The Nationals
On the 16th of July Mike, Dad and me (Jack) went to the nationals for Taekwondo. The Nationals is a really big thing because people all over New Zealand come to spar, do patterns or if your over blue belt do specialty and power. Well let me tell you a bit about these categories.
Sparring is when you fight another person for 2 minutes straight. Then you have a 30 second break. And after that break you go for another 2 minutes. Then whoever scores the most points wins, so it is not whoever can hit the hardest. Sparring be quite hard when you the shorter person and you are versing somebody that is taller than you. And it is also quite hard when you're not that light on your feet. Because then it is hard for you to dodge away from the other person. So being light on your feet really helps you.
Now Patterns it quite hard to explain but I will try my best. So for each grade there is a pattern, a pattern is a set of movements that you have to know. There is a different number of movements for each pattern, like one pattern might have 20 movements and the other one might have 16. So that is what a pattern is oh also you need to know your pattern to get higher in the grades.
Now we're onto Specialty well specialty is jumping, but while you jump you have to kick so you might have to jump over a bar e.g 1.2 metres high or one 2 metres high. But there are other techniques like you jump and kick upwards as high you can instead of vertically jumping into a side piercing kick. And guess what our instructor was a world champion high jumper once. But now he's a bit older and younger people have come and taken his place. Well now back onto the topic, you have to be a blue belt and above to do specialty. Otherwise heaps of little kids would just do it. And probably just like run into the pole so that’s is why it is blue belt and above. And know onto the last one power.
Well Power is when there is a machine and there are boards you have to break. The easiest board is white then the red board then the hardest of all of them is Black. I am pretty sure 2 or 3 whiteboards are a red board then I am pretty sure 3 red boards equally a black. I can break a white board quite easily now but 2 is my aim right now. Lots of big kids and people do power because it is quite natural for them because since quite big and strong. But for little kids it is much harder because you might be there age but they are stronger so they might break the boards but you won’t. So it does relie quite a lot on height, weight and strength. So size does matter when it comes to breaking.
