British Olympian uses Street Fighter IV to hone skills

One of Britain's Olympians is now using Street Fighter IV as part of his training. He has full backing from sports psychologists.

Sportsmen are hard at work training for the London 2012 Olympics and to improve on our 2008 medal performance, one of Britain's Gold hopes has included a video game in his daily training.

Tyrone Robinson, a British International Championship Gold Medallist and a European Championship Bronze Medallist in Taekwondo, has turned to the classic beat 'em up Street Fighter IV.

Now a best-seller, the game has been entertaining gamers around the world, even breaking world records, but now it's being tasked with training a potential Olympic Gold medallist.

22 year old Tyrone, one of Team GB's great hopes, is using the game to sharpen his coordination, speed up his reflexes, mentally rehearse his moves and develop his fight planning. Tyrone comments:

"I'm never going to be able to throw fireballs in the ring like the characters in Street Fighter IV, but I can still try some of the crazy kicks they do. It's a good way to relax at the end of a hard day's training and great to have a tournament with friends."

Amusingly Taekwondo coaches are right behind him. Sports psychologists have always accepted that mental rehearsal can dramatically improve results on the field, so Street Fighter IV is now being claimed as the ideal tool to help athletes get in the 'zone.'

Street Fighter IV is especially suited to Taekwondo, since they both feature a strict set of moves and require complex tactical forethought. Des Blackburn, the Performance Analyst for Great Britain Taekwondo, believes Street Fighter IV is an ideal mental trainer:

"To complement their physical training our athletes are also encouraged, in their spare time, to play this type of game, as it is known that doing so can increase their attention span, depth perception and hand-eye coordination; though this is always recommended as an addition to their physical training and never as a replacement!"

Street Fighter IV will now join Wii's recently popular brain training and Wii Fit games as aids in mental and physical fitness. But us gamers already knew that video games were good for us.