[ATHLETIC TRANSITION]


TAEKWONDO INTO CROSSFIT INTO OLYMPIC WEIGHTLIFTING TRANSITION


By: Tim Thackrey, Owner, CrossFit High Voltage


Like so many elite level athletes, I


put my 10,000 hours of sport-specific training and then some. I come from a taekwondo family, my first word was kick and I even met my wife doing taekwondo. I was fortunate to make the U.S. National Team every year from 2000-2007 for 58kg, won the Pan American Games in 2003, a bronze medal at the World Championships and was named Athlete of the Year in 2006.


The Beginning: Similar to most athletes with huge


dreams, my sport was my life, and tae- kwondo was obviously my life. But after not having my weight class selected for the 2008 Olympics, I finally took long enough time off to realize how burnt out I was from the years of training. On top of that, I was coaching a private tae- kwondo team, the UCLA Taekwondo Team, teaching seminars. Even though basically all good things have stemmed from taekwondo, once I had a moment to breathe, it was just becoming too much taekwondo. Still, I wasn’t done being an athlete,


but the thought of four more structured years with my life on hold seemed like the equivalent of 100 years. I needed something new.


The Transition: My old roommate from the Colorado


Springs U.S. Olympic Training Cen- ter, Tony Graf, told me about CrossFit. CrossFit basically saved me from com- peting for four more years and helped me move on with my life. I needed an outlet, and after so many years of hyper periodized training programs, Cross- Fit not only challenged me outside my comfort zone, but it was refreshing to find a whole new set of training aspects


and energy systems that I struggled with. Without having goals to work to- ward, I think I would have just kept fight- ing even though I’d lost my passion for it, and there’s nothing worse than play- ing your sport with no passion— at that point, I feel you should just give the next generation a chance and move on. I turned my private taekwondo team


over to my friend, Joseph Salim, 2012 Olympic Head Coach for Great Britain. I turned the UCLA Taekwondo Team over to my old training partner, Richard Lee. But for me, and the first time in my life, I was out of taekwondo. The taekwondo school that I opened


had transformed into a really popular CrossFit and Strength & Conditioning gym. I was very fortunate to have been trained by a really great taekwondo coach in Scott Fujii. He instilled in me the value of the Snatch and Clean & Jerk, proper mechanics, and program design. There was always a big focus in our training on looking forward to what is next, how the sport changes and not being bound by what we had previously done. No matter how much I identified with being a fighter, my life was chang- ing very rapidly.


2 >> WEIGHTLIFTING.TEAMUSA.ORG


A New Time to Learn: I’m sure it’s not news to anyone read- the ‘Olympic


ing this that proper knowledge and implementation of


lifts’


is critical. I had a friend who had a weightlifting


coach at his gym, and I asked if I could stop by. That coach just happened to be Bob Takano, even though that pretty much meant nothing to me then. I thought at the time if I trained with him once a week, it would help me be- come a better coach to my clients. Easy enough, right? I feel like Takano could just smell it


when I walked in, and I still don’t know how he did it. He watched me do a few lifts, and asked if I was interested in competing. “Oh man,” I thought. “Here we go again.” We’ve called it the Olympic perfor-


mance curse, and I think this rings true for anyone who had sport as the passion of their life. As much as you want to fight it, it’s in your blood to try to become great, even if great becomes relative to what you have to give at any specific time in your life. Learning that this is our destiny is a much harder lesson. There’s a reason why we chase excellence be-


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