Paul Green & Gareth Brown Seminar Day 1: January 5, 2018

/ Knockout Taekwondo/

The first day of the seminar weekend with the former Great Britain coaches gave me great insight of their views and methods of training. Comparing with previous USA coaches, Paul Green and Gareth Brown focus less on techniques to score on the electronic systems and more on preventing from getting scored on. Today they focused primarily on blocks and controlling the space between you and the opponent. They were training the athletes today to be more mentally strong and confident when approaching and being near an opponent. 

But the biggest takeaway from their training today was the theme of the training. Without themes in training sessions, the training will be mostly useless and doesn't help athletes improve their skills. The themes make the drills work and without them, the drills are just more drills that everyone can do. There were 3 notable themes today: Intensity, realism, and speed. Paul Green and Gareth Brown are strong advocates for the phrase: "Fight how you train". They ensured and encouraged all the athletes in attendance to do every movement and every kick as if they were in a competition. This is where the themes come in. Without intensity and speed, one's body will not improve because it will not know how to perform optimally. Without realism, the body will fail to react to situations in the ring if it hasn't been exposed to these situations in training.  

I am looking forward to what the coaches have in store for tomorrow.

-Joseph Ong

Great Britain Coaches' Sparring Seminar

/ Paul Green and Gareth Brown Seminar/

This coming weekend from Friday 1/5/18 to Sunday 1/7/18 is a sparring seminar lead by 2 former coaches of Great Britain: Paul Green and Gareth Brown. I've yet to be informed exactly why they are no longer the head coaches for Great Britain but they are now the head coaches for the United States. Personally, I think they are great new assets for the US Team. For a long time, results from our athletes compared to the other countries around the world have been mediocre. I think we are always, in some way, 1 step behind the rest of the world. It certainly shows through their results and our lack thereof. Going into this, I hope to learn much from their experience and add some of their wealth of knowledge to my own repertoire to share with my own students. It is a big change for USA Taekwondo but perhaps that is what it has needed all along to push it forward. 

-Joseph Ong