A report from camp Korea
Saturday the 19th June was training camp Korea day for Red Star Sport Taekwon-Do.
The competitors who are heading to Korea on the 29th spent the whole day away training. The training began early morning with some fundamental movements and patterns work. The patterns training was competition specific putting each competitor under pressure to perform under scrutiny. Each pattern was drilled over and over with emphasis on performance, including posture, facial expression, intention and of course technical content. At twelve noon it was off the the Geal Scoil Barra festival where Red Star black belt Néidín Coulahan taught a class to the students of Geal scoil Barra, the Irish school in Cabra.
After the class is was off to a local restaurant for a light lunch where Erika had a tuna melt (without the cheese, which really meant it was just a Tuna sandwich
). At 2pm it was back to the dojang for some tactical hand sparring. The initial emphasis was on level changing. A concept of close combat within Taekwon-Do and Kickboxing brought to Dublin by none other than Tomaz Barada. After 40 minutes of drills it was into some hand sparring with an emphasis on countering moving.
To warm up the legs a bit we moved into some ladder drills and transition movements.
Then it was into some lead leg side kick drills with the emphasis this time on counter and attack drills working on the need for accurate timing. At 4pm it was into some free sparring. At that time we were into our 6th hour of training.
After the free sparring session it was off to the Magazine fort of the Phoenix Park for some serious hill sprints. For anyone that knows the Magazine fort they will be aware of the steep unforgiving hills that surround the area. To start, we headed for ten rounds of death sprints covering over 300 meters of a 45 degree angle incline.
Everybody was well and truly shattered after the ten rounds, lactic acid and pure pain was the name of the game. We weren't finished yet though, out came the bike to everyone's delight (not). On that same incline everyone had to cycle to the very top at full speed. This was an interesting event as we discovered that Lauren couldn't ride a bike and Néidín didn't know where the breaks were as she headed back down the hill
. None the less everyone finished the section well. To finish the days training we took 1Km at a high pace with interval sprints. Adam and Alvy finished strong and showed great levels of fitness, the girls weren't far behind. After all of that it was off to the Peoples Gardens for some ice pops and sun.
That rounded off a very long and hard days training which demonstrated a high level of anaerobic endurance from all the athletes. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday will be the same, then we ease things off as we allow muscles to recover and get ready for the long flight to Asia.
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