Taekwondo Class

[serietah]

We do 5-10 minutes of stretching plus basic punches and kicks to start, then move on to the "workout" portion of class. That varies each day (or week, if we are doing a theme for the week) and can be partner drills, focus on details of techniques, sparring techniques, or kicking drills. This week, for example, each class focused on their board breaking techniques, except for white belts, who did running drills and partner drills. Adult class did one day of detail (my favorite), and one day of sparring techniques. After 20ish minutes of that, we do a water break then the rest of the time is spent on curriculum. Whatever each student needs to work on, basically.

 

[Gwai Lo Dan]

I taught a class on Saturday, and was genuinely challenged as to what to teach.

The class started with 3 kids, 10-13 years old, mid-level colour belts; I had my plan of what to teach. But 15 minutes into the class, 3 white belts, aged 4-8 showed up. I taught the 6 kids mid-level things (e.g., back kick), but the older red belt wanted more complicated techniques.

It's so hard to run a class for a wide range of skills and ages!

 

[JP3]

I taught a class on Saturday, and was genuinely challenged as to what to teach.

The class started with 3 kids, 10-13 years old, mid-level colour belts; I had my plan of what to teach. But 15 minutes into the class, 3 white belts, aged 4-8 showed up. I taught the 6 kids mid-level things (e.g., back kick), but the older red belt wanted more complicated techniques.

It's so hard to run a class for a wide range of skills and ages!

A way, just one way, to handle that problem is to have the red belt help you teach. They won't do a bang-up job of it, but you can take a red belt and have them work through a green belt's kicks, for example, which would give you enough breathing room to handle the white belts, start them on a basic drill... then trade them off after a bit, and have the green belt monitor the white belts and have the red belt do a bit of, say... jump spin-hook kick practice so they get that... then flip-flop it back and forth like that until the class time is over.

 

[Gwai Lo Dan]

A way, just one way, to handle that problem is to have the red belt help you teach.

That's a good idea. The older (about 14 years old) red belt was definitely more skilled and mature than the younger kids who had a harder time staying focussed. I'll have to keep that in mind for next time.

 

[Cooltkd]

warmups - running, skipping etc
demonstrations
drilling
sparring
stretches
meditation

 

[StevenNotSeagal]

Seen a bit of complaint above about length of warm up but as a new older student I suspect it might be a godsend for me, our classes where I go are structured, warm up, stretches, technique work then sparring (which for me as a noob is 1 step) the pattern work and I think its best to have patterns at the end as it helps the old grey matter retain the moves for practice at home . I have noticed above and beyond what I expected when I joined a greater emphasis on self defence techniques/take downs, obviously kicking gets a good deal of air time but I must say and I can only speak for the class I go to, hands and elbows get a fair shout too.

The club I go to is only on twice a week totalling 4 hours but what I am doing is taking as much of each lesson as possible and repeating it on off days plus I have found some good YT channels to help practice my pattern of the moment by.