t answer back even if someone provokes you
- Stay calm and cool when you feel like yelling at someone who did you wrong
- Focusing on bettering yourself and not competing with teammates or other people
4. Unbeatable Spirit
This principle is closely related to the perseverance as it means not giving in to defeat, and coming up with ways or solutions to overcome the issue at hand. Taekwondo is a sport that you learn with time. People have different understandings whereby some may take a little more time to completely understand the right tricks.
So, the taekwondo students are taught to exercise unbeatable spirit in their classes regardless of how tough it may be. They should learn how to overcome the fear and come up with schedules that work for them to overcome their failures in the class. They should also apply the same energy and spirit in real life.
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5. Integrity
In simple words, we can define integrity as the ability of people to differentiate between right and wrong, or standing up for what is right regardless. Practising integrity is crucial in taekwondo as it helps one to excel and avoid issues such as getting disqualified while competing. It starts with being honest to yourself when learning and practising the martial art.
You need to remain truthful to your coaches, teammates, and people around you. For example, if you promise your teammate to help them with their lessons or catch up with you, take it upon you to keep the end of the deal. You don’t need to ask them to pay or favors in exchange if this was not the agreement you initially had with them.
- If you happen to mistakenly carry something that does not belong to you, it could be a taekwondo uniform or a helmet, make sure to return it to the rightful owner.
- Other areas that you can practice integrity apart from in taekwondo classes include;
- Do not lie to your friends or family members to please them. For example, if you are a parent do not lie to your kids you will buy them something that you are sure you cannot afford.
- Always remain true to your friends; if they tell you a secret that you are supposed to keep, do not tell it to other people
- If a cashier gives you more money when giving you change, it is upon you to notify him/her
The kids should be taught to stay true to the people around them. If a kid gets to the class late they should take responsibility for it. A child should learn how to take responsibility of their mistakes in and out of taekwondo classes.
These are the five tenets taught in taekwondo classes for both young and adult students to emulate and practice in class and real life. The adults are expected to lead by the right examples to the young ones as they look up to them. On the other hand, the young ones are taught these tenets so they can grow up being responsible, respectable, and succeed in whatever they do.
