THE EFFECT OF 6 WEEKS OF PHYSICAL FITNESS TRAINING ON BODY COMPOSITION, ENDURANCE, AND SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE OF 14-17 YEARS OLD TAEKWONDO ATHLETES

Journal: Malaysian Sports Journal (MSJ)
Author: Pedram Barari Bijarga

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Doi: 10.26480/msj.02.2023.26.30

Taekwondo (TKD) is a popular sport and is generally considered beneficial for health. The present study aimed to compare six weeks of physical fitness training on body composition, endurance, and specific performance of Taekwondo boys aged 14-17. Methods: 30 young men (14-17 years old) taekwondo players participated in this study, this number of players was collected in four taekwondo clubs, in the form of available samples and randomly divided into two experimental groups (15 n) and Control (15 n) were divided. This study evaluates the body composition (body fat) from the in-body device, evaluates endurance from the push-up and sit-up tests, and also evaluates the level of specialized performance of taekwondo athletes with the Mitt-kicking and Bag-kicking tests. In this study, the experimental group performed physical fitness exercises for six weeks, three times a week, and for 1 hour. It should be noted that the control group only did their routine Taekwondo exercises and did not participate in any of the training activities. They did not participate in the physical fitness program. In this study, the statistical analysis of 2*2 combined analysis of variance was used using SPSS26 software, the significance level in this study is less than 0.05. Results: Baseline comparisons revealed no significant differences between groups at baseline testing for all variables. Overall, EG improved significantly between baseline and after six weeks on all variables. On the other hand, the CG improved significantly on Mitt-kicking and Bag-kicking after six weeks. In between-group comparison, the EG scored better than the CG, the 1 Min sit-up, Mitt-kicking, and Bag-kicking. Conclusion: The results of the present study showed that six weeks of physical fitness exercises affected the body mass index, the endurance of the core region, and the performance of taekwondo athletes. These exercises can be used for pre-season training.