Blue Wave Winter Camp 2009

an update! I know its been a LOOOOONG time. A lot has been going on, tournaments, testings, seminars, we had a great Co-oP work out with Pil-Sung Taekwondo of Troy NY. Unfortunately, I have been so busy, I have been neglecting updating the blog.

We recently had our Blue Wave Winter Camp. It was outstanding. Here are the highlights:

• 175 Participants
• Black Belt testing included the following promotions: Eleven 1st Dan, eight 2nd, One 5th, four 6th and two 7th.
• In addition to Blue Wave Master insturctors, our guest instructors included Master(s) Gale and Panizzo of Midwest/Milan Taekwondo. Master Ron Southwick of MSU Taekwondo, and Master David Turgeon of CT Chung do kwan. Master Southwick and Turgeon are members of the US National Poomsae team.
• Grandmaster Tae Sung Lee taught several semars on both days, working everyone hard and having a good time.

Match Games

We had about 25 people participate in match games on November 13th. (Match Games are like a "scrimmage" for Taekwondo competitors)

We set up two rings with Electronic scoring. The matches started at 5:45, there were about 15 juniors (11 and younger) most of them had 3 matches by 6:45. The 12 - 17 year olds and adults started around 7, and wrapped up by 8:00.  

I think that Tournaments provide a fantastic learning experience for Taekwondo students. The problem is Tournaments often do not provide enough ring time, especially in single elimination. By throwing out the strict divisions, we simply lined the competitors up and matched them by Size (weight), Age and Rank - in that order. We had green and black belts fighting, yellow and red belts - no one cared because it was not about winning or losing, it was about learning and Having fun. The focus was on Performance, not Results. This is such an important concept for younger competitors.  

Other then Blue Wave students, a near by school ( American Martial Arts and Fitness )brought some students to join in the fun as well. 

Here is a short video of some match highlights.

I hope to do another match games soon, I will keep you posted, and hope we get even more interest. A big thank you to everyone that came and participated, helped run rings and officiate. We had some parents scoring matches which is great. Thank you to Master Robinson who traveled all the way from East haven to help us run things.

The Convocation of Combat Arts

I have not reported on the Ky Tu Dang Poomsae seminar yet, I will when I have a little more time, but in short it was awesome. 

In the meantime I wanted to encourage you to visit a new and improved Convocation of Combat Arts Site. Once a google group, and now a NING site the Convocation is growing quickly with quite a few martial arts bloggers (and their readers) from all over the geographic and style map. Click the Image below to check it out!

Poomse Seminar with Ky Tu Dang

This weekend on November 2nd, 8 Blue Wave black belts (including myself)  will be attending a competition poomse Seminar hosted by Master David Turgeon of CT. Chung Do Kwan.  The seminar will be taught by Master Ky Tu Dang of Denmark.  Master Dang won his division at the World Poomse Championship this past year, and placed 2nd the year before.  He is widely considered one of the best forms competitors in the world.  Here is a clip from YouTube of his division from 2006, he is the second competitor in the clip.  (Sorry I could not find one from the 2007)

The World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) has been working very hard to develop the World Taekwondo Poomse Championships.  They have done a nice job at creating very clear, rules, guidelines, and scoring criteria.  USA Taekwondo (USAT) is on board and are including forms competition at their national events, and has named a National Team.

Ky Tu Dang begins around the 3 minute and 10 second mark

I will be sure to post again next week and report on the seminar, and hopefully post some pictures and Video.