PUMA at 3rd ITF Womens SuperClass

The ITF Women’s Committee held their 3rd Super Class on Sunday 10th January using Zoom. The two-hour seminar was conducted by four well-known female competitors, and open to all black belt members. The Chair of the Women’s Committee (Master Valérie Forget) gave a brief opening address, followed by a quick message from the President of the ITF (Grand Master Paul Weiler), praising the Women’s committee for their activities and likely the most active of all the ITF’s committees.

When I looked there were around 360 connections on Zoom, many of which had multiple people training, as well as the seminar being broadcast through ITF-Russia’s Facebook page. Edit: the official report is 543 participants from 44 countries, plus Facebook Live views. If you’re interested you can watch the seminar there https://www.facebook.com/tkdrussia/videos/217615366608132/ (the speeches start at approx 4min 30, and the first session at approx 15 minutes in).

• Ekaterina Kozlachkova (a multi-time champion across sparring, power breaking and special technique) gave the first session with some ideas of sparring drills and combinations which can be useful for controlling space
• Bo Rook (Patterns champion from the Netherlands, who often supports our International Open) shared some of her methods for combining relaxation with speed and sharpness when performing patterns – I’ll definitely look at using some in my lessons
• Isabelle Schander (Sparring champion from Sweden) gave a really interesting and informative session on how her training has adapted while pregnant and her focus on core strength and hip mobility to ease her transition back into training
• Katya Solovey (Arguably the most well-known female ITF fighter, from Ukraine) took the final section covering some sparring drills based around movement and flowing combinations

It was great to train under instructors with such knowledge and experience; although it feels much better to train in person the possibility of training in 4 different countries with no training fees or travel expenses is incredibly welcomed! It was also a pleasure to share the experience with some of my students, and other students across PUMA, those attending were (in alphabetical order):

• Mr A Bailey
• Mr T Bailey
• Mr D Hubbuck
• Mr I Hubbuck
• Mr D Melluish
• Miss E Mohan-Singh
• Mr O Payne
• Mr A Swain (me)
• Mrs J Swain

Well done to you all for stepping outside your comfort zones and taking the opportunities that are available!

About Movewell Taekwondo

Movewell Taekwondo is part of PUMA Martial Arts (Professional Unification of Martial Arts), the main instructor of Movewell Taekwondo is Nick Evans, 5th Degree Black Belt.

Movewell Taekwondo offers Taekwondo classes in Royal Wootton Bassett, near Swindon for all ages -

• Movewell Little PUMA's age 4-7 Class Times and more about Little PUMA's
• Movewell Junior Taekwondo age 7-12 Class Times and more about Taekwondo
• Movewell Adult Taekwondo age 12+ Class Times and more about Taekwondo