Three Reasons Why I Believe the Olympic Hapkido Movement is Good

Three Reasons Why I Believe the Olympic Hapkido Movement is Good

In these unprecedented and turbulent times, it’s hard to find anything with a positive outlook but, still if you try hard enough, you’ll find the beauty in a lot of your personal passions. One of my personal passions is the Martial art of Hapkido and these are three reasons why I believe the Olympic Hapkido Movement is a good thing.

1. Now all of us in the Hapkido community have heard the age old, Hapkido is a military art, not a sport! Now, with truth and merit to this statement I do believe like all things, even Hapkido needs to evolve and become more. We teach family values and life skills as well as technique in Hapkido and I believe life skills such as fair play and good sportsmanship are two values that we as a society are lacking in today. With the entitlement attitude of our youth and the generation of participation trophies, these are two values that we’re desperately in need of. So, if done correctly in turning some aspect of Hapkido into sport, this would benefit Hapkido and society in general.

1. 2 Now, we have all seen what has happened to Taekwondo so, I understand the concerns of the Hapkido community about this subject. We as human beings are capable of learning from our mistakes, and I believe we can transform some aspects of Hapkido to sport without hurting the integrity of Hapkido. Also, with the benefits of sport style training, we can build all the benefits of Hapkido like, strength, flexibility, endurance, coordination and much more in a much faster pace.

1. 3 One of the most important aspects of this movement is getting Hapkido much more exposure. Bringing it to an audience that may have never seen nor heard of Hapkido. It also gives us the opportunity to show the true effectiveness of Hapkido on a world stage, where sadly Taekwondo had failed. Which brings so much more opportunity for Hapkido, the skies the limit. Now, this is obviously just scratching the surface of why I believe this movement is a positive one but, this just a fraction of three reasons why I believe it’s good. For the sake of time for the reader I’m just using these few talking points at this time, will do more on another day. So, as martial artists we train to think outside the box and broaden our minds so, please before you criticize this movement or refuse to give it a thought of Hapkido as an Olympic Sport, I implore you, please just think about it and come up with reasons good or bad about this movement, you may surprise yourself.

About the author: Eric P. Laino is a 5th Dan Master with the World Pro. Hapkido Federation and 5th Dan American JaeMuKwan Hapkido Association. He is the Sparring Coach for the USA Hapkido Union Team and the N.C. State Representative for the USA Hapkido Union, Inc. and the World Pro Hapkido Federation.