Taking care of your body and staying fit is probably one of the most important things you can do. While any excercise that promotes cario-vascular health and muscle strength is good, Taekwon-Do offers several unique fitness advantages over lifting weights, running the treadmill, and your aerobics class above and beyond the pure self defense component of the sport.

Build Lean Muscle Mass

Through highly repetitive, low resistance bodily movements, Taekwon-Do builds a long, lean, flexible musculature . The result is a lean, cardiovacularly fit, flexible body with improved endurance and stamina.

Get a Solid Core

One of the cornerstone principles of Taekwon-Do is the use of torque to produce striking or kicking power. Nearly all the movements in Taekwondo involve the twisting of some body part and corresponding counter balance. For example, a simple punch involves the twisting of both wrists and the trunk while counter balancing a striking fist with the retraction of the opposite arm. This emphasis on twisting the trunk in executing kicking movements and in counterbalancing hand movements builds a trim, well-muscled abdomen (core) and develops the side of the trunk and inner thigh muscles. There are few, if any, excercises at the gym which will build core strength faster than Taekwondo.

Train Hard, Get Injured Less

Taekwon-Do does not require any weights or special equipment. All you need is your own body weight. When you practice Taekwondo you're slinging yourself about, not iron, to develop muscle tone, cardio-vascular health and stamina. As you progress, you find that your body sets its own limits and adjusts accordingly limiting injury and strain. Your current level of physical fitness also acts as an automatic pacing mechanism at first limiting what you can do, then, as your fitness level improves, allowing you to perform advanced techniques and participate in longer, more vigorous training sessions.

Lose Weight... Permanently!

Taekown-Do is a calorie killer plain and simple. It balances the principles of aerobic excercise and interval training producing an excercise regimen that burns fat, and builds lean muscle mass extremely well. Your 180lb adult will burn over 800 calories an hour during a vigorous Taekwondo workout.

Compare the calorie burning properties of different excercises at http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist3.htm