18.1.2023 / Online international technical seminar with GM Hwang Ho-yong

From Repy around the world quickly and easily

On the second weekend of January we visited the Sports Centre Repy again, this time for an online international technical seminar with Grand Master Hwang Ho-yong. Although Covid 19 doesn't prevent us from travelling that much, it's not quite that easy and moreover the format of the online technical and instructor seminars has proven to be a great success. Above all, it saves everyone a lot of money and also time!

But let's go in order - everything was preceded by two hours of preparation of the broadcast hall on Friday - tatami, rollups, two big TVs, cameras, laptops, editing box and above all a lot of cables :-) Testing everything, so that on Saturday we could deal with the taekwondo technique and not with what doesn't work... Everything was successful, even though Alex and I came out of the stereotype of covid onlines and sometimes the question came up - where did we have this? How was it wired?

Saturday we meet at the sports centre at 8:30. Grand Master Hwang, Master Martin Zamecnik, the president of the association and head of the technical department Petr Parik and especially the three pre-practitioners - Tereza Stekerova, Lea and Tea Rathouska will arrive one by one. They are complemented by Aaron Viudes from Spain, who is passing through Prague for a chess tournament in Mariánské Lázně. Grand Master Hwang repeats the basic theory of Taekwondo at the beginning of the seminar and patiently explains and demonstrates everything in cooperation with the prepractitioners. We take turns with Master Martin Zamecnik in translating and explaining. After a short break - made more enjoyable by the Grand Master in the role of snack master, or rather his wife - the traditional Korean kimbap disappears from the bowl into our digestive tracts with an appreciative munch :-D

The color belt patterns follow when the twins Lea and Tea take turns in pre-practice. The morning block ends and we, like the other participants from all over the world, go to lunch. From all over the world? Yes, because the participants range from Australia, to Malaysia, Nepal, South Africa, Europe and we end up in the Caribbean countries - Grenada, Haiti and Jamaica. A diverse community but with one goal - to listen and learn the secrets and pitfalls of the beautiful martial art of Taekwon-Do.

The Saturday afternoon block includes the higher patterns and also the first black belts in which Tereza Stekerova is also involved. Lee and Tee are then given the whole fighting system and the girls go through it like seasoned greasers! Grand Master Hwang lets me and Master Martin Zámečník explain the different variants of the sparring system and only occasionally adds his perspective. The kimpbap bowl is empty and the time is also full. We need to regain our strength for Sunday. We head home and I appreciate the distance, which is figuratively speaking a stone's throw (and a tricycle ride away) :-)

Sunday morning and again 8:30am meet at the sports centre and the Grand Master replenishes the kimbap supplies. Pre-practicing girls are replaced by the men's crew - Jiri Novak and Vladimir Svanda who will be pre-practicing Eui-Am to Tong-Il patterns. The Grand Master returns to Saturday's program and as always gives room for questions, which are often very interesting and educate even himself. The boys have taken to the pre-practice as proficiently as the girls did the day before and therefore the routines move along quickly. Still, there is one surprise before the end when the Grand Master asks Master Martin Zamecnik to practice the Se-Jong pattern already. With no preparation, Martin unexpectedly gets stuck in a few places, and the tangle causes the internet connection to be scrambled, sending him off into the unknown for a few minutes. But after a while, everything is fine and we can continue with the correct version of Se-Jong pattern and then with Tong-Il master lineup.

It remains to answer the final set of questions and then invite everyone to the March instructor course, which will also be online, and also to the end of May, when Prague and the Czech Taekwon-Do Federation will host after 3 years the classic in-person international technical seminar with Grand Master Hwang Ho-yong.

We will be looking forward to it, because every such high quality seminar takes our knowledge and understanding of Taekwondo much further. I dare to paraphrase the winged how many languages you know, how many seminars you have attended, how many times you are a taekwondo player.