Saturday - First ITFK Grading

Saturday morning was an early start - relatively speaking.... We set off from the dojang at Busan and headed up(?) to Ulsan for the first ITF Korea Grading - very exciting! Mr Brown and Mr Chirtoca have been working hard setting up the syllabus and training the kids for their yellow stripe grading.

I have to offer my complete respect to our ITF examiners at this point.... I was asked to make notes with regard to the performance of the kids at this grading, and offer my gratitude and thanks to the examiners that I have graded under in the past - it's hard work!!!!

Anyway - the students went through their stuff - and looked pretty good, especially considering the small amount of time that they have had to study the syllabus.

BTW - all of you junior belts out there - thank your lucky stars that we do not have to complete our patterns the same way that these guys had to complete Saju Makgi and Saju Jirugi. The students here are learning English in the same way that we learn Korean, so to help them with this they are asked to say the English name of each move in the "pattern" before they do it - whew!!! Could make Yul Gok tough couldn't it? :)

We were treated to a Gumdo demonstration at the second of the two gradings - the skill these guys have with swords is incredible!!! There were pieces of bamboo landing all over the place!!!

Mr Chirtoca also showed his stuff with two of his black belt patterns which had the audience in awe.

All in all - a very successful day! The work done so far for the ITF in Korea by Mr Van Roon, Mr Doogan, Mr Brown and Mr Chirtoca is pretty spectacular!