CEO blog – May 2022.

A lot of our focus this month is on the upcoming European Taekwondo Championships & the Para-European Taekwondo Championships.

The event is fast approaching and we’re looking forward to welcoming athletes, coaches, supporters and spectators to Manchester from the 19th to the 22nd May.

Tickets are still available for some sessions – come on down to Manchester and support our amazing GB athletes!

BT coaches and instructors’ day

If you are a BT club instructor or coach and are attending the event on Sunday 22nd May we’d like to invite you to drop in on us at the British Taekwondo Coaches Zone, where you can grab a coffee and a chance to chat with British Taekwondo staff, officers and other club instructors. It would be great to see you!

If you can’t make the event, then we’ll still be sharing updates from the championships across our official social media channels.

Come on Team GB!!!!!!!!!!

Technical activity

Our Technical Departments continue to deliver some excellent projects and activities, recently with the Sport Performance Youth Development Camps. Demand was so high that the team had to run extra sessions. Youth Development across all aspects of Taekwondo is so important to nurture our future talent.

Speaking of talent, GB recently held the second edition of the Red vs Blue ‘fight night’ concept, under the spotlights at the National Taekwondo Centre in Manchester. It was a really good night, open to spectators this time, and a decent crowd cheered on our athletes against a cross section of athletes from around the world. It was a very useful set of test matches ahead of the Europeans too.

Watch out for the chance to see more of these events in the future.

Our Poomsae and Martial Art departments are busy with lots of activity too.

The Poomsae Performance Department held a highly successful series of seminars and are building on these with a further five events covering the home nations across the month.

Martial Art Seminar – 29th May

It’s your last chance to register for the Martial Art seminar this weekend – with Grand Masters and Masters Bailey, Lennox, Guest and Biescas leading a session on all aspects of the Dan grading syllabus. This will support the grading candidates at the National Dan Grading next month. Even if you’re not grading – it will be a superb experience to train alongside fellow Taekwondo lovers with expert tuition from a range of high Dan and experienced people.

Sign up here.

Dan grading – 19th June

We continue to provide a high-quality centralised Dan grading opportunity for our clubs who prefer a national grading system. At least 3 Eighth Dan Grand Masters lead a panel of examiners conducting a thorough grading at the iconic National Taekwondo Centre. It really is an amazing experience for the candidates, befitting the once in a lifetime promotion.

British Taekwondo is also wanting to bring our club family together more and more, training and grading together for the betterment of everyone. So, we are asking all club instructors to consider putting their members into these National level gradings, getting collaboration going again!

Clubs also receive a rebate on entry fees into the gradings for the first time, making them really good value for money.

Instructors are welcome to come and observe both the seminar on the 29th May and the grading on 19th June to see what we are doing around things like the common syllabus and have a chat to the team.

Members stories

In our 40th Year we continue to share our members stories and club updates and it’s interesting and inspiring to hear how people have got involved with Taekwondo and the journeys they are on.
If you haven’t already, please do read the recent stories from Ebrahim Asskaravi from the Cardiff Taekwondo Academy, Karla Jaeger-Collins of the Dorset Taekwondo Association, Paul Jones from the Llantwit Major Taekwondo Club, as well as the Horizon Taekwondo Academy members who have continued with Taekwondo and taken up the sport side for the first time.

As part of British Taekwondo’s 10-year strategy we are looking for experienced and talented people to join our staff and volunteer technical department teams as we build our capacity to support our passionate network of Taekwondo clubs and coaches. Look out for opportunities on our vacancies page on the website.

As our membership grows and opportunities to highlight the benefits of Taekwondo present themselves we want to ensure we offer the right products and services to our member clubs, coaches and individual members of all ages. To this end we have put out a call to businesses looking to partner with our growing grassroots national governing body and look forward to sharing details with our members over the coming months.

Good luck to everyone competing and training in the coming month!

Ian

Ian Leafe

Chief Executive