As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes, after completing her formal college education and enduring being in the office for a full ten days, taekwondo fighter Jelena Vukas decided to continue “living the sport” she loves, which she kicked off by entering the often choppy waters of entrepreneurship.
In addition to running the Orion club, which she took over last year, she now runs the Taekwondo playroom Mali borci (Little fighters), and this project has recently been expanded with the opening of the first Croatian children’s gym in Sesvete near Zagreb.
“The Little Fighters Gym project unites my love for children and sport, taekwondo, which has always been the centre of my life. After we recently expanded the space of the club, the idea came to my mind to offer our youngest participants something fun and useful. It’s not like a real gym for adults with real weights, because kids are not allowed to work with them, but only with their own body.
But if the weights are made of styrofoam, and help them to make doing exercise more fun and learn to perform movements properly, then that’s another story,” explained 31-year-old Jelena Vukas, who has an impressive 15 years of taekwondo competition, from 1999 to 2014, behind her.
She is a multiple Croatian champion, the winner of medals from numerous international competitions, a member of the national team, a bronze medalist from the World Junior Championships in Vietnam in 2006, and a coach from 2011 until today. By formal education, Jelena is an agronomist.
Namely, as she was very active in taekwondo, she once decided that the Faculty of Kinesiology, although a seemingly logical choice for athletes, would take away too much energy that she needed to use for training.
Therefore, she enrolled in agronomy, which was close to home, and she finished it, but she never worked in the profession.
“After college, I got a job that meant staying in the office, but after 10 days I quit, and very quickly realised that this is not life for me, that I need sport,” revealed Jelena Vukas, who also finished sports college, a taekwondo coaching programme, and holds both European and world coaching licenses. There are about 90 active members in Orion.
The idea of the new gym, into which a second group is now enrolling, came in part from frustration with the poor quality of training for children that can be seen in many clubs, which often discourages children from all sporting activities and turns training into torture.
“So many talents fail, the children simply give up. One of the results is that the wrong movements are learned from an early age, the way of performing exercises, which is partially corrected in our playrooms. Sports programmes for such young children are challenging because classic training quickly becomes boring for them, they need a quick change of exercises, lots of colours and games.
When I realised that there are also ‘gym’ devices on the market for children, a bike, a treadmill, punching bags… I was thrilled. I got something myself, something was donated to me by friends, and we made something ourselves – say styrofoam weights. So far, I´ve invested a total of around 10 thousand kuna, but there are still plans yet,” concluded Jelena Vukas.
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