Viewing entries tagged
Flexibility
Well done to all our members who attended the England ITF Grandmaster seminar hosted by the T-UK in Stratford Upon Avon, great support and enthusiasm from the club as always.
The seminar was led by Grandmasters Ellis and Nardizzi. The seminar was broken down in to two halves coloured belts followed by a black belt only seminar. Each seminar consisted of a technical deep dive into all aspects of TKD.
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.
With the C-19 landscape changing in a positive way we are very excited to be able to start up face to face classes from the 30th March ensuring safe social distancing.
These classes will be delivered in St Nicholas Park, Warwick behind the Astro turf pitches as we did last summer. Our classes are a great mix of adults and children training in the same class enabling families to train together at the same time.
Self-defence is at the heart of what we deliver. This is the ultimate goal, to give every member of the club a better chance of defending themselves if they are unfortunate enough to get into a physical confrontation. We deliver a syllabus that helps each student to prepare themselves for this.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a deviating effect on our club and our ability to deliver classes. However we didn’t just close down and batten down the hatches we realised that we needed to keep supporting our students as best as we could and come up with a plan to do this until we could return to normal. Over the lockdown we came up with the plan of delivering video classes and lesson plans that students can follow at their leisure and free Zoom 121 personal training sessions after surveying the members as to what was the best options for them. A few weeks ago the Government advice allowed us to undertake 121 personal training face to face outside in a park which many students jumped on straight away.
With the updated Government guidelines last week we are now allowed to deliver small group training classes with one instructor to five students as long as we are outside and social distancing measures are adhered to. Excitingly this week saw Warwick & Leamington TKD club back training face to face for the first time in nearly 4 months following the Government guidelines keeping our instructors, students and the wider public safe and well. However, we are also continuing with support our students delivering the video lesson plans and Zoom 121 personal training sessions free of charge for those that continue to need them due to the need to continue with social distancing and isolation.
The Central Region coloured belt grading was held at Stratford Upon Avon today overseen by Master Archer President of the TUK. An outstanding grading for the Warwick club students with three ‘A’ passes:
Thea Roberts - promoted to green stripe
Henry Lion - promoted to yellow belt
Peter Gearing - promoted to green belt
All other students also passed with all of them raising their game for the grading and demonstrating the high standards that we expect from our students at the club. Well done all you have made the instructor team very proud.
This is going help a great many martial artists. The psoas muscle with its complex joint actions and influences can cause a lot of issues from hip pain, back pain, biomechanics dysfunction, if there is an imbalance it will seriously affect your training and performance. Watch this video for an effective stretch to hopefully assist with your problem.
As we get older we start to slow down, get less fit, become less flexible, balance is affected and we start forgetting things. However having a pastime such as Taekwon Do is an excellent way to slow this natural degenarative process down. TKD will achieve the following:
Adductor muscle group flexibility is essential in a kicking martial art. Static stretching is fine for achieving flexibility but it doesn't prepare the body for the dynamic and ballistic activity that it is subjected to, and thus you could be at risk of injury. Watch the attached video to add an excellent stretch to your repertoire improving performance and reducing injury.
Take a look at the attached video. I have utilise all of these techniques and more in my own training for years and incorporate them into my clubs warm up routine to great success. To this end I thought that it would be good to post a tutorial that explains fully what the drills are doing and how to perfect them as there is a lot to take in in the early days. These drills are excellent conditioning for your kicking technique and for improving the control of your kicks.
Keeping in line with my recent blogging around mobility and function for improved performance, take a look at these exercises. They condition the body at the same time as improving function and dynamic flexibility.
