Lopez Family Kicking for Taekwondo History

Mark LOPEZ - SILVER
Diana Lopez - BRONZE
Steven Lopez  - BRONZE

After suffering his first-ever defeat in three Olympic Games, and first loss in six years, welterweight Steven Lopez (Sugar Land, Texas) rebounded to win a bronze medal Friday night at the Beijing University of Science and Technology Gymnasium.

Italy's Mauro Sarmiento, the eventual silver medalist, defeated Lopez in sudden-death overtime in the quarterfinal round. When Sarmiento advanced to the finals, Lopez was entered into the repechage for one of two bronze medals. Lopez defeated Sebastien Konan from the Ivory Coast, 3-0, and then defeated Azerbaijan's Rashad Ahmadov for the bronze medal, 3-2.

The bronze medal gives the Lopez siblings three medals at the Beijing Games. Diana Lopez captured bronze in the women's featherweight division and Mark Lopez was the silver medalist in the men's featherweight class.

Source:  USA Taekwondo

By ERIC TALMADGE - USOC via AP August 8, 2008
http://www.usolympicteam.com/news/article/3359

BEIJING (AP) Since about as long as she can remember, Diana Lopez has been fighting with her three brothers. Not just little skirmishes or disagreements over bathroom rights, but the all-out, kick-and-punch kind of fighting.

Her parents encouraged it. In fact, it was their dad's idea. And it all seems to be working out pretty well.

The fighting Lopez family - Diana and her older brothers Mark and Steven, with eldest sibling Jean as their coach - are the first trio from the same family to represent the United States at the Olympics since 1904.

They made history when they each won their weight class at the 2005 world taekwondo championships - a feat no three siblings had ever accomplished in the same sport in the same year. Now, having all made the U.S. team, they are making their first appearance together in the Olympics and are ready to make history again.

The last U.S. Olympic trio - Edward, Richard and William Tritschler - failed to medal, in gymnastics.

But the Lopezes are all gold medal contenders.

"I feel like it is almost unfair," said Steven, who at 29 already has two Olympic golds and four world championship titles. "It's like when we go into the ring, it's four to one."

Coach Jean, himself a silver medalist at the 1995 world championships, said fighting comes naturally in his family.

"We have a combative nature," he said. "Taekwondo is just man-against-man, or woman-against-woman, and I think that is what captivated us."

Jean said the family found taekwondo, a Korean martial art that is focused on fast, high kicking, by chance.

His father, Julio, had always liked kung fu movies, and there was a martial arts school just down the street from their house.

"It just happened to be taekwondo," he said.

Jean was soon hooked, and the others were enrolled by their parents not so much as a sporting activity but to instill in them discipline, respect and confidence.

Now, they have helped put taekwondo on the U.S. sports horizon. Steven, for example, was named one of People magazine's hottest bachelors for 2004 - not a common honor for an athlete from an event many Americans still can't pronounce.

By the time they were teens, sparring was a part of life. But fighting in the ring, when it's a family matter, has some different rules.

"My brothers take it easy on their baby sister," said Diana, who will compete in the under 57-kilogram division on Aug. 21. "But I can kick as hard as I want."

"Sometimes she'll graze my face, and I'll think, 'Hey, I just got kicked by my sister,'" said Mark, who also fights on Aug. 21, in the under 68-kilogram class. "It reminds me to try to kick faster."

To train for the games, the Lopez family - along with Charlotte Craig, the fourth member of the U.S. team - spent 10 days in Singapore getting acclimatized and, more importantly, getting used to being away from their home in Sugar Land, Texas, where Jean runs the Elite Taekwondo school.

To save money, Diana and Mark shared a room.

"That was kind of weird," Diana said.

"There are times when I may feel I need to get away," she said. "But if I'm not getting along with Mark, I'll hang out with Steve, and if I'm not getting along with him, there's Jean."

Though Steven has cause to be confident - he hasn't lost a bout since 2002 - the road to gold for Diana and Mark will tough. Both will be fighting against South Korean opponents, and South Korea has never failed to get at least a bronze out of the eight competitors it has sent since taekwondo joined the Olympic roster in 2000.

"The Korean team is a very strong team," Diana said. "Korea is very good at being technical and efficient. But Mark and I make it a fight. We are very confident, and we know our job."

No Koreans are in Steven's weight category, the under 80-kilogram class. Instead, he said that he expects his toughest competition to come from Turkey and Iran.

But he isn't especially worried - for himself or for Mark and Diana.

"The goals, our expectations, are to go out there and win gold medals," he said. "In my opinion, they are ready. This Olympics is very special to us because we will be walking into the opening ceremony as a family."

Mark, 26, was even more confident.

"We are here to make a statement," he said. "We are the best in the world."

Taekwondo begins on Aug. 20 and concludes Aug. 23.

Peoria (IL) Journal Star Editor's note: Sports psychologist Dr. John Murray is providing Journal Star readers daily updates from the Olympics. The former tennis pro and Florida resident is working with judo competitor Adler Volmar. The goal is to offer insight into the mental and psychological aspect of sports, right up to Volmar's matches and immediately following them. The doctor will add some Beijing observations both inside and outside the sports venues. You can read the blog on working with Volmar HERE.

Murray's full work and profile can be found on his own Web site:

http://www.johnfmurray.com/

Boxer Joyce Praises Sport Psychologist, Gerry Hussey

Boxing: Joyce praises sports psychologist

A jubilant John Joe Joyce heaped praise on sports psychologist Gerry Hussey (shown left) after he showed his mental toughness in overcoming Hungary's Gyula Kate, a long-time foe of his.

Yesterday's Olympic first round clash was the fourth championship bout between the light welterweight rivals, with Kate winning the previous three.

But Joyce, 20, showed marvellous composure and used a clever attack plan to claim a deserved 9-5 win and progress through to the last 16, where he will face Felix Diaz of the Dominican Republic.

Hussey, a former amateur boxer who has been the Irish High Performance boxing team's psychologist for the past three years, certainly has a fan in Joyce.

'When Gerry is around, I always do well. I lack self belief sometimes but he looks after all that side of my performance,' said the Mullingar youngster.

'He could not get in here to be with me (today), but he has been working with me in the training camp and the Olympic Village and that preparation really paid off.

'I showed in the ring I was believing in myself and, once I believe in myself, I will perform to my potential and then I can do anything.'

No stone has been left unturned with Hussey, who runs Alpha 1 boxing gym in Galway, even showing the Irish fighters a walk-through DVD of the Olympic Village before their arrival in Beijing.

The Glenamaddy native has helped the Irish team develop psychology systems and techniques in many areas, from building self esteem and self belief to developing communication and relaxation techniques.

And Joyce warned anyone standing in his way of a Beijing medal that with his so-calldd 'bogey man' out of the way, he will only get better.

'I know the longer a tournament goes on the better I get, and that's why I was hoping for a good draw.

'I didn't get it, I got the toughest draw I could have got really because of the respect I have for Kate.

'To have finally beaten this guy will help my confidence. He has been my bogey man in the past. I hope that's the end of him.

'I'm not looking beyond the next fight right now and as a team we're just delighted that we've the two wins from two with Kenny (Egan) winning on Saturday as well.'

Story from RTÉ Sport:
http://www.rte.ie/sport/olympics2008/2008/0811/joycejj.html

Should You Wear RED Shorts?

This "clip" comes from our friends at ScientificBlogging.com

Many sports teams select their uniforms based on the mascot, city or country they are representing and not on a referee’s preference or bias but a new study has found that choosing the color red for a uniform in competitive sports can actually affect the referee’s split-second decision-making ability and even promote a scoring bias.

Psychologists Norbert Hagemann, Bernd Strauss and Jan Leiβing from the University of Münster specifically found that referees tended to assign more points to TaeKwon Do competitors dressed in red than those dressed in blue. The researchers presented 42 experienced tae kwon do referees with videos of blue- and red-clad competitors sparring. The two sets of clips were identical except that the colors were reversed in the second set, making the red athlete appear to be wearing blue and vice versa. The referees were then asked to score the performance of each competitor, red or blue, after each video.

The psychologists found that when the competitors appeared to be wearing red, they were awarded an average of 13% more points than the blue competitors, even though every athlete was presented in both colors at some point. What’s more, points awarded seemed to increase after the blue athlete was digitally transformed into a red athlete and decrease when the red competitor changed to blue.

The findings, which appear in the August 2008 issue of Psychological Science, suggest that referees may hold a split-second bias toward red-clad athletes when the competitors are evenly matched in skill: “Referees’ decisions will ‘tip the scales’ when athletes are relatively well-matched but have relatively small influence when one is clearly superior,” wrote the authors.

“Although there is a need for further research, including research on the effects of different colors, our results suggest a need to change the rules or support referees by providing electronic decision-making aids in those sports in which this color bias may be a problem,” they concluded.

University of North Texas Psychologist to Support U.S. Taekwondo Team

From a UNT News Service press release

Many Americans only dream of attending an Olympic games in person.

But Karen Cogan, an assistant professor of psychology at UNT, has been invited to the Olympics three times to support U.S. athletes.

As a sport psychologist with the U.S. Olympic Taekwondo Team this year, Cogan will provide a listening ear and helpful advice to team members competing at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. She traveled with team members and their coaches to Beijing for an Olympic test event after attending a qualifying event to select the team members last year.

Cogan already has witnessed sport history made at two Winter Olympics – Salt Lake City in 2002 and Torino, Italy, in 2006. As a sport psychologist with the U.S. Freestyle Mogul Team, she helped to provide support to the coaches and athletes - including silver medalists Travis Mayer and Shannon Bahrke in 2002 and bronze medalist Toby Dawson in 2006.

"One of the administrators with the mogul team is now an administrator with the U.S. Olympic Training Center, and he recommended me to the team because I had done good work with the mogul team," Cogan says, adding that she accepted the job as sport psychologist in the 2008 Olympics even though she knew nothing about taekwondo, a Korean martial art and combat sport.

"I asked a lot of questions and learned the terminology. Just by watching, I picked up a lot of things," she says.

Taekwondo is famed for its use of kicking techniques, which distinguishes it from martial arts such as karate or southern styles of kung fu. Under Olympic rules, sparring takes place between two competitors in an area measuring 10 meters square. Each match or bout consists of three nonstop rounds of contact with rest between rounds. Points are awarded for permitted, accurate and powerful techniques to the legal scoring areas; light contact to a scoring area does not score any points.

Cogan says mental preparation and training for taekwondo athletes is, in some respects, very similar to that of other athletes, including the mogul skiers she's counseled.

"Personal issues and anxiety can get in the way of best performances. There's also pressure from well-meaning family members and friends who want to get tickets to competitions and have other requests, and the ability to handle media attention," she says.

Cogan works with athletes on:

• relaxation
  
• management of anxiety
  
• positive thinking
  
• goal setting

"I help them devise some sort of plan or routine leading into the competition that becomes more personal for each athlete," she says.

With the mogul team, Cogan helped competitors who were frustrated with lack of practice time on a course. She pointed out that the team had to make special arrangements before the competition season to go someplace where there is snow, and hope that there is enough snow for training.

"They're lucky if they get 40 days on the snow during the training camps in a year," she says.

Instead of worrying about training conditions, taekwondo athletes may feel anxiety over their opponents, having to anticipate the others' techniques, and over scoring. Unlike mogul skiing - in which athletes compete for the fastest speed down a 27-degree hill that is between 755 and 885 feet high - taekwondo is "a very subjective sport" for scoring, Cogan says.

"Even if you have one of the best fights of your life, you can still lose based on the scoring. And coaches have believed there has been some bias against the U.S. by judges in the past, so it's hard for an athlete or coach to stay focused when he or she doesn't believe a fair call has been made," she says. "The competitions are also single elimination, so if the judging isn't fair, the athlete doesn't have a second chance."

Cogan says her biggest challenge with the taekwondo team, which has not had a formal sport psychology program in the past, is building strong enough relationships with the coaches and athletes so that they feel comfortable to talk to her, but not be intrusive. She has already conducted several interventions with team members.

"I have provided them with a firm foundation of mental skills, and now we are down to maintenance as they go into the Olympics," she says.

UNT News Service press release
Nancy Kolsti can be reached at nkolsti@unt.edu.

Fighting Through Fatigue

Fighting Through Fatigue
By Dr. Randy Borum
(Published in Black Belt Magazine, July, 2008)

“Fatigue makes cowards of us all” Vince Lombardi


What do you do when you are completely exhausted, spent, and “done”, but there is still time left on the clock? Fatigue can be a martial arts athlete’s toughest opponent, simultaneously attacking your thoughts, emotions and body – trying to get you to quit.

Fatigue is not “all in your head,” but how you react and respond to it can determine how it affects your performance. Sport psychologists investigating “motivational intensity theory” find– when the going gets tough - the degree of effort that people put out is determined by the justifiability (Is it worth it?) and attainability (Is it possible to do it?) of the goal. Interestingly, research shows those same motivational factors also determine whether your cardiovascular system will react and compensate to help you exert more effort when you need it most.

This means that motivational factors under your control can and will affect your performance when you are fatigued. Building on these scientific findings, there are two immediate implications for martial art and combat sport athletes: (1) it is essential that you set goals for yourself and use them constantly to drive your motivation; and (2) when the demands are high, feeling confident and keeping a positive attitude will really help you push through.

Fighting effectively through fatigue is really about preparation, not just about “digging deep” in the heat of competition. How do you prepare to sprint when you are already running on fumes? Here is a three-pronged approach to preparing for your fight against fatigue:

Train to the specific energy demands of your sport: The human body uses different systems of energy depending first on the intensity and second on the duration of the activity. For years, “road work” was considered the cornerstone of conditioning for boxers. While running may have its place in combat sport training, jogging for several miles at a time does not “mirror” the biological energy demands of the sport. Whether the athlete is in a boxing, MMA, wrestling, or point sparring match, he or she is typically not required to maintain an steady, constant, low level aerobic demand over a half-hour period with no rest.

Instead, the sport generally requires multiple, intermittent “bursts” of power at maximal or near-maximal levels, with several-second periods of “rest” in between. The oxygen and metabolic energy demands are quite different in these two activities. So sprints and interval-type training, for example, match the sport-specific energy demands better than a four-mile jog. You will fatigue much less quickly when you have trained your body to anticipate the sport-specific energy demands of competition. Think also about the mental demands of your competition environment - such as lights, crowds, and bad calls from the officials - and prepare for those in training as well.

Minimize Wasted Energy: Even if you are in good shape physically, you may still “gas” if you have not adequately trained your mental game. Tension, anxiety and worry also consume energy and personal resources. Negative thoughts compete with your preparation and competition focus. Constant tension in your muscles makes them tire much more quickly. Jittery feelings – if you perceive them negatively – activate your sympathetic nervous system and cause your body to prepare for a threat, potentially using lots of energy in a way that does not help your performance. By learning to control your level of physiological arousal and to manage your thoughts and self-talk you can help to minimize the amount of wasted energy that comes from an emotional drain.

Breathing is a very important part of managing your energy and fighting fatigue. If you are breathing irregularly or holding your breath while exerting yourself – which is not uncommon – you are limiting the supply of oxygen available to your muscles and your brain. Learning to breathe from the diaphragm and to breathe regularly even under demanding physical conditions should be a priority for your training and your competition plan.

Maximize Positive, Productive Energy: Remember, research shows when you are fatigued that goal attainability is one of the main drivers of your effort. Attainability does not just refer to the level of task difficulty, but also to your belief in your own ability. Psychologists call it self-efficacy, but most athletes just refer to it as confidence. It is very important for a combat sport athlete to enter a competition with a deeply rooted faith in his or her own ability to perform well and to succeed. This skill starts in training. Try not to give voice or credibility to self-limiting beliefs or unproductive thoughts that creep in. When you are training, practice keeping your focus on the present. Don’t allow yourself to say: “I don’t know if I can do it.” Don’t look at the clock or worry about how much time is left in a training interval. Just perform in the moment.

How does one further develop that confident energy? The best source of confidence is past experiences of success, whether in training or competition. Remember your past successes. Recall them often; remembering specifically how you felt and how it happened. Another source of confidence and positive emotion is self-talk. You should direct that voice in your head. Don’t just wait for it to react. Rehearse and repeat positive messages to yourself about your skill and ability. Connecting with your personal “feelings” of success and competence, settling your body into your optimal “zone” of intensity, and creating a positive thought environment should be highlights of your pre-competition routine.

You will also benefit from having a plan to refocus and restore your positive mindset if you happen to encounter a setback in your competition. Many fighters and athletes have had success using “cue words” to help them re-focus. Choose one or two words that have personal significance for you to help bring you back positively and fully into the present. Energy-draining distractions usually when happen because we are thinking either about something that has already happened or something that might happen. Your cue words can prompt you to re-focus on the present.

Fatigue can be a formidable opponent, but with a smart conditioning plan, confidence, and pre-competition preparation, you can keep your mind and body infused with positive energy to prevail in the battle.

How Exercise Revs Up Your Brain

How Exercise Revs Up Your Brain

April 17, 2008 12:09 PM ET | Katherine Hobson | Permanent Link

When I'm in a blue funk, going for a run helps me feel a lot better. And prolonged periods of inactivity—say, after a big race—make me anxious, and something close to depressed. There are certainly a host of reasons why exercise seems to improve my mood (the Justin Timberlake on my iPod and the view from the Brooklyn Bridge, for example), but one potential factor is the idea, supported by a growing body of research, that physical exertion itself has a much bigger influence on the brain than previously thought. Just this week, a survey of existing research published by the Cochrane Library concluded that the same aerobic exercise that is good for your heart also improves cognitive function—specifically, motor function, auditory attention, and memory—in healthy older adults.

That's only one piece of what has become a burgeoning field. In Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, published earlier this year, psychiatrist John Ratey explores the neuroscience behind potential beneficial effects of aerobic exercise on anxiety, stress, depression, learning, aging, and even attention deficit disorder. (Research hasn't as fully explored the effects of anaerobic exercise or more passive activities like stretching and yoga.) "Even people who are overweight and who start exercising see improvements in mood and cognition in as little as 12 weeks," he says. One study found that exercise improved depression symptoms as well as medication.

A host of mechanisms are thought to be responsible. As U.S. News reported earlier this year in a story about keeping your brain fit, studies in rodents showed that running led to an increase in new brain cells in a part of the brain called the hippocampus that plays a large role in learning and memory. Researchers don't count brain cells in studies of live humans, but one study of regularly exercising adults did show increased blood flow to the same area. Because of the obvious implications for age-related memory lapses and dementia, much of the human research in this area has been in the elderly, says Henriette van Praag, a researcher in the neuroplasticity and behavior unit in the laboratory of neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging. She's now studying (in rodents) whether the progression of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's can be slowed by exercise.

Some studies have looked at kids. They haven't yet shown that getting exercise causes improvements in concentration and learning, but "what we agree on at this point is that there's a strong association between aerobic fitness and performance on standardized testing, grades, and other measures of cognitive performance," says Darla Castelli, a researcher in the department of kinesiology and community health at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign. She was an investigator on a study published last year in the Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology that looked at the relationship between physical fitness and academic performance in 259 third and fifth graders. Aerobic exercise (as well as BMI) was related to achievement in reading and math. Now she's preparing to start a study in August that will compare cognition in a group of kids who participate in an after-school physical activity program with a group that does not.

Chemicals influenced by exercise, including neurotransmitters and growth factors, are being investigated for their role in mood and brain function. Even runner's high, that elusive euphoria that some people experience after prolonged or intensive running, is becoming clearer—literally. A study done in Germany, published in March in Cerebral Cortex, used PET scans to look at the brains of 10 athletes following a two-hour run. The scans confirmed that during the run, endorphins were released in certain parts of the brain known to be involved with the processing of emotions. But while endorphins may cause the runner's high, they're not the sole regulators of mood and emotions during a workout. "A lot of things contribute to us feeling better when we exercise," says Ratey. "Endorphins are one of them, but so are norepinephrine, serotonin, dopamine, and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)."

So you're sold. How much do you need to work out to get these fabulous brain benefits? "Something is better than nothing," says Ratey. As little as 10 minutes of brisk walking can quench the urge for a cigarette for over an hour, he says, and Castelli notes that a single 10-minute bout of physical activity in an academic setting boosts attention and problem-solving skills in kids. A study published online earlier this month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that mental health benefits were observed after 20 minutes of physical activity, though the more exercise and higher intensity, the better the effects. Which means that doing the recommended 30 minutes a day of aerobic activity will cover your brain as well as your heart.