Photo by llee_wu, used under Creative Commons licence.

To be fitter and fight better, you need to take care of your body.

So as part of our work with young people at Panther Taekwondo Black Belt Academy, we teach them the principles of good nutrition.

The most important thing is that this isn’t about information. Kids know what bad food is – just the same as grown-ups do. They know that they should limit their intake of sweets, fried food and so on. But knowing is not the same as doing. 

We keep all our eating advice general, never specific, so that no child ever feels picked on. And we focus on motivation.

Children sometimes say to their parents that they don’t want to eat any sweets

Children are as smart as adults: they always want to know why. We think that’s perfectly reasonable: after all, as an adult, you wouldn’t follow random instructions that made little sense to you. So we give children reasons to make good choices about nutrition and health. When we say to them  ‘don’t eat sweets’,  we tell them why. If they don’t eat properly – they won’t fight as well. 

Then close to tournaments, it’s boot camp time! Parents are given an information sheet about how to best help and support their children as they train, including the dos and don’t of healthy eating. Newer members sometimes hesitate to enforce this,  but more experienced parents reassure them. I’ve even heard people say of their child: ‘he tells me he doesn’t want any sugar’.

Eat well to fight well! Panther Taekwondo is a great motivator