I am please to be able to formally announce the appointment of Eva Neale, 2nd degree black belt, as the newest member of the Assistant Instructor team at WLTKD.
Eva will join the existing excellent team line up as part of the junior member development team working along side established and very experienced instructors Molly and Jack Rowe to strengthen this part of the club.
Eva works as a Senior Town Planner for the County Council and is also a mother of 2 young boys. This appointment will bring further strength and depth to this part of the club and the instructor team as a whole.
WLTKD students excelled at the TUK Central region coloured belt grading last weekend with 39 students being promoted including 4 student to black tag, well done Thea Roberts, Aisha Yousof, Seb Perrier, Lexie Alferez, the next one is the big one.
We also had 3 'A' passes, well done Sienna Mannell, Gabe Bailey and Sudha Pathak, outstanding performances.
A great team effort by the instructor team to get all there students ready for the grading and performing at an exceptional standard, well done all.
Now we can open the doors to a new beginners quarterly intake to also start on their TKD journey and help to change their lives for the better.
This weekend our Instructor team attended the International Instructor Course in Dublin, Ireland held over 3 days and delivered by the ITF TKD Technical committee Grand Master Morano, Grand Master Lan and Master Jedut.
Attending the course from 11 different countries were nearly 300 black belts, including more than 30 Masters and 7 Grandmasters, doing what we all love. T-UK had 17 instructors at the event, 5 of those from WLTKD.
Today we had our first grading in nearly 18 months with 3 small group grading sessions wearing face masks to comply with C-19 guidance. We had 16 of our Warwick & Leamington TKD students grade under the T-UK Association President Master John Archer and Myself in intense 60 minute sessions that were non-stop and each student under the spotlight with nowhere to hide.
Even though the students have not been able to grade for 18 months this has not stopped their learning and development through lockdown with a student training video library to assist them, a period of time face to face between lockdowns and then Zoom classes during lockdown 2. Once we were able to train outside their face to face training and development took off in earnest as well as 121 personal training to get them to the required standard for this grading.
Last night saw Warwick & Leamington TKD club back inside Everyones Active Warwick site, St Nicholas Park Leisure Centre.
After 2 months of conducting training sessions out in the park twice a week we returned to the leisure centres main sports hall delivering 2 classes. This is ideal timing as the club has a promotion grading test scheduled for the beginning of June so will allow a quality practice environment for the students.
Thursday nights are still being conducted out in the park however this gives the students a fantastic opportunity to practice their skills in a realistic environment wearing clothes and trainers on as they would be if they had to deal with a physical situation for real.
We take pride in the mentoring of our students at Warwick-TKD; even before students take their black belts we begin to mentor them in correct teaching methods and give them sections of the class to lead under the watchful eye of the experienced Instructors. As their skills and confidence grow we put more and more responsibility on to them.
This month saw Jack and Molly Rowe successfully take their 2nd Degree black belts. They started TKD at ages 5 and 4 years old respectively, they are now 18 and 17 years old and have been on the mentoring program for a couple of years.
