18.11.2015 / Czech national championship1 coment

Beautiful drudgery - Czech national championship 2015

Final of 2015 sport season took place in Nymburk during second November weekend. Event that we prepared for whole autumn training camp and from where everyone wanted to bring at least one medal.
As I´ve said on Friday´s brainstorming (braincleaning?) it is one of our top events we prepare for, not the most imporatant one (as sport is only part of our effort), but it can show us many things. Show not only our physical form and skills, but also how we can fight stress, fear of unknown (unknown opponent, skills, audience...). And last, but not least how we work and cooperate together as a group of people, as it is one thing to be friendly and helpful in known environment of training or camp where everybody knows each other and also know his place in food chain. And it is something different to behave well in stressful environment where you put your position and skills to unknown tests.

So what we got to know about us as Sonkal? We know that we are good also in sport part of Taekwondo (3. place overall with excelent number of competitors:number of gold medals ratio) and we know how to be the best (Tereza Štekerová the most succesful female junior competitor with gold from sparring, power breaking and special techniques). We also got to know that our ears hear "we will meet at hall at 7:58" when I say "Be there at 7:45". We also felt what does it mean that front leg should kick, not only touch or smoothen opponent, as your opponent does not take it as a symbol of friendship, but as a chance to beat you! We saw that we have good umpires, who worked tirelessly and with good quality for two days and played also very important role as ring referees. We found out that emotions sometimes wins over us, but also that we are able to calm down and say sorry afterwards. We were able to show sparring of top level for czech republic, but we also "fell asleep" and dedicated our matches to be boxing bags for our opponents. We saw that we are winning while listening to our couch, and loosing when forgetting his advices. Not because coach knows everything, but because it is his role to see match with broader perspective. We managed to defeat bigger and or technically more advanced Taekwondoists and won in situations where there were not too much hope to see that it is mostly about our heads and how hard we try to use our full potential. Finally we saw that we are able to help each other through whole weekend (thanks to everyone who helped coaching, taking photos and videos, bringing stuff...).
To summarize we saw that our all and many years work is worthy (work not only of 3 instructors, but of us all) of hard drudge, not because of medals ending on your necks. And I hope, that our success on National championship is also a symbol, that we can show such feats also during daily living.


Practical advices for training:
1/ you have to prepare for patterns, warm up, shape your techniques up just moments before you enter tatami - even at such competition basic things wins - stances, power...
2/ front legs KICKS, keep caressing for other situations
3/ if you need to run away from opponent, do it, but in proper stance guarding yourself, otherwise you would become a punching bag, but much more vulnerable
4/ you have to spar hard also during training, not all the time, but you have to try, do more techniques, finish combinations, one technique is not enough in most situations both in sport and real fight
5/ self-control means that I am allowed to get a bit angry, but in limits of accepted social standards
6/ competitions are fine and important, but if you loose, so what, improve for next time and you are already winner even if you don´t get any medal through whole your life


Taekwon.


Martin Svitek, IV. Dan, Sonkal