Real Beauty Is Powerful

∇ Popular Taebo = Taebo is the combination of Taekwondo, Karate, kick-boxing, and aerobics. Each martial art’s offensive and defensive moves are evenly included. One of its characteristics is that the movements are short in range, but fast. In order to retrieve effective movements, Taebo-exclusive music is used.

After developing in the U.S. and gaining a great popularity, Taebo was introduced domestically 3 years ago, and it has been particularly popular since last year. Secret to its success is strong music with powerful movements. It has already established itself as `regular menu` for aerobic courses at fitness clubs.

Fitness club personnel all agree that members increased from indirect effect of the advertisement (LG Card), in which actress Lee Young-Ae beats on a sand bag with gloves on.

“Generation of the simple and repeated aerobics is gone. Recent sport involves active and fast movements that include shouting to release stress,” said Kappa Fitness (02-546-3700) Abgujung-brach’s trainer Woo Ji-In (29. female).

∇ Boxing and kick-boxing = Martial-art aerobics did exist even before Taebo. A major example is boxing-aerobics. Former WBC champion Byun Jung-Il (37) introduced revised boxing-aerobics, which first developed in the U.S., for the Koreans.

At `Byun Jung-Il Boxing Club` (02-911-2747), which is located in Seongbuk-gu’s Jongam-dong, Seoul, both men and women crowd in. As martial arts aerobics currently went through a boom, female members steadily increased up to over 100, compared to 10 members 3 years ago.

In the Kick-boxing diet program, kicking is added on boxing aerobics’ knee and elbow hits. Its advantage is that it uses more of the lower body, compared to boxing aerobics, and self-defense can also be learnt naturally.

∇ Exercise effects = Martial arts aerobics is less boring than the previous aerobics, because they can apply different movements of each martial arts. Although they involve the entire body in exercises, body parts are clearly divided in movements to enable diets by body parts. Adult-based 50-minute exercise uses up 300 – 400 kilocalorie in average, which is more than other aerobic exercises like jogging.

There is no danger of injury by crashing into each other, but ligament or muscles may be hurt from time to time, because the exercises occur in high intensity and in short amount of time.

“Warm-up exercises like stretching and slow, repeated movements are important to avoid injury. And after such aerobics, finishing exercises are also important,” said Professor Park Won-Ha of Sungkyunkwan University’s School of Medicine at Samsung Seoul Hostpital.

Martial arts aerobics can also help mental health. Yonsei University’s Professor Min Sung-Gil explains, “Beating and kicking movements may seem violent, but if they are enjoyed as pure sports, they may help releasing stresses.”

Ji-Wan Cha maruduk@donga.com