Jack Watson – ll Dan, Southern Cross Taekwon-Do Academy
On November 10th, Central Region was lucky enough to host Mr Brendan Doogan to take his Weird and Wonderful seminar. Once we had bowed in we instantly kicked off into some break falls and how to do them. This was both very weird and wonderful for many students who had never done anything like this in their syllabus, and was a great addition to many student’s self-defense. In conjunction with learning how to break our own falls, we learnt how to make others fall by learning various foot trips and takedowns; this too was new for most students. Through these foot trips, we learnt how to apply our various foot positions to take people down. One of the weirdest but best of al is the twisting kick foot position.
After a short break, we jumped into applications and how to do various less well-known strikes and striking tools. First, we learnt how to prepare our tool for a headbutt and then practised this on pads. The next technique we did was a slap with the open palm. We practised this on each other and then broke boards with it. We then moved on to more technical aspects such as deep Korean history in relation to the General and pattern meanings. This was very interesting and something every Taekwon-Do student needs to learn. We also broke down the characters that spell Taekwon-Do, learned what they mean and how they look like some techniques found in the patterns. To finish, we learnt the lost pattern Ko-Dang; I and many others thoroughly enjoyed learning this as it felt we were learning a piece of Taekwon-Do that many students don’t have the chance to learn.
This seminar was truly weird and wonderful and was a great learning experience for everyone who attended.
Finally, thank you Mr Doogan for taking this seminar, it was a great experience and everyone took away a new piece of knowledge and skill.