Master Frank Vanberghen, Master Annick Van Driessche, Eddy Van Damme, Amy-Jane Troy, Michael O’Keeffe, Erika Knihti-Van Driessche and Esther Meulemeester will take part in the upcoming IIC in Dublin (City West), Ireland May 12th-13th 2018.

The IIC will be conducted by the ITF Technical Committee: GrandMaster Hector Marano, Grandmaster Lan Ung Kim and Master Pierre Laquerre.

Next IIC’s in Europe: Skövde (August), Sofia (November), Amsterdam (November) & Barcelona (January).

Since a couple of years ITF-Belgium is having 2 Days of Taekwon-Do a year…..meanwhile it has become a tradition.

May 6th the first edition of 2018 was being held in Destelbergen, with 113 participants and 11 instructors. For the first time there were separate classes for kids 3-7, the Kids Day. For these youngest participants, the seminar was shorter (1,5 hour). The instructors: Margaux Pollefeyt I° and Jérémie Bewa I°.

Youth, juniors and seniors had classes from 10.00 to 13.30. We started with a general warming-up, afterwards the groups were divided according to age and grade; there were classes in fundamental movements, tul, application of movements and stepsparring, hosinsul, sparring, powerbreaking and special techniques. Instructors: Master Annick Van Driessche VII°, Eddy Van Damme VI°, Virginia Dionisi VI°, Yves Pollefeyt VI°, Patrick Crevecoeur V°, Bob Wigman IV°, Nico Tunyck III° and Jan Lauwereins II°.

Meanwhile some black belts, instructors, could join Master Frank Vanberghen VIII° for individual tul sessions.

At the end of the seminar all participants received a participation certificate.

Report by Nicolas Taylor (Samjok-O)

On Saturday 31 March 2018, a Masterclass with ‘The Dragon’ Stephen Tapilatu was held in London, organized by Da Silva Taekwon-Do Association. Two training session were organized :

• A 1h30 session for colour belts
• A 3h00 session for black belts

Although I was registered as coloured belt, I was given the opportunity to also train with the black belts, which made the day quite intense.

After a short warming-up, we started to do some mobility exercises, adding some kicks and punches afterwards. Then started to add exercices to practise counter-attack. Finally, we ended up by some sparring. As the number of participants was limited (around 10 per session), Sabum Stephen Tapilatu could watch out every single one of us and make comments to help us to improve. During all the sessions, we also had the opportunity to ask as many questions as we wanted.

It was a very interesting seminar (my first one with Sabum Tapilatu), where each exercise was built up on the previous one and I’m glad I had the opportunity to participate to it.