Elevated and Inventive Taekwondo

At the World Championship tournament this year, the National Martial Arts Alliance announced their transition from Extreme Martial Arts or XMA, to Elevated and Inventive programs. Extreme is now called Elevated. They are two different programs and students can choose to compete in either division. They can choose to use music or not depending on the student’s preferences. 

Nearly everyone agrees that these divisions are some of the most fun to watch parts of Martial Arts. Students that compete in these programs love to train and practice because they push their bodies to the limits and show some crazy moves. Competitors must choose between Inventive and Elevated, but many start at Inventive and work their way up. They can move from Inventive to Elevated during the competition season, but can not move back to Inventive from Elevated. 

Inventive:

While competing and training in Inventive, students can only use moves found in traditional forms. They have the opportunity to create and use a form that they make up on their own using open hand techniques. Competitors can also use weapons while competing and training in Inventive. It’s the same concept, they create their own form using techniques found in traditional weapons forms. The judges calculate their scoring based on precision, flow, and ability to captivate the audience.

Elevated:

Elevated on the other hand, is more extreme. Students can compete with tricks- flips, cartwheels, round offs, summersaults, b-twists, etc. They integrate the tricks into their form and combine them with traditional moves. Again, competitors get the chance to make up their own form and show it off to judges and other students. The Elevated division is one of the most impressive and fun to watch parts of taekwondo because of the amazing moves that students are able to do.

At Venture Martial Arts, students that compete in Elevated and Inventive programs are part of the competition team. There they learn from their head instructor Isaac Martin, who holds multiple World Champion titles in the Elevated (formerly XMA) division. He is able to do every awesome trick in the book, and is excellent at teaching them to students. 

Elevated and Inventive is just another incredible aspect to Martial Arts training. It gives a whole new edge and level to competition and gives students the chance to take pride in something they created on their own. Plus, it looks super awesome and is incredibly fun! To learn more about the offerings at Venture Martial Arts, click here.