Organizing A Competition

I had been chosen to organize a competition and since I am not much of a organizer, I am having sleepless night as the competition date is getting closer. There are too many things to do which I have no idea of doing. So just recently I had elected a committee which I should have done earlier to segregate the tasks on the day of the competition. But prior to that I still have things to do. Thank goodness medals are being take care of but now the concern is the participants. The venue is not near therefore, I worry there will not be many participants. I am trying my best to push my students to participate in the competition.

There is not much time left as the competition is only next week. So much to do so little time...

Fitness Training

Currently I am doing a lot of fitness training with my senior students as a way to increase their strength and power. The fitness training consists of all the fitness components namely: muscular strength and endurance. cardio, power, speed etc.

As they are not only senior students but also teenagers, it is also good to improve on their physical outlook by increasing their strength and power. We doing a lot of sit-ups and now we just starting on push-up too...

Later, I'll incorporate lower body strength training in the training...

Team Poomsae

It is not easy for the students to do a team poomsae if they have not had any experience doing it. It also not an easy task since it required synchronization of all the team members. The team need to have some sort of chemistry and understanding of each other movement and timing in order for them to be able to perform the poomsae.

Currently I am working with a few teams and trying to teach them to learn to 'feel ' each others' movements so that they can actually get the timing and synchronization before actually perform the poomsae with power. This take some time but they understand what I'm teaching them and with only one lesson, they are able to get the timing and synchronization. We will then work on the power this coming lesson.

One-Step Sparring

Teaching 1-step sparring sound easy but in actual fact it is one of the hardest component to teach as the students tend to remember the techniques than to understand the purpose of it. One-step sparring is actually a self-defense technique where the students learn to protect themselves using the basic block and counter-attack. By focusing too much on remembering the technique itself rather than the big picture of its' usage will defeat the purpose of it.

The students have to understand that the 1-step sparring is not just for passing their test but it is the self-defense techniques in Taekwondo training that one day might be needed to protect themselves. Therefore, they should understand the concept of it and not just treat it as part of a test component.

Intensity and Volume

I am using the same approach for all the classes that I'm conducting but implementing different intensity and volume. This is because there are many differences in every classes. The differences consist of age, level of training, training age and different capability.

The intensity and volume of the exercises are very important to elicit training effect to the students. Depending on their level, too much will hamper their development and too little will not be enough to elicit adaptation. Therefore, we have to find an optimal level of intensity and volume of exercises which is effective to their progress.

My New Approach

Lessons have begun for two weeks now and I am still experimenting with my new training approach.

Last year, I am only begin training for poomsae one month towards grading but this year I am begin poomsae training from the beginning. we'll be doing one poomsae a week until the practitioners' own poomsae. Even then, the practitioners will have to practice all the poomsae below theirs in order for them to remember and master all the poomsae. Poomsae training will only be done at the end of the training.

My approach will also focus on their physical aspects and sparring. The physical part will be covered at the beginning of the lesson with dynamic warm-up followed by sports-specific endurance. For the start now we will be working on one basic upper body and lower body strength training which is the push up and squats. Not forgetting the core strength using sit up upon competing the poomsae training.

After that, we will work on some basic free-sparring movements. The focus is on the techniques and the movement speed.

This way, I feel that all the components are covered for the general training. However, this program only can run on the maximum of 6 weeks before moving on to a new program. Otherwise, it'll become redundant and getting bored. Nevertheless, the sequence will be the same and they still have to do poomsae after free-sparring training.

2010

It's been a long while since I last updated my blog. All the gradings for the year 2009 had ended lessons for the year 2010 has just began. As it was a 1st week of lessons, therefore training was light and just a lil' bit of physical with a lil' bit of skill training.

For this year I'll be taking a new approach in conducting my classes. I had just taken my first step this week and will try to keep it going and see how it goes.

It was an eventful week seeing old faces turning up for training and also a couple of new faces trying out for training. Students returning from oversea and will join back the classes. There was also an accident happened in one of the classes where 2 girls fell down and cried.

Well, all and all, it's a good start of the year and I wish the momentum will continue....