22.10.2017 / Kicboxing tournament Czech Open2 coments

Kickboxing experiences - Czech Open 2017 CSFU

Jirka Novák and Bert Kindl asked me about possibility of participating in some kickboxing tournament to get new experiences and motivation. After discussing with rest of Sonkal instructors and picking suitable events one problem occured - we cannot clone ourselves and there is so many activities that it took more than year to really took part in one.
We took part in international tournament in kickboxing Czech Open 2017 in semicontact disciplines (semicontact only on paper everyone hit hard ;o) ). The magnificent seven participated (Pavel Šnábl, Honza Dvořáček, Jana Kovářová, Terka Žilinská, Bert Kindl, Léňa Hrstková and Egor Popov - all very skillful taekwondoists) to try pointfighting (stopped after first hit) and lightcontact (like our sport sparring with nonlimited punches and cruely penalized tatami exits) disciplines.

It was experience hard to bite - kickboxers are preparing for their World championship so everyone is well prepared and national teams from Austria, Hungary, Romania, Russia...etc came. More than 750 competitors, more than 1000 starts! Stressful event for both competitors and me as coach.

None of our competitors passed second round, but they fought well. Lenka Hrstková made me happy as she listened to me carefully. Egor and Honza looked like they are more natural in kickboxing match then in sport Taekwon-do. Rest of us did major mistake in one discipline but show great skill in other one. I´ve sent individual corrections to each of them.

Talking about techniqes I have to mention 2 facts We don´t kick enough and we don´t kick colourfully. One technique is not enough neither for attack nor for counters (when opponent si pushing you. Light kicks is punished by hard punches and we lack colourful consecutive kicking (pointfigters were better in this). Talking about hand techniques our rules (2 punches in combination) are holding us back and we are not able to push with punches. But still we should see where are we punching to and be able to counter in between hard kicks. I believe these two things will inspire us to decent, but important training changes.

Our important disadvantage is small penalizing for leaving tatami in sport Taekwon-do. When opponent is pushing strong I leave tatami. In kickboxing you loose point for leaving tatami and get disqualified after few exits! So kickboxers are able to always do something even when recieving punches and kicks, nearly never turn away or give up. I believe this is skill important to develop both for sport tkd matches and self-defence.

Maybe my critic sounds to strict. So I have to mention that skills of our warriors were praised by kickboxing national team coach Martin Zavoral. He also asked us for cooperation and invited us for seminar few of us will participate in. Also one old kickboxing "guru" Mirek Sobotka spoke well about matches he saw. So we may be proud despite of loosing in first or second round.


Thank you for being strong and fighting well even with world class opponents. I believe it was worth of trying and we will do it again in future.
Thanks also to everyone who came to help with friendly word or material.


Martin Svitek, IV. Dan, Sonkal Praha

Opinions of competitors themselves follows:

Bert Kindl: "Despite of being pretty unsuccesful it was very good experience. We all now know better about our sparring mistakes. We also saw european competitors before Worlds what motivated me a lot as they may compare with top class Taekwondoists."

Honza Dvořáček: "I really enjoyed it because of colourfulness of disciplines. Not only fighting, but also musical forms were of high level not only in adults, but also small kids were very good. I was a bit demotivated with change of schedule as we waited really long for first adult fights.
Talking about fights most of them were of high quality. We were good standart and I have to mention Lenka Hrstková who were best of us in my opinion. I hope to participate in such competition again in future."

Pavel Šnábl I was looking forward to my first kickboxing tournament. Eventhough I did not trained much and felt slow and stupid during September trainings I wanted to try. I was surprised with number of comeptitors and with their power but it is reasonable as many national teams came. I have to criticize hall air conditioning and also schedule - my first match started at 6 P.M when all oxygen and my motivation was already spent. I´ve lost with taekwondoist Dalibor Veselý - I screw it up, small tatami, not enough time so I pressed too much without thinking. But I improved my mood in pointfighting with bulgarian - my 2 points against his 14, but I pressed him a lot and did few double impacts - have to say they are really quick! Pointfighting is more of psychological game where my not so good cardio may rest :o) So I enjoyed whole event, but next time more mediocre competition with more mediocre opponents with less waiting especially when there is such nice weather. It kills me the most ;-)

Lenka Hrstková I was not sure if it is good idea to participate, but I am happy after all that I decided to do so. It was interesting to try different style of fighting and movement. So great experience and time spent there.