Red Belt & Black Belt Training Weekend
report by Una O'Neill, 1st Degree, Master Howards School.
The 24th and 25th of August saw 20 red and black-belts descend on Galway school of Tae Kwon Do. Why? Well, with prelim. exams looming, not to mention the next black-belt grading, all in attendance were eager to hone, refine and add to our Tae Kwon Do techniques. And we had two excellent instructors to teach and guide us: Mr. O' Donnell 5th Degree and Mr. Howard 6th Degree.
We began early on Saturday morning with our warmup which led into basic technique practice. Mr. Howard led this first session and showed us how to add hip-twist to technique and how to ensure that we relaxed between movements to create sine-wave. This was a valuable lesson because its easy to end up tired and tense at the end of pattern practice if not relaxed. Mr Howard showed us how to avoid this. We then went through our patterns and, using our new relaxation techniques, we added more power to these.
Then, Mr. O'Donnell took 1st and 2nd kups through our individual patterns, answering innumerable questions based on these. His expertise was gladly received and any doubts we had re. technique were allayed. The days training wound up with practice of jumping techniques. At this point, we found that Mr. O'Donnell and Mr. Howard can get their students to jump through hoops for them!!.We learned some excellent practice exercises for jumping and then applied them to flying kicks ie side piercing kick, split kick, back kick, double sidekick. We also practiced our spot-sidekick and flying turning kick on pads.
We met later for a social evening in Teach Ui Neachtain on Quay Street, all of us a little tired and sore but nothing that couldn't be cured by Dr. Arthur Guinness and friends. A few hours later we found ourselves in the Warwick, one of Salthill's finest dancing establishments. After some fancy footwork there, we sent ourselves home for a valuable few hours of shut-eye.
Training at 10.30am was probably not the easiest thing to get to grips with, but having successfully navigated the warmup, I forgot any physical woes and buckled down to training. Mr. O'Donnell took us through one-step and sparring. This was interesting - during our one-step we could only use moves from a specific pattern- ie Hwarang tul. Easy if you're attacking, but blocking definitely required sharp wits . It helped us to make our one-step more varied. Then, on to sparring and 2-on-1 sparring. I loved this because it is so rare to get the opportunity to spar a member from the opposite end of the country unless you're in the throes of a tournament. 2-on-1 was daunting - and dizzying! - but the skills and practice were invaluable.
And so, to breaking . Mr. Howard took us 1st and 2nd kups for this. Everyone got the chance to break with hand and foot techniques and from the corner of my eye I saw some very impressive speed - and flying - breaks going on in the black belt corner too. Both of our instructors gave us lots of encouragement and advice on how to break to the best of our abilities.
All good things must come to an end, however, and the class wound down then to finish the day's activities. It was a great weekend - highly geared towards our upcoming black belt exam. Best of luck to everyone on the training weekend who's going for an exam - and thanks a million to Mr Howard and Mr. O'Donnell.