Black Platinum Raising the Bar / State Development Squad – 13 October 2013
It was the last Sunday of the spring school holidays and it was a beautiful day: plenty of sun and you could feel the smell of spring in the air. It was a pleasant surprise that we all lined up outside, under the big tree on the green outside the Claremont dojang .
Most of us didn’t train too much over the holidays – some because of travelling (like me!), others just because they wanted to have some time off. Regardless, we were all there, eager to start and the kids energy was infectious. The warm up was fun, with some heavy lifting: lift your partner in a side-kick position or squats whilst holding your partner up. It was quite a good warm up, but then it was time for a mini-competition. It was all about remembering Saju-Makgi, one move at a time and coordinating with your team. In our teams, we had to step forward to our instructors and starting at the first move, say the direction, stance, tool, height and technique, in this particular order, for each move. To make things even more fun, if one person got it wrong, the whole team did a burpee!
Because this session was not only about having fun, but also about selecting the kids for the State Development Squad, we split up in groups. The kids got on with their assessment, still enjoying the great outdoors weather, whilst the adults moved inside the dojang for some technical work on patterns, step-sparring and some free sparring. Everyone was very enthusiastic about it and put a lot of hard work into making the most of the time. The kids wanted to demonstrate that they deserved to be in the squad and worked really hard.
I enjoyed having time to start preparing for the grading and practicing the 2 Step Sparring, but also meeting people from the other dojangs that we don’t see so often.
The atmosphere was great, we had lots of giggles and lots hard work and by the end of the 2 hours I think we all felt that we put in a good effort, we learnt something and had a great day. It was a good event and even if some of the kids will not make it into the squad, they still have something to be proud of – they were there: training hard and they did their best, which is the most important thing. At the end of the day, we all had a big smile on our face.
Cristina Angheluta, II Dan
