Effects of Taekwondo exercise on the psychological well-being of school children and young adults

Abstract

The concept that exercise and self-care behaviour are vital components in health promotion and psychological well-being is the basic tenet of this study. Previous research into exercise and health improvement, in particular, has indicated that the practice of martial arts has buffering effects for psychological health against life stress. The focus of this research was to apply the physical and cognitive exercise components of Taekwondo in an effort to identify its effectiveness as a health improvement intervention. In a series of two cross-sectional studies and two longitudinal studies, ninety adult Taekwondo practitioners, fifty-five primary school children and sixty-one high school students participated as volunteer subjects. Laboratory-based physiological assessments of practising Taekwondo, and psychophysiological responses to Taekwondo after exposing cognitive stressors, were conducted in the first and second Experiments, respectively. The last two longitudinal studies focused on evaluating the practical significance for psychological health of Taekwondo training in the school environment. All results were assessed using ANOVA, MANOVA, MANCOVA, and /-tests for paired samples to determine the location of statistically significant differences on independent variables.