Carrick-On-Suir will host this years National ITF Black Belt Seminar on Sunday 12th September. Senior Master Robert Howard and Senior Master Anthony Phelan both 8th Degree Senior ITF Master Black Belts will conduct the Seminar. It is open to all Black Belts Junior & Senior.

Click here to download the application form

On Saturday 28th of August instructors from St. Mark's and Firhouse Taekwon-Do schools attended a "Club Development Information Seminar" in the new Aviva Stadium. The seminar included speeches from the Minister for Children, Barry Andrews TD, Olympic gold medalist Michael Carruth and the Chief Executive of the Irish Sports Council, John Treacy. The seminar covered: 

• Influencing local sport
• Garda vetting
• Committee structures
• Fundraising
  

Coaching Ireland’s 10th All-Island Forum “From Playground to Podium” will take place on 11th September 2010 and is open to all TAB / IMAC / Irish Sports Council registered Coaches. The title for this year's forum is “From Playground to Podium” and it promises to be the most exciting and challenging event of its kind to date.
Workshops will be delivered in the following areas:

• Coaching Children
• Club Coaching
• Developing Talent
• Performance Coaching
• Women in Coaching

The structure of the event allows you to select topics relevant to you and those you coach. The keynotes and workshops will be delivered by National & International experts, with practical knowledge and experience of dealing first hand with real coaching issues. These workshops will focus on the LISPA Phases – Active Start, Fundamentals and Learn to Play and Practice (Physical Literacy).

For further information and to register visit http://www.fromplaygroundtopodium.com/

On August 23rd, St. Mark’s Taekwon-Do school played host to a preliminary black belt grading.  The students ranging from 1st kup up to 3rd degree attended from a variety of schools including Senior Master Howard’s Dojang, St. Mark’s, Stillorgan & Blessington Taekwon-Do schools.  All members graded under RITA Vice President, Senior Master Anthony Phelan, 8th degree in a bid to proceed to the forthcoming black belt grading next month.  We wish all members the very best of luck.

The first squad session of the R.I.T.A. National Colour Belt Development Squad is to take place in The Dojang, North Quay, Carrick-on-Suir on Saturday, 11th September from 12.00pm to 2.30pm.

Our hopes are to get all colour belts, both junior and senior, that would be interested in attending, to train together.  With respect, we would be very grateful if all instructors would encourage their students to attend, to enable us to build a strong squad of colour belts from the R.I.T.A., which will hopefully lead to us producing a junior squad (male and female) and a senior squad.  Through getting the colour belt students training together, our hope is that they will build a good bond, which will in turn make a strong unit.

If you need any further information please contact Mr Tobin at 087-2447886 or e-mail is paultbn@gmail.com.

The RITA have introduced a new Black Belt Grading application form, this will replace all other forms in relation to Preliminary and Black Belt Grading promotions. This form must be used for the forthcoming Black Belt Grading. Instructors will be sent a copy in the post or it can be downloaded from the Instructors section of the website.

Click here to download the Black Belt Grading Application Form

The RITA will be holding a very special and important event on Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th October.  The ‘Black Belt Strategy and Planning Workshop’ is being held to facilitate discussion and feedback from all adult Black Belt members as to how best to improve our association and move forward in the coming years.  The end-product from the weekend’s discussions will be the RITA’s Strategic Plan for the next 3 years.

All registered adult Black Belt members are cordially invited to attend the Strategy Weekend which will be held in the Maldron Hotel, Whitestown Way, Tallaght, Dublin 24 starting from 9.30am on Saturday 9th October.  The first day will be a mix of training, discussion groups, and workshops to hear your views on how we can improve our association over the next three years.  On Sunday 10th October, more workshops will be held from 10am to 1pm and this time will also be used to finalise and collate all the ideas and proposals into a structured plan for review by the Masters Council, before the implementation stage.

As this event is regarded by the Masters Council as being extremely important for the future development of the RITA, overnight accommodation at the hotel will be provided & paid for by the RITA for all members taking part, as well as meals.
Please remember, the RITA is our association, and we all need to work together to develop and improve the association, both for existing members and for future generations of Taekwon-Do students.  This will require input from all Black Belt members e.g. Instructors, Black Belt students, competitors, coaches, committee members etc. 
Everyone has views and ideas on how we can improve the RITA – this is your chance to get involved and make a change for the better.  It is also a great opportunity to spend some extended time with your Taekwon-Do family, which is always enjoyable.

Personal invitations were posted out on Wed August 11th to all registered adult Black Belts.  If any adult Black Belt members have not received their invitation within a few days, they should email Mr O’Donnell: instructor@galwaytkd.com. All members who will be attending should fill out the confirmation slip provided and return it to Master Howard by Monday 20th September.   Please indicate on the slip whether you require accommodation or not.  If forms are not returned by the closing date, accommodation cannot be guaranteed.

As this is the first such event ever run by the RITA, and given its strategic importance for our association, we hope to have as many Black Belts as possible taking part and all schools represented. 

Click here to download the information and confirmation form

The ITF have produced an Introduction to Tournaments video. It shows all the events in a ITF Tournament. Videos from the 2006-2009 Junior, Veteran and Adult World Championships are used and contain clips of Irish competitors such as World and European Champion Ms Audrey Condon and World & European Silver Medallist Mr David Freeman. Click the links below to view the videos.

• ITF Introduction to Tournaments part 1
• ITF Introduction to Tournaments part 2
• ITF Introduction to Tournaments part 3
  
  

At a recent grading held in Naas some of our young brothers and sisters successfully achieved their new grades, entering the Green Growth exciting stages of their training. Well Done Jeanne Kenyon who progressed to 7th Kup Green tag and Reece Sheridan and Suzanne Benny who received their Green Belt 6th Kup. All your brothers and sisters in Taekwon-Do are proud of you.

Members from Galway, Athlone, Cork and Dublin travelled to Athlone for a Black Belt class under one of Irelands most experienced Instructors, 8th Degree Black Belt Senior Master Anthony Phelan. Those attending ranged from 1st to 7th Degree Master and all enjoyed the class. Senior Master Phelan focused on Black Belt techniques with advanced kicking, foot sparring and all the Black Belt Patterns were covered from Kwang-Gae to Tong-Il.

Senior Master Phelan emphasised the importance of continuous correction as an Instructor and took time to correct everyone's mistakes no matter how small. Those attending all learned a great deal in the short space of time and would have gladly trained for longer under the very experienced instructor.   The next national Black Belts class will be before the RITA’s AGM on the 27th of November.

About 40 children between ages 6 and 11 successfully completed year 1 of the RITA’s children’s development programme.  The new children’s programme is being piloted in three of the RITA’s schools (Athlone, Galway and Senior Master Howard’s School).   The children were examined in the new syllabus by Senior Master Phelan, Master Howard and Mr O’Donnell and the Taekwon-Do Tigers (aged 6-8) and Dragons (9-11 years) and all passed their first grading with flying colours. 

The Dragons were promoted to their next kup grade while the Tigers were promoted to white belt black stripe.  The new programme is closely aligned with TAB’s Introduction to Coaching Course and is aimed at developing the core Taekwon-Do skills in young children.  Congratulations to all the Tigers, Dragons, parents and instructors.

The Taekwon-Do Advisory Board (TAB) of the Irish Martial Arts Commission (IMAC) ran the first of this year's Introduction to Coaching Courses over the weekend of the 10th & 11th July 2010 in Mulhuddart Sport Taekwon-Do Club in Dublin. Nineteen instructors and assistant instructors from all over Ireland took part in the course which is the first step in the Taekwon-Do Advisory Board's Coaching Education Programme. This course was especially enjoyable as there was a very broad range of experience among the delegates which ranged from Blue Belt to 7th Dan Black Belts. The course included 12 contact hours over the weekend, which is split 50/50 between classroom workshops, presentations and mat based exercises. What makes this course particularly interesting is that actual Taekwon-Do students take part in modules prepared and coached by the various instructors and assistant
instructors on the course and then give feedback to the coaches. The course was presented by TAB Tutors; Mr. Adrian Byrne and Mr. Donal O'Donoghue.

Some areas covered included; coaching skills; coaching process, key factors in working with beginners, learning needs of participants aged 6-8 years; technical, tactical, physical, mental, lifestyle and personal capacities related to the development of this age demographic. The course participants will next complete the IMAC Coach Level 1 course which will be conducted by the Taekwon-Do Advisory Board in 2011. The atmosphere of the course was very positive and enjoyable for all taking part and it was a great opportunity to see olds friends and make new acquaintances with fellow instructors from around the country. This was the first major event since the Republic of Ireland Taekwon-Do Association (RITA) rejoined IMAC and the TAB. It was great to see the camaraderie and cooperation between all participants.

Photos from the course can be viewed here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/IrishTKD/CoachingIntroCourse#