21.1.2012 / Scotish mission18 coments

Scotland mission - first training under UKTA

As some of you knows, I left to Glasgow to spend here half a year at university. I was sure that I want to practice Taekwon-do here as well.
First days here were pretty rough, had many things to arrange and to buy. I did not like Glasgow first - it´
s dirty here, city transport impossible to understand and not really nice. But I got used to it and found nice and interesting places here.
I had 2 addresses of tkd dojangs and asked at both places when do they train. First place is just 5 minutes away from where I live, they have trainings on Wednesday and Friday, moreover there is special traning on Satuday. Other school has just one training per week and is far away so I tried the first place. Chief Instructor is Mr. Chalmers, V. Dan. So I took my dobok and protecting gear I´ve brought from Prague and went there to ask if I may join them.
Instructor wasn´t there as I come. Some children in doboks came and then 2 black belts. I asked them if they are going to teach today and Mr. MacGowan (I think) told me he is leading this class. After introduction he showed me where dressing room is and went to dojang. More taekwondists of all ranks came. I was introduced to all black belts, they were very nice, asking about where I come from and what is reason of my stay. Small children whispered something to each other :o) What suprprised me the most was age of some practicioners, some were even about 60 years old. They hang flag of Scotland, Taekwon-do flag, brought pads and old-school power-breaking posts. Everyone repeated student oath and taekwondo tenets during line-up, only I was partly silent, partly mumbling. Have to learn till next training. It is also proper here to adress black belts with Sir/Madam. So one much older person with green belt adressed me as "Sir" later in training.

We have started preparation exercises without warm-up what was no problem because the room was overheated so I was blushing without a movement. Exercises were pretty the same, as I know, something like Svíťa (Martin Svitek) does. I have to mention that flexibility of this instructor is awesome. Then we took pads and practiced in pairs, I have practiced with man who would easily be my grandpa, with II. Dan. We started with twimyo apchagi so I put the pad to waist height, but he rised to chest level and started to jump. He did just few repetitions, but surprised me a lot.
I also got to know that instructor is 53, what was hard to believe.
Then we continued with some uncommon techniques like son palkup naeryo tulgi, dung joomuk naeryo taerigi a gokengi chagi. We also practiced some patterns, some corrections were different from what GM Hwang taught us last years. Finally we did some fundamental exercises.

I thanked the instructor after the training and I hope that it will be possible to come regularly (hope that monthly fees will be ok for poor student).