From taekwondo to touchdown

Joe Kim wasn't exactly the most self-assured child in the kindergarten class of his Cleveland elementary school.

It didn't help his confidence that he was forced to wear multi-colored corrective lenses following several surgeries to rectify an eye problem. So one day, when a bully stripped the glasses off Kim's face and put his foot down, shattering the glasses into pieces, it was no surprise that Kim was devastated.

Like any frustrated 5-year-old, Kim cried and ran to his mother. And like any little boy should always remember, mother knows best. She definitely proved that this time.

Not long before this incident, Kim's mom had read an article in the paper espousing the virtues of taekwondo. It claimed that there was far more to martial arts than one would see in a Bruce Lee movie, and she thought it might be a good fit for her son.

She accompanied him immediately to a school run by local taekwondo master Myung Hwan Kim. The young boy's mother was not only impressed with Kim's skills. In fact, she fell in love with him and they married in the late 1970s. Having a taekwondo expert as a father certainly proved beneficial to Kim, who later became a national champion and an athlete who trained at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Later on, it proved beneficial to a number of NFL defensive linemen who have received words of wisdom and instruction from Kim about how the martial art can improve their performance on the gridiron.

That playground bully probably wouldn't want to see Kim with all of his taekwondo skills and NFL buddies now.

Kim has worked with six NFL teams throughout the past 18 years. He began as a full-time assistant strength coach with the Cleveland Browns in the early 1990s and has since toiled with the Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins, Green Bay Packers, Denver Broncos and currently works with the Buffalo Bills. For the first time in his career, he worked with a Division I football program, helping Penn State's defense during the off season.

His primary task is teaching defensive linemen how taekwondo skills can improve their pass rush, but there's far more to it than that. He travels to Buffalo for all of the team's eight home games and will spend time working with the defense during the team's bye week. On the Friday before a game, he will travel from Cleveland to Buffalo to review video with players and discuss hand-to-hand fighting. In the hours before a game, he will work with the defensive line on the field.

"This was something that I've done in the past, something that's been done a lot of places," Buffalo coach Dick Jauron said in an interview after a Bills practice. "It certainly has its place. Our players really like it. It's meaningful in a lot of situations and placement on how to get in and out of different situations, defeating a block, defeating a hand placement."

Kim doesn't take credit for introducing martial arts to NFL players, but he is the first to work with them extensively on their own turf. He has the innovative Bill Belichick, former coach of the Cleveland Browns who later guided the New England Patriots to three Super Bowl titles, to thank for giving him that chance.

"Prior to that, other football players had taken martial arts and seen the benefits," Kim explained. "But Belichick saw the need for it and sought me out. I spoke with him and (several Browns assistant coaches) and told them what I felt could benefit football players. We started working closely together."

Belichick has proved his wisdom works.

"The system we developed was based on using hand-fighting skills for defensive maneuvers to gain control and take the strength away from your opponent," Kim said.

"The fundamentals are based on footwork, leverage, control, timing and movement. Taekwondo is an art of defense. It teaches you how to attack based on balance and be in position against a counterattack.

"There are 35 different martial arts experiences and this takes a little bit of what's great from all of them and teaches using taekwondo as a foundation. But every martial art has value in developing sports performance."

Kim recalls fondly his early days as a taekwondo student learning from his eventual stepfather at Kim's Martial Arts School in the Cleveland suburb of Brooklyn. Joe's brother runs that school now while Joe runs a sister taekwondo school in nearby Avon.

It didn't take long for Joe to begin soaking in the skills.

"I started making the connection almost right away," he said. "I began competing outside of my comfort zone of Cleveland in 1984 and became a national champion in 1989. I made the national team in 1989 and 1990."

That was when Kim spent much of his time at the U.S. Olympic Training Center and appeared to be on the fast track to the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games. But when it was announced that the Olympic taekwondo competition would be shaved from eight weight classes down to four, leaving Kim's out, the dream of winning a medal disappeared. The sport was not included at all in the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games, and that's when all of Kim's hopes for an Olympic experience died.

Kim had competed and succeeded all over the world, but he was forced out of the most prestigious and publicized of all international events. The emotional blow was enormous, but he managed to recover quickly.

"It was a situation in which competing in the Olympics was my whole goal," he said. "It was a selfish goal. I wanted to represent my country in the Olympics as an amateur athlete. The Olympics was the top of the mountain, but I flipped the switch on a new set of goals. I started teaching taekwondo and an opportunity with the Cleveland Browns came up."

Kim's work with the Bills has been so impressive that Jauron even said the benefits of utilizing taekwondo techniques could be applied beyond the defensive line positions.

"Both sides of the ball and almost all positions, it even applies to the secondary," Jauron said. "(Kim) was good. He did a good job with all of our areas, special teams, offense and defense, so hopefully it was worth his time. I think he enjoyed it and it was definitely worth ours."

Kim was not surprised to see the Bills players embrace the martial arts training, and he has a suspicion that Jauron and the Bills won't be the last to utilize it in their practice.

"I think a lot of people are learning what martial arts can bring to help football players become better football players," he said.

This season, two of Buffalo's defensive linemen, Marcus Stroud and Kyle Williams, are tied for first place in the league for most tackles (with Oakland's Tommy Kelly at 27 apiece). Stroud has had two sacks; Williams has one.

"I'm in charge of these guys getting sacks,'' Kim said. "These guys love it. They're enjoying it. They're showing that the system works.''

Story courtesy Red Line Editorial, Inc. Marty Gitlin is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of any National Governing Bodies.

Tags: Buffalo Bills, Joe Kim, Marty Gitlin, NFL, Taekwondo, USA Taekwondo