We have many athletes among our colleagues. Some fell for active movement in adulthood, others have been doing it since they were little. Richard Giák from DZ Energetika belongs to the second group, he was enchanted by taekwondo as a six-year-old. As an athlete, he achieved his greatest success in 2017, when he won a bronze medal at the World Championships in the Netherlands. A year later, he became the European champion. Today, he runs his own club and passes on everything he has learned to his trainees. We talked about his beginnings, sporting successes, and future plans.
Who brought you to taekwondo?
You can say that I brought myself to this sport on my own. I was attracted to martial arts thanks to films such as The Karate Kid, which were popular at the time. When I was six years old, I saw a performance of a taekwondo club and started training in a local club. I worked in Tureň nad Bodvou for 16 years, as a trainee and later as an assistant coach.
The style of taekwondo you practice is called traditional or original. What does this mean?
Compared to the Olympic version, it puts more emphasis on hand work and the scoring system is based to a greater extent on technical criteria - accuracy, strength, control of blows are evaluated. This martial art is relatively young, it was founded in 1955 by a Korean general who trained karate in Japan. He brought elements of old Korean martial arts and Japanese karate into it. I was lucky enough to experience the Korean champions who were working in Slovakia at the time. For me as a child, it was a big deal.
What was your path to coaching?
With the success in the club, our coaches focused more and more on a more advanced group of trainees, so there was less time for beginners and the recruitment of new members was no longer so frequent. Therefore, I offered to devote myself to a smaller group of exercisers. I attended coaching courses, camps, visited various sports camps for children in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and I found a hobby in it.
What do you enjoy about coaching?
Diversity. Every child is different, he thinks differently. Especially nowadays, the diversity is more noticeable – everyone's parents allocate time differently, some have unlimited access to the Internet and smartphones, others don't. I enjoy directing it then within taekwondo so that we all have to be the same here. And I also enjoy observing how children improve, how they gain new experiences.
Coaching connects sports growth with psychology, how do you work with children before the competition?
Many children are stressed just from the knowledge that they have to go to a competition. That's why we try to prepare them for it as part of training with our own competitions. They can imagine how it goes there. First, we sign them up for small competitions, in smaller gyms where there are few people, and then they go to sports halls. If the children lose or fail at something, I try to talk to them immediately after the end of the round so that they can accept the loss and despite the failure, it moves them on.
You have been working as a head coach in the club you founded for six years. Can you tell us more about it?
We train in school gymnasiums, in Tureň nad Bodvou and in Košice in the Nad Jazerom housing estate. Children from the age of 8 come to us, now we have an exceptionally five-year-old athlete. The oldest trainee is 48 years old, he won a bronze medal at this year's World Championships. Each age category has two workouts a week, one lasts an hour. If you feel like it, you can also join two optional extra workouts.
I don't compete anymore, although there were ideas that I could return to it, but my health won't allow me to do it anymore. So I devote myself to coaching and helping in the national association. I want to stay with that. I would like to expand the club, I know I can't do it alone. I try to motivate my trainees and assistant coaches, to build it bigger, to get this sport more "in sight". There is interest in martial arts in our region, but not so much is known about us, I would like to change that.
What would you say to those interested in martial arts to motivate them to try traditional taekwondo?
In this martial art, everyone can find the area that suits them best. Whether he wants to devote himself to the competitive part, focus only on self-defense, improve his technique without direct contact, or simply keep himself in good shape. It is diverse, which is why taekwondo is referred to as a modern martial art, everyone will find something for themselves.
