On Sunday 12 March Taekwon-Do UK held the first Colour Belt Technical Course of the year at the Trident Academy at Sale Rugby Club with Master Miley and Mr Crisp taking over the reins from Master Archer and Master Ridley.

There was an excellent turnout for the course with almost 40 students taking part from red belt all the way up to 4th Degree. It’s always nice to see the more Senior grades attending these courses and keeping their knowledge up to date.

Mr Crisp started the session off with a fun and bracing warm-up, designed to get our bodies and our minds ready for the session ahead. He then started to work through the fundamental movements involved in Saju Jirugi and Saju Makgi before passing us over to Master Miley for Chon-Ji. They alternated patterns in this way, breaking down the more complex techniques in each pattern to ensure that all students understood the finer details. We also had a little fun with some patterns exercises such as performing Chon-Ji on the spot by jumping, Dan-Gun switching open hand techniques for closed and vice versa and Dan-Gun in pairs in a piggyback situation with one person performing the stance and the one on their back performing the hand techniques.

There was a slight tangential discussion around the history of Taekwon-Do and the ITF thanks to some questions from some of the participants, which was interesting and it was nice to see the knowledge of Master Miley and Mr Crisp around the art as a whole and not just the technical information.

During the session we also went over the protocols around three step, two step and one step sparring and practiced these with partners so we could ensure that all students are up to date with the correct line ups and details.

This is the first Technical Course that hasn’t been run by our Senior Masters, Master Archer and Master Ridley, which did feel strange at the first as I think we’re all so used to their presence at occasions such as this but Master Miley and Mr Crisp ran a fun and informative session and managed to keep the attention of even the youngest students, which is no mean feat. Sometimes with so much to cover in the time we have it can feel like information overload but I felt the pacing was just right and the mix of different activities in with the technical details helped keep the students engaged.

Thank you to all the students who attended and put in maximum effort all day, to the parents for bringing the younger students and of course to Master Miley and Mr Crisp for sharing their technical knowledge with us all. I’m already looking forward to the next one!

Jayne Heywood IV

Publicity Officer for the Northern Region

T-UK Technical Course