It was a glorious day on the Wirral, and as we welcomed Master Wood and his wife into the Shaftesbury youth club you could tell -  it was going to be a good day!

Having not trained together before, nobody was sure what to expect - at 10am the black belt session got underway, and we were treated to a core based warm up involving variations of the notorious plank position, and shadow sparring up and down the length of the hall. The session was varied throughout, and Master Wood kept everyone on their toes by moving between patterns, step sparring, bagwork, kicking techniques and self defense - making the most of the one hour session. (Could have done with a few more hours!)

The colour belt seminar began around 11am, and after a quick introduction Master Wood got straight into demonstrating a selection of simple yet very effective release from grabs before giving everybody the opportunity to practise with a partner. 
Before starting the seminar, Master Wood had described a warm up game called ''end to end'' which involved all 30+ participants working together and following commands, woe betide anybody who wasn''t paying attention and made a mistake! It was interesting to see that the adults made more mistakes than the juniors! Any nervousness had left the room and the focus moved to fundamental movements and consecutive kicking techniques on bags. The session drew to an end, and the floor was opened to questions before taking a break for a well earned lunch.

Congratulations to all those who were successful in the grading, particularly to Mr Phil Birkett and Mr James Morris who were promoted to 2nd Dan. Many thanks to everybody who attended and worked behind the scenes to make the day such a success - It was a priviledge to have Master Wood and Mrs Wood with us, everybody took something away and everybody enjoyed the day, so a very sincere thank you from all at Shaftesbury TKD.