With great enthusiasm and emotion, the karate athlete Leyla Servín is getting ready for the XII South American Games Asunción 2022, she is 25 years old and has been dedicated to karate for 15 years.
Karate is a combat sport, where karatekas seek victory using blows with their hands and legs. For its assessment, key factors of the discipline are taken into account: speed, strength, balance, rhythm. solidity, clarity and strength of the movements, power of the blows, which the athlete Leyla Servin knows perfectly.
“Since I was 10 years old I have dedicated myself to this, as a lifestyle, until I reached the age to compete and represent the country,” said the athlete excited about these South American Games.
“We are four brothers, we are all in the selection and we qualified for ASU 2022, in different categories because it is by weight in karate”, he pointed out.
Leyla stressed that family support is very important. “My parents always supported me, my mom took us to and from practices. They accompany us to all the national tournaments. Parental support is super important.
We carry out physical preparation at the Paraguayan Olympic Committee, we have the entire multidisciplinary team there, and karate training at the National Sports Secretariat.
CLEAR GOAL
A little less than a month away, Leyla has the clear goal of raising Paraguay’s name and winning medals at home. “I am super excited, I already want that moment to come, there are so many nerves that are being felt,” she said.
The athlete commented that since January 2021 she has been training with a view to this competition. “The process was initially by zoom due to the pandemic, but since I’m training in person I feel more pressure and every day I try harder to improve my brand, my speed and polish my techniques,” she added.
Leyla represented our country in different international competitions, bringing several medals. At the 2018 South American Games in Cochabamba she dazzled by winning the silver medal in the Kumite less than 50 kg category. In 2019 she took bronze in Toledo, Spain. He participated in the “Corpus Christi Karate Trophy” tournament. On April 23 of this year, he won the post-pandemic bronze medal at the XXX Senior South American Championship in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
DISCIPLINE
Within this sport there are two: Kata and Kumite.
Kata are sequences of established movements ranging from 20 to 70 or even more movements, they can be practiced either alone or in pairs or as a group in a martial arts class.
The kumite is a combat in which some of the techniques practiced in the kihon or in the kata are applied in a confrontation with a real opponent in order to add the greatest number of points in the time of each confrontation.
