On Sunday 10th February 2019, Taekwon-Do UK held the first Area Master’s Seminar of the year in the Manchester area. Unfortunately, due to a calendar clash with an ITF England meeting Master Ridley was unable to attend our Seminar but we were in more than capable hands with Master Archer and Mr Miley.

The first session was for colour belts and after Master Archer took the students through a warm up, Mr Miley put them through their paces with some movement drills that would be very useful for sparring. Everyone put in maximum effort and it was inspiring to see some of the younger students persevering when they were struggling a little with some of the drills. Nobody ever finds a new drill or exercise easy when they try it for the first time but it is important to push ourselves, step out of our comfort zones and try new things as that is how we grow and improve as martial artists.

We then moved on to patterns with Master Archer taking over and going through each pattern in detail before splitting off the grades as we passed each belt and sending them to Mr Miley to do some padwork and self-defence.

It was nice to see a good turnout from our black tag students who are obviously working towards black belt gradings, probably this year, and these seminars are a good opportunity for them to train with different students and get some pointers from Master Archer and Mr Miley prior to their grading. Everyone left the session with smiles on their faces so I can only assume that they all enjoyed it!

After a short lunch break it was the turn of the black belts to be put through our paces. Personally, I love to train with different people and am always keen to pick up new drills and exercises for my own training and to use in my sessions with my students so seminars like this are perfect. Again, we had a warm up with Master Archer and some technical kicking, focussing on using the correct parts of our feet to deliver the technique and preparing our tools in the best way to maximise the effectiveness.

Mr Miley then took us through some sparring movement drills and padwork, which were very interesting before we went over the First Degree patterns with Master Archer as a whole group. There were lots of questions being asked and I think it was especially good to see some of the more senior black belts asking questions about First Degree patterns. It just goes to show that we really never stop learning and nobody should ever be afraid to ask a question at a training session as we learn a lot more when questions are being asked.

Master Archer then took the Third and Fourth Degrees through their patterns in detail whilst Mr Miley took the First and Second Degrees through the Second Degree patterns and then did some self-defence work.

I really enjoyed the opportunity to train with people of the same grade as me and to learn from the other Third Degrees as well as from Master Archer and Mr Miley. We spent some time thinking about the terminology for the techniques in one of our patterns, Sam-Il, and between us we knew a lot more than we thought we did and also managed to clear up some techniques that we weren’t really sure of.

I would like to say thank you to Master Archer and for travelling to us and for putting these sessions on the calendar in each area to help minimise our travelling; thanks also to Mr Miley and his team for hosting the session; and thanks to everyone who put in the effort and turned up. Large group training sessions like this are much more enjoyable when everyone is working hard and having fun together and we had a great group of students in both sessions. Bring on the next one!

Jayne Heywood III

T-UK Masters Area Seminar