Pilsung ITF chief instructor Jon Mackey, attended a recent self protection / comabatives seminar hosted by Urban Combatives in Southampton England.
The event was one of it's kind bringing the top upcoming self protection specialists from across England together in one hall to perform a number of mini seminars. For more information visit the Urban Combatives Ireland website - UC Irelanda

Congratulations to all those who were succesful in their grading under Master Dalton. Master Dalton put over 70 students through the motions at the regular December testing. This years test was very technical especially for the 4th gups (blue belts) who were tested on their knowledge of chambering and applications. The adults got an extremely hard test which went on late into the night. Thankfully of 70 students, 68 were successful.
Master Dalton paid tribute to all those who tested saying that the standard was excellent. Master Dalton has now his eye on a couple of top competitors who may get to represent Ireland next year at the European championships in Croatia.

Castleknock students who all passed!  Master Dalton cutting the ribbon

Master Dalton also performed the official opening of the new premises with a ceremonial ribbon cutting! Thanks to everyone who turned up for the event, the place was packed to the rafters with parents and students alike.

Members of the newly established Leadership team of Pilsung ITF attended a special briefing session on the 1st of December, ran by the H.S.E.
The briefing session was the first in a series of sessions aimed at training staff who work with children and young people. The theme of the briefing was 'Children First' and outlined the staffs duties and obligations while working with children and young people. This included identifying the strands of child abuse, from neglect right through to sexual.
The leadership team of Pilsung ITF comprises of members who take an active role in helping run the club. Assistant instructors and supporting black belts will make up this team, who from now, will look after fund raising, discipline, child protection and other important aspects of maintaining a successful club. More about this team later.

See all the photo's HERE!

WOW!! Just WOW.
Taekwon-Do legend, Tomaza Barada paid his eagerly awaited visit to our full time training facility on Bannow Road, Cabra on Saturday 22nd November.
A ginormous amount of juniors turned up to train with Mr Barada and the excitement was huge. When Mr Barada arrived into the dojang a big spontaneous cheer went up from 50+ junior Taekwon-Doists who have been talking about the visit all week. Mr Barada is the most famous Taekwon-Do fighter in the world, and now he is an accomplished national coach to several world champions in both full and and light contact.




Mr Barada, trained the juniors for over 2 full hours and the time flew by. Usually it's hard to keep the attention of little ones for longer than half an hour, but Mr Barada with his massive energy and enthusiasm kept them all on their toes and interested.
To finish off, Mr Barada gave each and everyone of them the chance to beat a world champion, he sparred ALL of them, and with huge cheers and clapping every student gave it their all and put him under fierce pressure.
When the session had ended, all the juniors gave him a big 3 cheers and rousing clap.
Mr Barada then sat and spoke with them about the importance of Taekwon-Do training and being good in school. Both go together he said, "you can't be good in Taekwon-Do school and not good in school, you have to be good at both" he said. He also spoke about the tenets and how it was important that all the juniors cared for each other as a team, " when you come to Taekwon-Do class, you should come with a smile. Because at Taekwon-Do, it is where you meet all your best friends, you train together, sweat together and learn together. Taekwon-Do class is a happy place!

We all think Casey's amazed face summed up the weekend perfectly Free Smiley Face Courtesy of www.FreeSmileys.org

The senior training took place over two days. Over Saturday and Sunday two groups of Taekwon-Do and kickboxing students gathered at Synergy and literally trained their hearts out.
Mr Barada brought the groups, two different one's on each day, through his world famous training drills. Mr Barada is constantly researching and updating these drills and training methods which have helped bring several world championship titles back to Slovenia, his home country.
Each training day spent an amount of time perfecting these drills, each of which carried Barada's own trade mark of speed, agility and unique precision. On Saturday the last part of the class was spent on special core development and fight conditioning, and boy was it tough. Everyone was pushed to their limit, but everyone thouroughly enjoyed the session.

Sunday saw a progression in training. After an intense warm up, everyone got the sparring gear back on and Mr Barada recapped and introduced new drills. Towards the end of the day we were broken into different groups and we sparred using a rapid fire system developed by Mr Barada to keep the sparring intense, which pushed the fighters into the realms of anerobic conditioning. Everybody present must have had at least 50 rounds of sparring. In some cases, the defender was only allowed side kick, while the attacker used a full range of techniques, in other drills the defender could only move and not get hit while under pressure from the attacker, replicating being one point ahead and having only 10 or so seconds on the clock.
As was with the Saturday session, time ran past the scheduled finish, everyone was in the moment, it was hot and sweaty and the sparring was taking precedent. When all was done, Mr Barada finished with some conditioning and a warm down, followed by a questions and answers session. This concluded the much anticipated visit by Barada to Dublin.
All the participants expressed a great thanks to Mr Barada for the training session of 2008, further thanks were expressed to Mr Terry Donnelly who has long standing working relationship with Mr Barada and who invited Mr Barada over for the seminars. Mr Donnelly concluded the event by saying;

"I would like to thank everyone who supported the seminars with Mr Barada this weekend. There is no doubt that he (Barada) is the leading authority on Taekwon-Do sparring in the world today. His record speaks for itself. No one has ever achieved what Mr Barada has achieved and only he can impart that unique knowledge that he has garnered over the decades of his own international experience. I would like to thank personally,Mr Jon Mackey for co hosting, Mr Plunket from the GTI, Mr Jimmy Courtney PMA, Mr Tim Forde, MrClyde Beatty and my own instructor Mr Aidan Walsh for supporting the event as well as students who travelled from other Taekwon-Do organisations to train with the very best in the world today"