2/ Few Toi-gye Prague members also took part with their instructor Petr Smejkal (IV. Dan) and even though black belts worked mostly as assistants, we also found time for advanced training that was worth of doing.
3/ Winter was strong (minus 15 during evening), but we still considered ideas of photographing barefoot in snow (Petr´s idea) and rolling in snow naked after sauna as very good, although we used very nasty language doing it. Typical infectious humor of Toi-gye manifested this time as bench locking sauna´s door. Not becoming hysterical took lot of self-control (or egoism? No one wanted to start crying first).
4/ Senior Master Hwang came with his wife and led first grading in Sabom dojang and also taught beginners. I won´t forget his skill to fascinate them and admiration in children´s eyes for long time.
5/ Incidentally taekwondists from the other ITF had their training camp on same place in same time. Because they had more oldies with black belts than we had and as a special guest trainer of Slovenian national team Mr. Mohamed Baltić, Aneta and Martin asked Vladimír Machota if we may join them. I was curious how much will training change into „who is better“ contest, but I have to sincerely say that I did not feel even a drop of disrespect, anger or trotting out. Mr. Baltić knows how to motivate, how to explain and how to torture people in stretching (what is ok when you see that he probably tortured himself a lot) with ability to show whatever he asks us to do in perferct speed and technique relevant to much younger practitioner. So everyone worked hard and one felt like part of one big family during this hard sport matsogi training. I felt like training in our own dojang. This may be inspiration for those who has some conflicts in taekwondo, hard training really connects people ;o)
PS: I trained with a girl Katka during training of Mr. Baltić, first thinking that I would have better training with a boy more of my constitution. I would like to apologize her this way, because it was great to train with her and sincerely…maybe my lungs got more devastated than her :o)
PPS: It is interesting how much you can get for 1000 crowns in 2 days, isn´t it? This is how I feel relax before Christmas should look like :o)
Carpe diem
Martin Svitek, III. Dan
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