{"id":3630,"date":"2024-03-12T13:34:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T05:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/?p=3630"},"modified":"2025-02-23T19:51:43","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T11:51:43","slug":"march-2024-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/2024\/03\/12\/march-2024-action\/","title":{"rendered":"March 2024 action"},"content":{"rendered":"

First Tae Kwon Do Western Australia held its autumn grading recently under the head of the school\u2014Master Vernon Low, from Adelaide. I was again shooting with my Nikon D700 and Nikkor AF-S 70\u2013200 mm f\/2.8 lens, giving me a reasonable amount of telephoto reach and typically excellent background blur in the out-of-focus areas.<\/p>\n

Students at 8th Kup (coloured belt grade) have only just begun their Tae Kwon Do training, perhaps only having started learning this martial art around six months ago. Overall form should be sound, but it will be particularly important for some key details to be correct even at this stage\u2014such as the formation of the fist, which will be true across virtually every form of unarmed striking art.<\/p>\n

\"First
FTKD upper-section punch, March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD upper-section punch, March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next two photographs show one of the younger students stretching and executing push-ups during the warm-ups just ahead of her grading examination. At 2nd Kup, denoted by a brown belt, this student will have been training for a few years already. Here, she demonstrates excellent flexibility and excellent push-up form.<\/p>\n

\"First
FTKD stretching, March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD push-up, March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is perhaps worth mentioning here one of the more misguided beliefs I have heard over the years, which is that ‘if you have [sufficient] martial art training, the opponent’s size and strength will not matter [very much].’ Obviously, any child, regardless of the extent or quality of martial art training, will<\/em> be at a severe physical disadvantage if assaulted by an adult. But the hope is that with good training, the child will demonstrate sensible decision-making (such as choosing a safe time and route to make a journey), be aware of the immediate environment (and be sensitive to potential danger, and mitigate the risk accordingly), and have some degree of physical defensive capability if the situation really comes to that. (That physical capability could be as basic as being fast enough to get away from an assailant, without any closing to striking range in the first place.)<\/p>\n

The front snap kick is the most basic kicking technique in Tae Kwon Do, and below we see two boys at 4th Kup demonstrating this as part of their grading. Visual focus on the target is good in both cases, with the first boy’s kick probably delivering more vertical impact whereas the second boy’s kick may perhaps deliver a touch more horizontal impact.<\/p>\n

\"First
FTKD front snap kick, March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD front snap kick, March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The core traditional Tae Kwon Do curriculum encompasses patterns, sparring, and breaking, and below are samples of each of those aspects being tested. In the first picture, a student prepares to execute her pattern, standing in the specified attention stance and mentally focused on the sequence of techniques to come. This requirement for absolute focus is one of the things that separates martial art training (and similar endeavours) from more casual pursuits.<\/p>\n

\"First
FTKD pattern, March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD free sparring, March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD free sparring, March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD turning kick break, March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD middle-section punch, March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This grading examination also saw three instructors promoted through the black belts ranks, including one instructor promoted to 3rd Dan (black belt degree) and two instructors promoted to 2nd Dan. The two new 2nd Dan instructors are from the First Tae Kwon Do Cockburn Branch, and are shown below with some of that branch’s other instructors and black belt members.<\/p>\n

Following my previous post from December 2023<\/a>, special congratulations to the branch’s Senior Instructor (2nd Dan in March 2024) and her son (1st Dan in December 2023) as pictured at the end.<\/p>\n

\"First
FTKD Cockburn Branch instructors and black belts, March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"First
FTKD Cockburn Branch Senior Instructor (mother) and Assistant Instructor (son), March 2024<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Congratulations to the many students who were promoted on the day, and to the three instructors promoted through the Dan ranks by Master Low.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First Tae Kwon Do Western Australia held its autumn grading recently under the head of the school\u2014Master Vernon Low, from Adelaide. I was again shooting with my Nikon D700 and Nikkor AF-S 70\u2013200 mm f\/2.8 lens, giving me a reasonable amount of telephoto reach and typically excellent background blur in the out-of-focus areas. Students at… Continue reading March 2024 action<\/span> →<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[27,278,70,58,162,160,24,260,277],"class_list":["post-3630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-martial-arts","tag-breaking-action","tag-ftkd","tag-martial-arts","tag-nikkor-afs-70-200-2-8-vr-ii","tag-nikon-d700","tag-patterns-action","tag-sparring-action","tag-tkd","tag-vernon-low"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3630"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4093,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3630\/revisions\/4093"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}