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That's great Zaine. As I get older I take the view that I should just train if I'm feeling good, rest day or not. Also it's ok to take a rest day if I'm not feeling so good.

I'm not, do you think it's worth investing in one? I'd not yet as I figured my weights were too low to need extra support. Sorry to hear things are getting tough Brian. But those are some impressive numbers! Do you have a goal in mind you're trying to reach?

18/04/21 Another gym day Squat 10x20kg, 5x40kg, 5x60kg, 5x70kg, 5 sets of 5x80kg Bench 5x20kg, 5x30kg, 5 sets of 5x40kg Row 5x30kg, 5x40kg, 5 sets of 5x50kg Then home to work on my patterns. Did an hour, every other colour belt pattern and all blackbelts up to my grade. 20/04/21 Squat 10x20kg, 5x40kg, 5x60kg, 5x72kg, 5 sets of 5x82.5kg OHP 5x20kg, 5x20kg, 5 sets of 5x30kg I'm struggling a little with the press. Not with arm or shoulder strength, actually it feels like my arms don't get much of a workout, but with poor core strength as my back just wants to arch all the time. So for the time being I didn't want to increase the weight and more work on my form. I'm hoping the more I do it my core will catch up. Deadlift platform was in use so jumped on the press machine to work my arms some more. Deadlift 5x 60kg, 5x72.5kg, 5x85kg 21/04/21 Taught kids class. Then joined the seniors for an hour of padwork. I got to work on my cardio, I gas out too quick!

Welcome to the forums Bob

Finally everything has started opening back up here so I got to go back to the gym and to Taekwon-Do. So I can start posting here again 13/04/21 1st day at the gym. Very busy and I do didn't want to go crazy so did 20 mins on the bike followed by a small arm circuit on the resistance machines. My cardio sucks right now. 14/04/21 Taught kids class and then the advanced grades. We can do sparring and pad work for the first time in 12 months though only under 18s can be back in class right now. Joined in with some of the padwork and to demonstrate. Flexibility also sucks too 15/04/21 Managed to snag a squat rack during my session at the gym so back to lifting. Last lifted at Christmas so dropped a little off my numbers to start. Overall felt pretty good strength-wise. Squat 10x20kg, 10x40kg, 5x60kg, 5 sets of 5x75kg OHP 10x20kg, 10x20kg, 5 sets of 5x30kg Deadlift 5x40kg, 5x50kg, 5x60kg, 5x70kg, 5 sets of 5x80kg, rounded off the session with 3x90kg just to see where I am strength-wise. Would have liked to have done some cardio too but can only book into the gym for an hour.

Used it once then I broke my hanging bag bracket they only record a kick when they sense an impact so you need to kick a bag or pads. They were created for WT Taekwondo so they have also been using them in sparring with the hogu as that will record the impact. I'd like to try them in sparring where I think it would be more useful but as we use foot pads rather than hogu I'm not sure how that will interfere with the sensor. As an adult they seem to work fine but I don't know whether the kids can kick hard enough to get a reading on the sensor (some of my rubbish kicks weren't registering). I would be interested to see how it works hooked up to hogu and doing some sparring. In our classes, even with the pads, we have pretty moderate contact, not really drilling each other, so I'd be interested to see what it would take to register impact. So I gave one set to two of my kids, one 7 and the other 9. They seem to be able to get it to register impact on a hanging bag even though I know they won't be kicking very hard. Having said that, several of us seem to have trouble getting it to register side or back kicks. Roundhouses and spinning heel kicks are fine but it really doesn't like mine or my sister's side kicks or back kicks. I wonder if it's a stylistic thing as it was developed by a WT guy and mapped onto their kicks. It won't record a bad kick so I'm wondering if it's traveling differently. Overall it does seem to be quite good. There are some improvements I'd like to see mostly on the app side. Specifically it doesn't remember historic training data, only your last sessions can be seen in detail. It would be nice to see how kick speed is improving over time for instance.

It's about $234 for two trackers and everything you need to use them. Oh ok, that seems quite reasonable. Might have to give it a try; many of my Student Body might enjoy this one way or another. Thank you, Patrick. If you want to trial might be worth getting in contact with them. I got sent 8 trackers for free to test for 2 months. Then if we want to keep them we can sign up to a 12 month contract. On the club subscription I get to access all the students' data plus I can set up training programs in the class though I've not yet been able to trial that due to COVID. Apparently I can stream a live score board of sorts to a big screen so students can see how they perform in real-time.

To the bold above, I would argue that instructor training can make good instructors great instructors and great instructors phenomenal. People can have a natural ability to teach but there is always room for improvement. That's why people still study educational theory and practices today, not to mention sport science methods There may be little tweaks to teaching style you can make or the way sessions are structured or even newer training methodologies.

This is a really good point. Kids are also the right demographic to target in that most parents are looking for after school activities for them and kids will generally have lots of free time for hobbies. Adults have fewer hobbies and even less time, especially if they have their own families and are karting the kids around to their own activities.

Used it once then I broke my hanging bag bracket they only record a kick when they sense an impact so you need to kick a bag or pads. They were created for WT Taekwondo so they have also been using them in sparring with the hogu as that will record the impact. I'd like to try them in sparring where I think it would be more useful but as we use foot pads rather than hogu I'm not sure how that will interfere with the sensor. As an adult they seem to work fine but I don't know whether the kids can kick hard enough to get a reading on the sensor (some of my rubbish kicks weren't registering).

I think if you have the time then no reason not to learn them. Some of our instructors still practice Ko Dang as they learnt it in the old days before it was removed. Re. The book, I've seen it but don't know personally anyone who has it. My understanding is it goes into the individual techniques with extra detail which is missing from the encyclopedia. Would be interesting to see what it says.

This is interesting who has formal training and who doesn't. We don't right now being a very young school (2.5 years) but I really want a more formal training programme in the future. At the minute I have 2 blackbelt teenagers who help out. Both are well capable of taking a full class and I started off by letting them do bigger and bigger chunks of the class and by reviewing the sessions with them and giving them feedback over time. I like letting all students run things like the warm up and I have several younger colour belts able to do that really well now and lead the class through stretching at the end. In our organisation you can teach class from 1st dan under the guidance of a higher up but you cannot run a school by itself until you are 4th dan and then you must pass a test to do so.

Sending positive thoughts your way Bob.

I'm teaching classes online right now via Zoom but even these classes have shifted in focus compared to what I'd do normally. The video classes are much more drill focused. Lots and lots of sparring combos and general fitness than basics and forms. Solo I have been doing bag work, solo forms and lots and lots of drill work. My students are obviously not sparring and we won't be able to do so for a few months, but surprisingly they all look like they've improved massively with their kicking ability. I have friends that study BJJ and they've all been doing online sessions with grappling dummys. Its not perfect but its better than nothing.

I think it depends on what your goals are and how you market yourself. Admittedly my experience is more limited having run my school only for 2.5 years (and one of that was during COVID) but our kids classes pay the bills and allow me to teach adults. We never really had many adults come to us, more teenagers. But then I've not made a massive effort to target that age with our marketing, any growth has been organic in that class. It depends on how you present yourself but there are plenty of boxing and MMA gyms out there which are heavily geared towards adults.

My club has been giving a few of these to try https://kickai.com/ They're small Bluetooth based trackers which track kick speed, reaction time and kick volume. So far very impressed and there's some fun modes in the app like survival mode. Not sure whether the data is that useful to us in the long run, kick speed only tells part of the story. Still it seems to be engaging the kids well. Has anyone used this type of thing before?

That ones on my list just haven't gotten around to it yet. Let us know what you think. Here's U-Nam performed by Master Campbell (now Grandmaster I think): and also by CK Choi: There's supposed to be a fair bit in the original Korean Encyclopedia's which were lost on translation to English. Hence vol 16

I know people who have done this, giving their belts to their student or often parents gifting their belts to their children. In Taekwon-Do its less common nowadays as the belts tend to be embroidered with your name.

Good luck Bob all the best with the move!

We don't have titles on the school level specifically but have titles tied to teaching levels beyond Assistant, Sabum/Instructor (4th dan plus) and Sahyun/Master (7th & 8th dan) and Sasung/Grandmaster (9th dan). Within our organisation we also have a President, Vice President and Executive Board but no special titles.

That sucks. Hope you don't have too bad a time with it. Quite a few people I know have come down with it during our second wave here. Thanks, Danielle. It's really draining for me, especially having to miss work.I'm about 4 days in I think now. I've been feeling pretty tired and drained, and I haven't been sleeping well. But the fever hasn't persisted, and I don't have a horrible cough. I've felt much worse in the past being sick, I know that. I do think if I tried to get active, I'd really start feeling it. Sucks but at least you seem to got off easy. I know a fair few people who have gotten it and its affected them all different. Several really fit people I know have been hit hard and still have long-Covid symptoms months later.

Trailer: New film coming out next month about Miyamoto Musashi called Crazy Samurai: 400 vs. 1 Apparently the reviews so far are terrible but it does boast an epic 77-minute single-take swordfight sequence.

That sucks. Hope you don't have too bad a time with it. Quite a few people I know have come down with it during our second wave here.

I'm sure my thoughts on this will change over time but right now I would say no. The trouble is it is very hard to teach distance and timing, the two cornerstones of sparring and fighting, solo via video. Can you really understand a technique or concept in its entirety if you have never actioned it in a chaotic live scenario? That said I didn't ever think that online training would work but having done this for months I now think it has its place as a supplementary form of teaching next to live classes. I haven't yet tried to teach pure beginners, all our online students have a foundation already but we are teaching children who are at most 6th kup, or we are teaching blackbelts who already know key concepts. With the younger ones, whilst our standard is high compared to other schools in our system, I can already see them falling behind where there would have been if live classes continued. The students who are doing okay are visual learners (i.e. the see and can copy), or they are auditory or verbal learners and can listen to my explanations. But what's missing is that physical correction or being able to go away and work out the drill in their own time with a partner and we are seeing poor results from several individuals. Whilst I try to make it interactive, you can also tell the kids do not find it as engaging as being in person. After the first lockdown in our country, we did do a socially distanced kup grading. However the vast majority of students were low enough grades they would not have been tested on sparring anyway and those that were high enough I have seen spar in class and competition previously. Our next kup grading is scheduled for February and I'm seriously thinking about what to do. I wouldn't have issues with the low grades testing but what to do with the rest? Regarding blackbelt gradings this is a firm no from me. I have one student who was due to test for 2nd lockdown before COVID hit and we have discussed it and he understands he must wait. As bushido_man96 said, at this level it is pursuit of knowledge not grade anyway and he is still learning. Others in our style have tested blackbelts online or in a socially distance format, whilst that is their choice, I cannot understand it as all you can do is assess their ability to make shapes in the air and not whether they can apply their knowledge. Its like learning to swim without getting wet.

Great video from Jesse Encamp about the term "sensei". What are your thoughts on this? I'm very lax in our school with titles and such. Possibly wrong but even my youngest students can use my first name and I go by "Miss Danielle" most of the time rather than use a title. I see a lot on Facebook and the like using their titles as part of their name which always seems strange to me... as don't your non-martial arts friends also interact with you on those platforms. As a teacher, how do you prefer your students to address you?