ISSUE 4 DECEMBER 2019 VOLUME 13

A word from the

CHIEF INSTRUCTOR

Breaking striving for perfection

moderntkd.com

upcoming events

21st December Christmas Party

@ Kallangur

14th March Grading

@ Kallangur

13th June Grading

@ Kallangur

spin kicks had the spectators in awe of his skills. I have been teaching Joe since he was 6 years old, he has developed into a fine example that I hope all our kids in the IMT aspire to. Super job Joe—congratulations from all of us. Also doing their 2nd Dan gradings at the end of this year are Jack Wellington and Craig Hinckley. Jack started with IMT about 20 years ago and is finally ready for this promotion. The point here is that it is not a race to get to Black Belt then Second Dan etc—life sometimes has to come first. I am very excited to see Jack‘s grading. Craig was one of my first students when I opened the Murrumba Downs class—I used to refer to Craig as ―boy mountain‖, for as a kid he was very tall way back then, and now he has developed into a man. He also further hones his great skills at the Northside clubs that he visits most nights for extra training. Good luck to you both—I know you are well prepared, so give us a great display. We held our third and final round of our Tournament series on the 9th of November at Murrumba Downs. These tournaments just keep getting better and better. I think everyone would agree that the small chang-es that have been applied (including the medical team, better trophies, enhanced processing of member application forms, etc) have improved the running of the day. We now have a First Aid team available for any injuries that may happen and the quali-ty of the trophies continues to increase each time as well. The Club Trophy has been updated to honour an incredible individual who is sadly no longer with us. It has been renamed “The Michael Griffith Indomita-ble Spirit Perpetual Trophy” and this is to

Here we are again at the end of another fantastic year of training. This means we are at the last gradings for 2019, and for a few this is their Black Belt and Dan promo-tions. It is always a big end to the year, and these examinations are a highlight of the year. Another highlight was Joe Sandona at his 4th Dan Grading on Friday the 22nd of November—what a dynamic display he put on for everyone who attended. Our 4th Dan grading highlights the strengths of each individual and Joe showed incredible tech-nique in every area that he displayed. His jumping kicks and 360 and 720 jumping

keep the memory and spirit of Michael, who passed away 2 years ago (almost) to the day of the presentation. Michael‘s mother Lee Griffith did us the honour of presenting this new trophy on the day. A page will soon be added to the website which will be a tribute to Michael, and share his story of courage and strength with his fight against cancer. As always, with our final round of any tournament series the standard was very high. There were far fewer mistakes in patterns making the scor-ing very close. in some cases only 1 or 2 points separated the top players on the day. The sparing was some of the most con-trolled I can remember. The visiting medi-cal team kept mentioning how exciting the day was and the support and spirit that had been on display was outstanding. These professionals visit sporting events every weekend and thought ours was the best run day that have ever seen, which is wonderful to hear. My thanks to all competitors, in-structors and all the Black Belts that make these days so special. Due to rising costs with these additions, next year will see a small increase in the tournament cost. This is unavoidable in order for this event be able to break even. You would hopefully all agree the costs have been very reasona-ble, and we intend on keeping prices realis-tic and affordable. As of next year we are also adding some small changes to our grading curriculum. We will of course be keeping the Modern approach, but will update a few areas that needed refining. The end result we expect are more well rounded self defence drills that will include the partner attacking and moving and dragging the opponent to simu-late a more realistic experience. Some other smaller changes will be in the new look

By Peter Cameron

6th Degree Black Belt

Chief Instructor

Founder of IMT in Australia

mastering the art .. 3

gladstone grapevine 3

tournament rnd 3 .. 4

redcliffe review .... 5

murrumba maniacs .. 5

black belt camp ...... 6

kallangur news ...... 6

deception bay buzz . 7

banyo breakers ...... 7

grading forms, and in set sparing we will also be assessing takedown. We have been working on these changes for the past 12 months and will be detailing these changes at the all rank training sessions from the beginning of next year so make sure you get along to these additional training ses-sions. Back on the 18th of October we held our yearly Black Belt Camp—this time at Cur-rimundi on the Sunshine Coast. This was another great weekend for all those that attended. The intensity was high in every session, our visiting black tips really en-joyed the challenge and the experience. The 1 hour free spar lived up to its hype, and was a great highlight over the three days. Even I suffered afterwards with cramping and general bruising (from blocking of course), but it was a nice sort of suffering. These weekends are physically very de-manding and mentally tough. However, the feeling that you get knowing you have put everything you have into the sessions is awesome. If you can get through these weekends it is a good indication of your ability and strength as a black belt (or soon to be black belt). We are looking at another Instructor Camp (which has some similar elements even though it is more technical and focuses on instructing) for early next year so stay tuned for more details again. Our Christmas Party time is fast ap-proaching, so make sure you keep the Saturday afternoon and night the 21st of December free to party with us at Kru-ger Hall, Kallangur. We will be kicking off at 2 pm with a fun afternoon of games and music. The theme is... unsurprising-ly...Christmas! So come dressed however you wish along this theme (except as Santa, that role has been taken...by guess who).

Maybe you can come as an elf or a charac-ter from a Christmas movie, or even wear your worst Christmas shirt or jumper (we all have one). Beware of the Christmas Grinch, as I understand he has heard about this event and might attend and shake eve-rything up! We ask that you bring a plate to share, and if you have a game that multiple people can play at once, bring it along. If you have a thought about what you can bring please discuss it with your instructor. It‘s about everyone being involved and having some Christmas spirit. That means carols...and that also means we will have a karaoke machine loaded with them, as well as normal hits, past and present. We will kick off (see what I did there) early in the evening, and we will have some prizes for the best costumes, outfits and Class Christ-mas Carols. What does this mean? Each class selects a Christmas song which they will perform on the night. So start practic-ing (or at least learn the words)! I‘m hop-ing everyone sings along and has a great family time leading into their New Years break. I would like to finish my article by thank-ing some people. Jason Parker, you are without a doubt one of our hardest workers within the club, always first to put your hand up to work, to get things planned, and help every single person that asks for assis-tance. Your abilities are also an inspiration to all the members. I could not be any prouder of the instructor that you have de-veloped into. John Barron, your behind the scenes work may not be seen by many but we all benefit from your assistance with the administration side of the club–collecting uniforms, arranging the printing and all the little improvements you keep coming up with. We may give you a hard time now and again but we all appreciate your in-volvement. Daniel up in Gladstone, I know how much hard work you are putting into your club. You attend most of the big events driving down regularly, and you

always arrive with the right attitude for training and learning. We are so pleased that you have committed to teaching while being so far away. You know we are here to support you in any way we can. Lastly, I would like to thank my Ipswich class mem-bers, as we are starting to really get some strength in the ranks. I was very proud of how you all conducted yourselves through-out the year. From our small team, we won three Grand Champions trophies. Also, in our class we have two members that have just started their careers in law, and one that has just completed their PhD so now can be called Dr. We have an anaesthetic technician, and of course me. So the kids in the class are surrounded by some very posi-tive adults, and I can see the effect this has on them–their confidence rises and they enjoy and benefit from the experience in class as equals. Thank you all for your sup-port throughout the year. I look forward to another year of yelling at you and making you do push-ups. But really, I can see im-provements in each of you so that makes me want to share even more of my teaching with you and the rest of the IMT students. Thanks for a great 2019 everyone–IMT students, the mums and dads of the students for your ongoing support, my instructors and all our black belts that have made the club what it is today. I try to lead by exam-ple but without you all supporting me none of this would ever have been possible. We are well into planning for next year and aim to have a calendar ready before the New Year. I look forward to 2020 with you all, so have a great Christmas and stay safe. Try to be back at class as soon as it starts next year. Train hard, kick high and keep striving for perfection.

A word from the CHIEF INSTRUCTOR

After a long year of training, we all deserve a nice break! Here are the final night and return dates

for all clubs:

BANYO Last session 13/12, Training resumes 28/01

BRACKEN RIDGE

Last session 11/12, Training resumes 20/01

DECEPTION BAY Last session 12/12, Training resumes 28/01

CLASS BREAK UPS GLADSTONE Last session 12/12, Training resumes 28/01

IPSWICH

Last session 12/12, Training resumes 14/01

KALLANGUR Last session 11/12, Training resumes 20/01

MURRUMBA DOWNS

Last session 17/12, Training resumes 21/01

REDCLIFFE Last session 12/12, Training resumes 21/01

you should think of your comfort zone as a barren wasteland - you can survive there if you keep plodding along but you won‘t grow, and you certainly won‘t thrive.

To achieve your goals and exceed you own expectations of yourself, you have to think more about where you can improve, and go further each time: run faster on the next lap, spar with more intensity each round, do one extra push-up/sit-up each day, practice you patterns stronger each day. You have to train your mind to know that you can go one step further each day, and at the end of the week you‘ll be 7 steps ahead.

Imagine what being 365 steps ahead of yourself now will look like when you turn around at the end of 2020…

practice at home by running through their patterns after school and doing their push-ups, sit-ups or going for a run. They at-tend weekend sessions to work with stu-dents and instructors from other classes and pick up tricks and tips from their unique styles. They arrive early before the next class to warm up and run through their patterns before class. They train fe-rociously during class until they have nothing left in the tank at the end of the night. Then they do it all over again, and they improve.

We all know our ‗comfort zone‘ - it‘s the training intensity where we continue on until the end of class but we could still keep going if needed. It‘s the intensity with which you spar younger grades when you‘re worried a black belt might pick you next and you need to save your energy. Or the way you just run fast enough in fitness to not come last. But

By Joseph Sandona

4th Degree Black Belt

Mastering the art

one performed really well considering we has no power (i.e. no fans) for most of the grading. James, Casey and Corey put in a big effort in the heat of the day for the first grading, luckily for Maximus the power came back on as we were getting into the more physical side of his grading. Great effort from everyone training this year and I‘ll see you all again after the

Christmas break.

ly well in their first IMT tournament and a big shout out to Evan who got the best re-sult with a second in his division of the sparing. Everyone really enjoyed it and are keen to go back and compete again so you might see us again next year. We have had our end of year grading the week before the Kallangur grading and for the first time we have run our grading in 2 groups with Maximus being the first senior colour belt from our club to grade. Every-

By Daniel Jays

3rd Degree Black Belt

Gladstone grapevine

Hi from Gladstone! Well here we are at the end of another year already. We had 5 people that made the effort to travel down to Brisbane for the last round of the tournament. Everyone did real-

The end of the year is a good time to re-flect on the previous months: have you achieved the goals you set out at the start of the year?

A few people will be able to say yes, but most people will not. What makes the difference between someone who achieves their goals and some who lets their goal slip away? Both people show up to class, they complete the drills, re-member their patterns, survive sparring and are tired at the end of the night. The average person stops there, goes home for dinner and doesn‘t think about tae kwon do until they show up to the next class. But the achiever does more. They ask for feedback from their instructors on how to improve, they think about what they can improve during the drive home. They

Tournament Round 3

In 2008 we started this new format for our tournaments. 3 rounds per year, points of individuals and points for each competing club. At the time it was very different and it was possible that it may not have worked as we envisioned. But it has only got bigger and better over time. The format worked, and for the last 11 years, we have been slowly growing and refining the format. To say goodbye to the first decade, and to usher in a new era, we have chosen to mark the milestone with a new club trophy which is awarded to the winning club at the end of the year. The new club trophy has been named in honour of founding IMT member Michael Griffith. The stunning new trophy is a dedication to all martial artists. Mi-chael was an embodiment of the martial way and his legacy will be forever with us. His Mother, Lee Griffith, was pre-sent on the day to hand over the new trophy to the winning club Murrumba Downs. Congratulations to John and all of the students from Murrumba for your fantastic results throughout the year. Another fantastic milestone happened on the day too, with the first time students from the Gladstone club competed in a tournament. Thanks you for all making the effort to come all that way. We hope you enjoyed the experience, and we hope to see you again at future tournaments. Of course, there are a lot of individual honours up for grabs at round 3. The culmination of our tournament series is one of excitement and maybe a little bit of nerves, as all students wish to put a big effort in in order to try and win a Grand Champion trophy. As usual, the standard and spirit of competition was very high. There were multiple divisions in both sparring and pat-terns where no clear winner could be found, and extra time was needed to decide a winner. There was even a double extra time final when no clear winner could be decided after the additional 30 seconds! There was even joint Grand Champion winners in the Black Belt patterns division between Eliot and Daniel. It just goes to show hoe close the stand-ard is across the entire organisation. A final Thank-You goes to the Bracken Ridge club for hosting the event. There was lots of hard work going on in the canteen and plenty of prizes for the raffle. Your hosting made the day extra special. As always, a full list of results can be found on our website www.moderntkd.com/News/Results Thank you again for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you all again next year.

Grand Champions - Patterns Grand Champions - Sparring

Club Trophy Presentation Club Champions - Murrumba Downs

By Jason Parker

5th Degree Black Belt

I hope everyone had a really great year of train-

ing this year. I have relished the challenge of

teaching and developing our new grading curric-

ulum in preparation for its implementation next

year. It has been many years since we have up-

dated our syllabus, and it has been a pleasure to

develop these new additions to give our students

extra skills in different areas.

Thanks you to all of my students throughout the

year for helping me to better understand how to

teach these new changes. I hope you have all

enjoyed the change up, even though at times,

training may have been a little more disjointed

than usual as I occasionally struggled to either

I would also like to congratulate Joseph San-

dona, who recently obtained his 4th Degree

Black Belt last month. I took over Joe's training

from Peter Cameron when he and his brother

Robert were 3rd grades. So it was an absolute

pleasure to witness his promotion, and I felt very

proud to be a part of his Tae Kwon Do journey

for these many, many, many years!

Good luck everyone at the last grading for the

year, especially to Jack and Craig who are going

for their 2nd Degree Black Belts.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas

break. You have all earned a rest! Next year will

be very exciting with the official introduction of

our new curriculum, so keep yourself fit and

healthy over the break, and I look forward to

seeing you all again next year!

remember or communicate these to you. But

your willingness to learn has made it just a joy to

share.

Our class has had some very positive results in

tournaments and gradings throughout the entire

year. I would like to again congratulate all of my

students who competed in the tournament series

this year. With a relatively small group compet-

ing, we came away at the end of the year with 3

grand champions (2 of which did the double). So

well done Jacob, Tallis and Summer! Overall we

finished equal 4th with Bracken Ridge. Congrat-

ulations of course to the team from Murrumba

Downs on winning the club trophy. Which of

course is now named the 'Michael Griffith Per-

petual Club Trophy' after our dear friend and

founding member of IMT.

Redcliffe review

Greetings from the Murrumba Downs Club. As another year draws to an end it must be time to reflect back. I must admit that I looked back at my 2018 December article this article is a virtual carbon copy of 2018. We managed to win the 2019 Club Champion-ship in tournament. I have to say this it is a club effort and although we have not won as many as other clubs, we are on our way. I am extremely proud of the students and their achievements. After the award has been re-named, it was an honour and very humbling t be presented by both Lee and Peter. As per 2018, the club managed numerous grand champions including Kimberly (training only 6 months), Jayda, Ella (who scored a

end of your training, it just means you have finished your basic training and this is the start of the real training. I wish all 3 of you the best of luck and I am sure you will put on a display showing us your abilities. The week after the grad-

ing, Murrumba students are in for a treat as we hold our first ever ―destruction night‖ as a reward for the students‘ efforts in the tourna-ments.. A big thanks to Joe and Daniel who have helped all year and to Jayda, Connor and Gab-by who have started to learn the teaching pro-cess. To the parents thank you for your sup-port throughout 2019. Merry Xmas, Happy New Year, stay safe and will see you back in class in 2020.

double) and some students who repeated their efforts of 2018 Brett (also scored a double) and Noah who defended his double grand champi-onships of 2018 – which was a massive achievement consid-ering his competition. As I write this it is 3:30pm on Saturday (30/11/19). In exactly 1 week, 3 of the Mur-rumba Downs students hopefully will be re-ceiving a new belt. Alex De Ruiter (13), Ben Fowler (18) and Adam Scott (38) will be at-tempting their 1st degree Black Belt next Sat-urday. I have known all 3 for a lot of years and have enjoyed training them to reach this goal. Just remember, as all senior grades and in-structors will tell you, a Black Belt is not the

By John Barron

2nd Degree Black Belt

Maniacs Murrumba

Kallangur By Kris Ashton

4th Degree Black Belt news you in to the humble martial artist you are today. We all have the upmost respect for you mate! Anyways that‘s enough rambling from me for now, I‘d like to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a safe, happy new year. I look forward to seeing you all back training in 2020.

We have the pleasure of witnessing not only a black belt examination but also a 2nd dan with Craig and Jack sitting for promo-tion. I have been working with both these guys and am very happy with their pro-gress, they‘ve both dedicated countless hours in order to perform at their best. I wish all students the very best with their gradings. I also wanted to take this chance to congrat-ulate Joe on an outstanding performance shown when grading for his 4th degree black belt 22nd November. Your dedication to Taekwondo has been lifelong developing

Hi from the Kallangur crew. With 2019 coming to a close it‘s time to look back at the fantastic year that was. As usual we‘ve enjoyed our all rank train-ing camp, black belt training camp, tourna-ments, all rank and black belt training ses-sions and of course our gradings. It was very pleasing to see these events attended by so many of members throughout the year. It‘s that time again for our December grad-ing, generally our biggest grading for the year and this time will be no different.

Our annual black belt camp was held in October. The main focus this year was to get a lot of training done in prepara-tion for the upcoming curriculum changes next year. We split the time up to cover basics, lower grade and higher

grade self defence to give all of the instructors a chance to drill and test them before teaching them.

But of course, we also need to fit in some hard core physi-cal sessions to make sure we come home with tired, sore

muscles.

It wouldn't be a Black Belt camp otherwise!

Kris took us through an

‗Aggression Session‘ that involved a multiple oppo-

nent drill using focus mitts, strike shields and self defence. It was a great way to combine different skills in a high energy non-stop slog fest!

Jack took a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu session to give us all a lot more knowledge on what to do if we end up on the ground in any situation. He kept it simple for us (BJJ is very technical) so our brains wouldn't short circuit! But we learnt a lot of great tech-

niques.

Of course it wouldn‘t be a black belt camp without the traditional 1 hour freespar! Peter cranked the music and we smashed out a sparring session to

remember!

Overall we had a great weekend filled with great new information to keep us on our toes as well as hard sessions to put us on our heels. We look forward to doing it all again next year with the usual gang as well as all the new Black

Belts and higher ranks who will be eligible to attend next year.

BLACK BELT CAMP

By Jason Pascoe

3rd Degree Black Belt

Hello from Deception Bay Tae Kwon Do! So, we are at final grading of 2019. It`s been a good year with so many higher grade promotions and a couple of more to finish off. Good luck to Craig and Jack on your upcoming 2nd Degree Black Belt grading. I‘m sure you will both do very well. Of course, well done Joe Sandona for achieving your 4th Degree. It was a very good display of martial arts. Thanks to all my students from Deception Bay. We had some good promotions through the grades this year. Well done to all my students who competed throughout

the year in the tournament se-ries. A special mention to Kaleb Frame for getting Grand Cham-pion in the sparring and the patterns. Good luck to all students grading in December its going to be a hot one! I want everyone to have a good and safe Christmas and hope Santa brings you the new set of sparring gloves to test out next year. And remember to keep

your hands up.

Deception Bay buzz

By Tony Robinson

3rd Degree Black Belt

stay in your memory forever. Cherish the

day.

Talking of dan gradings, we were also ex-

tremely lucky to witness the awesome dis-

play provided by Joseph Sandona in doing

his 4th Dan grading. Congratulations Joe, it

will be a long time before anyone present

forgets your deeds.

Also it would be remiss of me not to con-

gratulate the Murrumba Downs club on

their good win of the club championship

trophy. You guys were just too good this

year and thoroughly deserved your win.

With this being the last grading for the year,

that also means clubs have a break over the

Christmas/new year/school holiday period.

With only the IMT Christmas party on the

21st to come, the year is almost over. I am

looking forward to catching up with every-

one in a little bit more relaxed atmosphere

at this party. Please make every effort to be

there. It will be a whole lot of fun.

If you are unable to attend, we at Banyo

would like to take the opportunity to wish

everyone a happy and safe break and look

forward to seeing you all next year.

Cheers

December already. That means we are at

the last grading for the year.

We at Banyo are still growing and will have

quite a few on the floor this time around.

As well as mainly junior grades, we also

have Jack Wellington grading for 2nd Dan

last thing in the afternoon. It has been a

long time coming for Jack, (about 14

years), and we wish him all the best. He has

really worked hard all year in preparation

for this grading and I know he will do him-

self and his club proud.

Doing this grading with Jack is Craig from

Kallangur. You guys deserve the reward

that comes from all your hard work. Second

Dan is a really tough grading and it will

Banyo breakers