27.3.2021 / International instructor online course

Instructors in virtual world

In February, we had our first technical seminar in the online world. After such a successful event, an online instructor course followed not so long after. The Zoom platform was used again, but there was one difference- number of participants. I personally expected something like 50 or 60 of them, but the final number of 140 participants was just incredible. The mere amount of people who attended it, meant success.
The whole two days long seminar was led by grandmaster Hwang Ho- Yong (IX. Dan) with assistance from myself and Master Martin Zámečník. For me, it was a first time in this role on this kind of event, but it eventually went down better than I expected.

What was the conception of the course? On Saturday, we went through two theoretical parts, each one 2,5 hours long. On Sunday there was one 3 hour long practical part.

I consider appropriate going back in time a little bit. The preparations for this course were more long termed and among the most important things were ATG covid tests. We all came out negative, except for our main technical guy, Alexander Mach. This was on one hand unfortunately, on the other fortunately, the result of lower reliability of ATG tests. His PCR test then came back negative, so we were good to go. It wouldn’t be a proper TKD weekend if we weren’t up as early as 6 am. By the time 7th hour passed, we were already in the streaming room, setting up all the necessary equipment. At 8.30 am, we ran a successful test and at 9 am the course began.

Saturday was except for one technical problem on our side, absolutely flawless. After the scheduled course, we still had energy, so we decided to move on with another project of ours- Czech Taekwon- Do podcast. Our first guest was Master Martin Zámečník. You can expect the premier soon. More specifically on 66th anniversary of the origin of Taekwon-Do ITF. We will shoot the next episode this Sunday. It won’t be just a TKD history lesson. We will also invite taekwondo practitioners from Czech Republic and do some interesting chats with them.
Let’s sum up Sunday. Our studio transformed into the classic seminar mode, because the practical part was ahead of us. We invited two models- Onřej Faltin and Hubert Skála. It was their first time performing on an event like this, but they did a very good job and deserve a big thanks for that.

There were participants from all around the world. Australia, Korea, Malaysia from the eastern half and Argentina, Chile, Grenada, Jamaica, Canada and USA from the western half. This kind of variety is usually only seen on the World Championship. Despite the time deficit, there were a lot of questions chat activity.

The grand final of the weekend were international instructor exams, done in the Sunday afternoon. This was probably the most challenging part, mainly because the amount of examinees. You want to know how many is a lot, well a little bit over 40. But in the end, all was managed well and everyone passed the exams.

The final clean-up was left for me and Alex. For me especially, the whole cleaning and getting home was lightning fast, because the refereeing of Czech E-Open was starting not long after. But let’s save this one for another time.

I personally want to thank all those who helped us and grandmaster Hwang for his words of praise. The time runs very fast when you have a work to do, even in a lockdown. I will look forward to seeing you on another online seminar with grandmaster Hwang on the 28th of March, again as assistant. And also on 11th and 12th April on the second international technical seminar.

PS: Train, train and train. The restrictions are soon to end and we will jump right back to training. There won’t be time to ask who trained and who didn’t. If you want to move forward, win competitions and get a higher belt, you’ll have to show a corresponding performance.