On 21 November 2010, Master Wood and his senior black belt students were invited to Lincolnshire to give a Seminar for Lisa’s coloured belt students at Reepham Tae Kwon Do School. This gave the students and Master Wood the opportunity to meet each other, and allowed the students to receive some excellent quality training from some very experienced Black Belts.

After the introductions and formalities were done, Master Wood with the help of his seniors gave the students a warm up with some press ups and other exercises, followed by kicking and punching.

Then it was straight into the basics - how to move forward and back using sign wave; how to use posture and body movement to produce power; understanding  that blocking movements should be as strong as offensive techniques; and the importance of using the correct stance.

After each segment of the seminar Master Wood sat the class down and explained to them in detail the importance of that particular part of the seminar, ensuring that the students all understood the information being given. 

Following some stretching, Master Wood covered the subject of using body weight whilst moving forward to produce more power.  Under the guidance of the senior belts, this gave the students an opportunity to perform flying punches and kicking techniques against pads and kicking shields.

The next subject was free sparring, which gave the students the chance to pad up and do some fighting, with demonstrations from the seniors on good sparring techniques, and including a demonstration of two-onto-one sparring.

After sparring, Master Wood put the students through some patterns, picking up on a few areas where the students could implement new ways to improve the standard of their patterns. This was followed by demonstrations of senior patterns preformed by the black belts.

Next, Master Wood gave the students a self defence lesson that not only covered release of grip and grab techniques, but also some advance take downs and the theory of self defence.

Before ending the seminar, Master Wood gave the students an opportunity to ask questions. Some students asked questions which were Tae Kwon Do related, and others were curious to know more about Master Wood.  The standout question of the day was “Does Master Wood have a favourite pattern?”  Master Wood then told a great story about when another student had asked that same question to Master Choi Jung Hwa -  Master Choi enquired whether the student had any brothers or sisters, and the student replied that he did. Master Choi then asked if his mother or father had a favourite child, and after thinking for a while the student said to Master Choi, “You like them all equally don’t you Sir!”

It was then time to bring the Seminar to a close and allow the students to rest after their very full and interesting day.

Master Wood and his seniors black belt students stayed to give both Lisa and myself some much needed tuition on our grade patterns, EUI -AM, GHOONG-JANG and KODANG.  We both understand the importance of having an Instructor, as without the guidance of an Instructor a student cannot learn and improve themselves, and in turn pass on their knowledge to others. 

 Lisa, the students and I all greatly appreciate Master Wood and his seniors taking the time and trouble to present this seminar – the opportunity to learn from such well respected members of the Imperial family is highly beneficial and we cannot recommend a seminar of this type highly enough.

Although both myself and Lisa enjoy being Instructors, sometimes it’s great to just be a student again.

Thank you Sir.