I’ve been running Tournament Training sessions every Sunday for the last few months with Mr. Roland and Ms. Jobin. It’s one thing to train regularly in class and it’s another thing to train for competition. These trainings are different because they focus on certain aspects that are strictly related to competing. Some of the things we will be covering are:
- Goal setting
- How to prepare mentally before competition
- Warm-ups
- Scoring System for both patterns and sparring
- What judges look for
- How to conduct yourself at a tournament
- Fine tune movements in all patterns
- Covers different sparring sparring drills and strategies
There are so many things to cover and there never seems to be enough time. The biggest challenge is everyone is at different abilities and different levels of competing. I wish I could work with everyone individually.
It’s been exciting to see the classes grow in size and to see the improvement in everyone.
Some kids have never competed before so there is so much to cover with them and they definitely do better with the one-on-one attention so they aren’t distracted.
Patterns in competition is all about presentation. It’s important that all the movements are executed properly. Judges are very picky.
Ms. Jobin and I demonstrate some sparring drills that everyone can do. These drills and combinations can be really effective and useful if you know when and where to throw them. It’s so important to understand the scoring system too. Sometimes people get confused thinking that they are winning a match since they are doing a lot of combinations but they aren’t actually scoring points.
Knowing the level of contact that is acceptable at different types of tournaments is important. You can see which schools train with more contact that others at tournaments. It’s important to get used to actually being hit so your aren’t thrown off guard. Obviously there are different standards of contact for different belt levels and different age groups.
Look forward to seeing everyone at the next session 🙂