Sunday 29 March 2020

Taekwondo and Corona Virus

We are living in a historical time. I have never read about a single other time "everyone" has been part of a social experiment at this scale. Some countries have done a lot to prevent Corona from spreading to rapidly, and other countries have done nothing, yet others have opted to isolate the people in high risk group while the rest of the population "roams free". Only time will tell what is the best solution, and how this will affect the society at large. In Norway based on the little information knwon to us in our Dojang we decided to close down the Dojang to help social distancing early on (a few days later the government kept up with us and ordered all sports to close down). In our Dojang we felt that social distancing and self quarantine would benefit the society more than keeping the Dojang open. As Taekwondo is supposed to help society we felt that closing down the dojang to help fight the spread and hopefully keep the hospitals and health services at capacity would be more beneficial than keeping it open. Read the whole thing as I come with a lot of tips later on how to keep providing a service to your students.


Monday 9 March 2020

Teaching a class using only one technique?

I've been a fan of "repetition by stealth" ever since I heard about it, and last Friday I wanted to
challenge myself as an instructor and see if it was possible to teach a whole class with a narrow focus on one technique without it being boring for the students. To challenge myself even further I decided on going on the most basic of techniques, the traditional straight punch (one hand going back to the hip as you punch). It is heavily featured in our Poomsae, and it is also the perhaps most often trained hand technique in traditional Taekwondo. The Friday class consists of students from 13 year old to people in their 40s. Theres beginners (just gotten their uniform) to black belt students in that same class. Teaching this kind of class where everyone gained something from it, and narrowing the focus down into one technique was a challenge. So I made a rough plan, then tweaked it into a more detailed plan and "went to work" :-) Below is how the class was done.