Platinum Training Workshop – 13 April 2014
On Sunday April 13, Platinum Taekwon-Do hosted the inaugural training workshop. This was a four hour session for all coloured belts intending to cover everything that is in their syllabus for the next grading. Black Belts were also invited to attend to revise the colour belt syllabus.
After a brief warm up and stretch the class split up into two groups, white to green tip with Sabumnim Adeline, and green to red belt (as well as the Black Belts) with Sabumnim Paul. The first session was covering the fundamental movements focusing on correct stance, posture, chambering and movements.
We then moved on to patterns and had a great chunk of time to look at the patterns in depth and to do them many times to help engrain them into memory. Learning patterns is all about getting them correct, then repetition repetition repetition.
The groups then got back together, sat down with our water bottles and had a discussion on the Do, my personal favorite. General Choi wrote a book before he passed called the “Moral Guide Book” and in this he mentioned that equal time should be spent on both the “Taekwon” and the “Do”. The Do is such a vast topic to understand, we touched on just one important aspect of it – Ego. We were encouraged to be honest with ourselves and look within to see our own ego. We all had a chance to remember times when we may have been letting our ego get the better of us.
We then split up into our groups again and covered sparring relative to our grades (not tournament sparring). I was particularly excited about one step sparring (covered from 6th grade) as this is something I really enjoy and rarely practice. Some self defence techniques were also covered which are also a personal favorite. Some of the more senior members then moved onto breaking techniques and got to smash some training boards over and over again.
As a summary the workshop was a real success. I believe everyone came out feeling a lot more confident with the various parts of their syllabus, and although it was a four hour session, the time really flew by. I personally see a lot of potential in these sessions and encourage you all to book in early for the next one.
I also was very impressed with the number of students that brought their actual printed syllabus along and took notes. Ultimately this is what you need to achieve to grade for the next level, and by making notes in a way so that you understand will not only help in preparing for your grading, but also later along the track when you are teaching yourself.
Peter Granheim, II Dan Black Belt