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Shinergy Youngstars[battle] Spring Cup 2011

Today, the "Shinergy Youngstars[battle] Spring Cup 2011" took place. From my school, there were 5 competitors, all of whom took home one or more medals. At the end of the day, my 5 students scored a total of 7 medals.

The Shinergy Youngstars[battle] is all about speed, agility, precision and coordination. There's no actual fighting there. This is due to pedagogical reasons. We (that is, the Shinergy instructors) don't really believe in kids beating the hell out of each other in front of their cheering parents. I strongly believe that trainers should focus on building a strong athletic base with their younger students before having them fight in a competitive environment.

Yesterday's battle was split into three events:
  • Agility Parcours
  • Power Punch
  • Flying High Kick
Let's take a short look at the details of those competitions:

Agility parcours
The agility parcours is just what the name implies. A parcours was set of, consisting of 3 standing bags, a couple of jump hurdles, a slalom track and a plyometric hurdle.
Students were told to execute a jab/cross/roundhouse kick combo onto each of the standing bags, then jump over the jumping hurdles, run the slalom track and finally crawl under the plyometric hurdle. We had the students repeat the whole thing as often as possible in 30 seconds. The student to overcome the most obstacles would win the event.

Power Punch
A preparatory exercise for breaking competitions, the power punch event is all about speed, precision and, obviously, power. Two standing bags are set up in such a way that they can be used as a goal (just as in soccer). The student's task is to hit a focus pad as hard and precise as possible so that it lands in the goal area. On each pass, the distance between the students and the goal area gets bigger, those who fail the pass drop out of the competition. Although I'd rather have a proper breaking contest, this form of competition is easier on the youth's joints and therefore safer, according to the host of the event.

Flying high kick
Just as the name implies, competing students are to jump over a hurdle/obstacle and hit a kicking target behind that obstacle. On each pass, the hurdle height increases. Failure to jump over the hurdle and/or hit the target results in the athletes elimination from the contest.

Overall, the event was great. I really got thinking about the pros and cons of competition in a pedagogical context, but I guess I'll cover that in a future posting. Also, I'll put up pictures as soon as I get them.

So long,

take care
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