DWx

I do less and less traditional warm-ups now. Jogging in-place, exercises etc. are boring! Instead I make the class play games to get warmed up, anything that increases the heart rate and gets the blood flowing. Kids love it and so do the adults too.

How do the instructors on KF approach gradings with younger students? My school is less than a year old and we recently had our second belt testing. In the style of TKD I teach its usually the way that the next grade must be tested for in an exam setting rather than awarded after observation in class. One of the challenges we're running in to is how to approach gradings with the younger kids. With the syllabus we have (one that I don't have control over) I feel it asks too much of the younger ones from belt to belt as there is a lot of content to cover for them. My current thoughts are to try to break the syllabus down into smaller chunks and award stripes on the belt or stars on a chart as a way to incentivise the students. Then once they have all the stripe or stars, let them do the grading. What does everyone else do, if anything?

Happy Birthday KF and congratulations Patrick on another milestone!

Congrats Alex A huge milestone

Belated happy birthday - hope you had a great day

That looks pretty good and better than the Versys. I think with these things I tend to hang back and see what the reviews are like in a couple of months once its been road tested.

Welcome Littleford65

Congrats!

Do all Martial Arts not do this to an extent? Maybe they don't refer to it as such but most will talk about weak or vital spots to target for each technique.

Just do your best Rafa Nadal impression and get a headband Not a lot you can do apart from a towel and sweatbands. If it's reallllyyy extreme, talk to your doctor about botox.. it is sometimes used as a treatment to stop excessive sweating.

A joint demo between WT and ITF Taekwon-Do was recently held in Lausanne Switzerland to celebrate 25 years since TKD joined the Olympics. https://www.olympicchannel.com/en/video/detail/watch-korean-stars-unite-olympic-museum-smashing-display-taekwondo-skill/?sf210918352=1 The two orgs have been working more closely together in recent years and this demo followed a visit by WT leaders in the week to ITF Headquarters in Vienna. The demo in Switzerland was also special as it took place on the 11th April, the anniversary of when the name "Taekwon-Do" was officially coined for this new Martial Art. Great to see the two orgs working together and also the wider implications of further cooperation between North and South Korea.

Not got any advice but Japan is on my bucket list and hope to do it in a couple of years. Hope you have fun!

I think it depends really on what your goals are and how much you can afford to spend. First of all I would work out how much on average a student is worth to you over one year. That includes training fees and anything else like belt testing fees or money you make on equipment and merchandising. Say this is $500 a year to you. Would you spend $10 to get them on board? how about $20? $30? $40? then you can make an assessment as to how much you really want to spend over the year. I've been using Facebook ads pretty much exclusively as my paid method of advertising. If you get it right you can get a great return on your investment. In 6 months I've managed to sign just short of 60 students and now have waiting lists. I won't tell you how much I spent initially (!) as I set up a school from scratch in an area that I had no connection with, but now that I have established the club I spent around £1 a day and have 2 to 3 enquiries a week.

I've seen this type of thing before. There's one called the Sparbar which has wall versions too but also very pricey: https://www.sparbar.co.uk/ I'm not that handy but if you are, would have thought it simple enough to use a PVC pole?

Congratulations Bulltahr

Belated Happy Birthday Liam, hope you had a great day!

Thanks for the responses guys. It's something I eventually want to do when I have more time. I have some 4 year olds and 5 years in my classes and it is becoming clear that they just can't cope with the main syllabus. They enjoy the classes but for progression I'd love to be able to give them some different belts or badges to keep them going. What's the youngest age you take for these programs?

Does anyone here run a Little Kickers type program for younger students? For students who are not ready to learn your main syllabus but could benefit from a reduced curriculum to promote coordination, balance etc. I have a few friends running this type of class. Usually they are much shorter than normal classes, up to 45 mins in total and whilst they have a few basic kicks and punches, most of the class is practising coordination, agility and strength games. The children that do these classes then feed into the main classes later one. Does anyone on KF have any experience with this type of class? What do you teach? How are the classes set up?

We haven't even seen Karate make its debut at the Olympics in Tokyo 2020 yet it's now been dropped from Paris 2024. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-olympics-karate-idUKKCN1QB1NP Given people were divided over its inclusion, is this a good thing or a bad thing for Karate?

Struggling with this one myself having just set up my own school. The way I'm managing at the moment is forcing myself to have a dedicated hour per week just for my own training. This is in addition to making the effort to visit other schools for training. Not as much as I'd like to do but at least its something.

Interesting post immaterial. Do you have an example of a Shotokan kick you can share? I train ITF TKD and am struggling to picture the Shotokan version.

I think this depends on jurisdiction. In the UK I can refuse to teach someone but only if it isn't discrimination. So I can refuse to teach someone who disrupts the class intentionally but I can't refuse to teach someone because of their race or ethnicity or because they have a disability (unless that disability means that it would be unsafe for them to participate).

Welcome back! and congrats on graduating!

Congrats!

I agree with testing their fitness. You can't measure progress unless you can define where you started from. You can simply do tests like the bleep test or how many push ups, sit ups etc. a student can complete in one minute or the instructor can make an assessment based on how well the student copes with the exercises given normally in class. As for tailoring the lesson, I think you can do it to a certain extent but only if its not to the detriment of other students.