Last night, I had the pleasure of training with a World Champion (1992) and instructor from Argentina, Mr. Ricardo Rieiro. Mr. Cabanas from Arcan TKD invited him to stay and train with us for a night. Mr. Rieiro had limited English but it was fine since Mr. Cabanas translated from Spanish. Mr. Rieiro was so expressive with his movements you could figure things out easily anyway. The night was full of great drills, tips, and pieces of advice. I love learning from people all around the world. It brings a new voice, opinion and perspective which I love. You can learn from absolutely everyone so this was a great opportunity. The three main things that really stuck in my mind were:
1. Explode! It’s important to explode when you are attacking forward but it’s equally to also explode when exiting an attack. Most people explode only when they attack.
2. There are different ways of training when doing kicking and sparring drills.
- For explosive drills, it’s more like sprints. You do less repetition but with more explosiveness.
- When training for cardio, you can use intervals and more reps with less explosiveness.
- With more complex drills, the number of repetitions should be decreased.
3. Class schedules and teaching techniques
Since most of us in the room are instructors as well, he explained how they planned out classes in Argentina, and how he sets up his classes. He likes to focus on one thing each class. For example, a full class of sparring or a full class of patterns, or a full class of kicking drills. I thought that was an interesting and a cool concept.
Nights like this reinforce that there is such a strong unity amongst TKD practitioners all around the world. We might do some things a bit differently but we all have the same passion for the Art.