Congratulations to Audrey de Faoite who passed her Black Belt grading in Galway on Sunday! Audrey is the latest in a long line of Black Belts to come out of UCD and did brilliantly to pass with flying colours, doing exceptionally well in her breaking and in her theory. It's no more than she deserves for the truly massive amount of training she has put in over the last year. Now she can sit back, relax, and help the colour belts prepare for their impending grading. Which is similar to sitting back and relaxing, but with more shouting and taking of classes.
Summer Training Times
Alas, we are now in Summer Training, which means we have one scheduled class a week. However keep an eye on the mailing list for extra classes. Cillian is back in June and is already fine-tuning a training schedule that will make last year's look like a brisk walk to the corner shop. I'm pretty excited about this.| Wednesday | 7 - 9 | General |
About Taekwondo
Taekwondo is a Korean martial art which was founded in 1955 by General Choi Hong Hi. The art can subdivided into Sparring, Traditional, Destruction, Self-Defence and Conditioning. At the begining of your training these divisions can seem very distinct with, for example, Sparring and Traditional appearing to be completely different, almost opposites, in fact.
However, as you progress and move higher in the art, the philosophy that lies behind all aspects comes to the fore and it becomes obvious that the various subdivisions are just different facets of the same ideal - that of the body, mind and spirit acting in harmony and synchronicity, bringing all available resources to bear on achieving the objective.
About the Club
We are an ITF Taekwondo club, part of the IUTF under Master Dalton. However, as a university club, we also have members from other styles and federations of Taekwondo, and even completely different martial arts, who regularly train with us for both fitness and sparring.
We attend many competitions throughout the year, both local, national and international, and the club has produced national and European champions at both black belt and colour belt level. We also have about three gradings a year, and it is a particular source of pride that many of the club's Chief Instructors have actually come through the club from white belt to first degree and beyond.
There is also a strong social side to the club, and we often arrange nights out, movie nights on campus, and trips away.