Master Willy Van de Mortel - Taupo Development Camp - Day 2

Day 2 of the training camp starts at 8.40 with a warm up prior to 2.5 hours of intensive training. Check out the photos here.

Master Willy Van de Mortel - Taupo Development Camp

We're down in Taupo for the weekend at the Master Willy Van de Mortel development camp. Check out some photos from today's action.

Auckland Black Belt Grading

Check out part of the action here.

WAKO Tournament in Albany

Today we went to some fo the WAKO tournament held in Albany, Auckland. I wasn't there for that long but here are a few photos of the action while I was there

Nationals - Emotions

I captured some nice expressions on the sidelines of the Nationals tournament last weekend. It makes quite a fun sequence.

Images...

Nationals - Doug's Picks

Here are my favourite images from the Nationals tournament this weekend...

Nationals Day 2

Photos from Day 2...

Nationals Day 1

Photos from day 1...

Auckland North Final Training

Today's final pre-nationals trainign was held at Warkworth.

Here's a selection of pictures... See you at the tournament next weekend!

Auckland North Training

Todays Auckland training was at Remuera Intermediate.

Check out some photos here...

2007 WAKO Top Fighter Tournament

While not ITFNZ I thought you may be interested in seeing photos from this tournament. A few of us headed down to Te Awamutu to the 2007 WAKO Top Fighter kickboxing tournament. It was a lot of fun and you can check out all the pictures here...

Auckland North Nationals Trials

Today Auckland North held their trials for the nationals team at Warkworth. Image gallery...

Auckland North Tournament

More photos from the tournament...

World Champs coverage

Doug Hanna's ITFNZ World Champs 2007 content feed.
ITFNZ World Champs 2007 web page.

Taupo Combined Camp - Saturday 14 April

This is the first camp for juniors and seniors combined since prior to the junior trials last year. Everyone arrived on Friday night with the Kerikeri lot arriving at about midnight after their 7 hour drive. They were pretty quiet arriving because I didn't even wake or hear them and they were sleeping around my spot in the morning.

The camp was pretty packed with I guess 40 competitors, 7 coaches and management plus parents and supporters. It had a good feel about it and everyone got on really well. It really feels like a New Zealand team now.

When we arrived on Friday night it was only 8 degrees and had been raining on the way to Taupo but it's not so cold on Saturday morning.

It was an early start for the seniors with a compulsory run at 6.30am. Juniors were invited to come along if they wished to but I didn't see any leap out of bed to join in the run. A few thought about it but hadn't brought running gear (yeah... whatever)! I must admit I didn't consider joining in for more than 5 seconds either.

Today has been a mini-tournament of individual patterns, team patterns then individual sparring, specialty, team specialty with power and team power later in the day.

Mr Pellow was keen to see his juniors take it to the seniors in the sparring. Good results went both ways with everyone getting something out of the competition. It was a good measuring point which revealed previously unknown weaknesses.

We're being pretty careful what images and comments we put up on the web... we know other competing countries are watching and we don't want to give anything away. So only limited photos of such things as team patterns and pre-arranged sparring so that we don't give any of our secrets away :-)

The morning's photos

The afternoon's photos

The last activity in the gym was the first Haka practice led by Mark Trotter and Luke Thompson. It was pretty impressive by the end of the session even though some had never done it before. Sorry - no photos of this until we do the real thing in Quebec!

Tonight we stole a TV from the girls room and everyone huddled together and watched Borat and Benchwarmers DVDs. Benchwarmers hadn't been returned from the previous camp to the video shop so was about a month overdue! Oops.

I snuck off to a motel as Jan and Patrick (my wife and 3rd son) and cousin Jimmy came down to check out what all the fuss of the Taupo camps were about. It was luxury compared with sleeping on the camp floor. However, I slept like a log at camp on Friday night and had a useless night's sleep in a flash bed in a new motel tonight. Sheesh!

Junior team patterns training 10/4/07

Not a lot to say but here are some photos of the boys and girls team patterns training

Mucking around with colour

It's Easter and we're away at the beach for a few days. No Taekwon-do on so I've been playing around with a few images to pass the time. Leave a comment to let me know what you think about them.

Mark Trotter lining up a 3 pointer at Top Ten #1

Jeremy and Callum training

Paige at Taupo Camp

Cool video compilation of Impact @ Top Ten Tournament

Jeremy Hanna has put together a 6 minute video composition of highlights of Impact Taekwon-Do Club members who are part of the NZ team competing at the Top Ten tournament.

Check it out on the Impact Club site, www.taekwon-do.org.nz

2007 ITFNZ Top Ten Tournament #1 - March

Today was the first in the 2007 ITFNZ Top Ten series tournaments held at the Auckland Netball Centre, Morrin Road, Mt Wellington. The tournament is for over 15 year olds. There were just over 50 competitors entered including most of the Junior World Champ team (well those located between Rotorua and Kerikeri anyway). It was a good day with intensive patterns and sparring competition amongst the black belts. Several bouts included members from the junior and senior world champ teams competing against each other for the first time this year. After lunch the men’s sparring attracted quite an audience ring side to watch and cheer on some very intensive sparring. Results will be posted on the official site soon. Patterns photos People photos Sparring photos Doug's picks of the pix All selected photos from the tournament

Taupo Camp - Sunday 4/3/2007

[Unfortunately the photos embedded in this article are no longer accessible so I've removed the broken image links. All photosfrom the day are in the link at the bottom of the article - Doug August 2020]

7am - "Everyone up" shouts Mr Ballard. I'd been awake for a while listening to Sunday slowly coming to life (referring to the birds chirping and a tiny bit of traffic noise) and was up like a shot. Remarkably the boys weren't too slow getting up either. I enquired about how Jeremy felt after eating almost 2 litres of ice cream in last night’s contest. “Not bad, I chucked about half of it up last night before I went to bed. Stomach still feels full though”. Gross.
After breakfast Mr Ballard informed the team “pack your gear, tidy up this place then get into your doboks and get over to the gym by 8.15am”

Injuries There have been a couple of injuries in the last week. Paige was hit by a car on Tuesday when crossing the road from her school bus. She has a fractured arm (in plaster from hand to above her elbow) and a broken nose plus bruising. Candice dislocated her shoulder in Saturday while sparring so she was wearing a sling last night and today. And let’s not forget Mr Burr’s KO (read about that in the previous article below). Today he was in a neck brace as well as his dobok but it didn’t slow him down, much to some of the parent’s consternation!

We learnt that he'd shared his ambulance ride to Rotorua hospital with the man with a broken arm who had been hit by a truck, along with his wife who was killed. "He was pretty drugged up on pain killers" said Mr Burr. The accident was all over the papers and we read about it on the internet. The accident happened only a few hundred metres up Spa road from where we were at camp.

On this morning’s agenda was power and specialty (overhead kick) for those involved in these events with those not doing this practicing patterns and sparring drills.

Mr Pellow was up before 5am and drive down for the morning’s training. He hadn’t been able to make it on Friday night and Saturday due to a funeral he attended. Everyone really appreciated this effort!

Next was what everyone had been looking forward to (not). Fitness test time! Taken by Mr Burr (even worse). “What we’re doing today are 4/5/4’s” said Mr Burr. Stewie (above) made some smart comment (like usual) and Mr Burr retorted “ok then, it’s now 4/5/6’s!”. After an explanation of how to do it, with lots of questions asked to burn time they were into it. I took a few pictures while the faces reddened but the team didn’t really didn’t look too bad. Those of us sitting down on the sidelines thought it looked pretty easy really. Ah..hem.

Back over to the cookhouse for the final pep-talk from Mr Ballard, Mr Pellow, Mr Burr and Mr Yates. The coaches were pretty impressed with the sparring on Saturday and, given the last camp was only 3 weeks ago, thought the team had come a long way. They also congratulated the team for their co-operation, support of each other and team spirit which they felt was pretty awesome.
Mr Ballard announced that Ross Black, who has continued to train with the team since the first camp had improved to a level that they felt he had earned a place on the team to take the remaining position in hyper-weight sparring.

Also announced was the boy’s team patterns selection. Confirmed were Jeremy Hanna, Matt Hartigan, Johs van Pierce, Jason Fraser, Ethan Parker. And still to battle it out for the 6th man position are Shane Black and Brad Wickman.

Just in case the team were feeling a bit cocky Mr Yates handed out the raffle tickets (150 each) for all to sell prior to the April camp. This is to raise funds to pay for the apparel. Paige was chastised for being the last person to get her documentation in – she had left it at home by mistake - and Mr Burr was also chastised by parents for not looking after himself and resting up.

We all headed for home – now raining – tired, a bit sore, but all eager to return again for more in a month’s time.

The weekend's photos are here.

Taupo Camp - Saturday evening - a show of character and guts

After dinner of sausages, steak, baked spud, cole slaw, mixed veges and pasta followed by ice cream (sounding good?) Mr Burr arrived back from the hospital - still in his dobok - to a standing ovation.
Fortunately everything was checked out at the hospital and, apart from the concussion, Mr Burr is ok. He gave Shane a hug and spent a few minutes telling him how good the fight was and not to worry about the KO. It's just one of those things that can happen.

Meanwhile there were a couple of challenges being dealt to. Michael's hair was being straightened by a swag of the girls with straightening tongs and, after an hour or so, seemed to be having quite a bit of success.
Candice had travelled down to Taupo with the Hanna's and on the journey she and Jeremy talked about how much they could eat. This sowed the seeds of a challenge which was then to play out in front of us all. After a visit to the supermarket and a good hearty dinner each presented the other with a 2 litre tub of ice cream. The challenge... first to finish wins. The rules... if any ice cream comes up during the challenge it has to go back down or you are disqualified. After about 20 minutes into the challenge they were both very cold - this was not what they expected. Brain freeze had been a problem too. Wrapped in duvets they battled on although when they got down to about a cup full of ice cream left, they both slowed almost to a halt. Suddenly Candice let rip and a good plateful was returned to the 2 litre container. Meanwhile Jeremy was eating a spoon full at a time then hanging his head over a bucket but didn't throw up. Candice refused to return the ice cream to where it had come from and pulled out. After another 10 minutes or so Jeremy gave up. There was so little ice cream left - about a cup full - I couldn't believe that he just gave up. But he couldn't move and couldn't squeeze any more in. Roll on the fitness test tomorrow!!

See the gory details here

Boys playing in the gym during the evening...

Taupo Camp - Saturday 3/3/2007

We woke early this morning to the sound of the gun shot announcing the start of the Taupo Iron Man. The town is packed out with thousands of supporters for the event.
The camp started Saturday morning with a 7am wakeup followed by breakfast and over to the gym for a fun warmup for the day. This was followed with sparring drills creating many sweaty red faces. Next was 2x2 minute sparring rounds with each junior team member facing a senior apponent from a handful of "ring ins" and the coaching d management team.
The juniors have definately lifted their sparring up a level since the last camp showing more confidence and agression in the ring.
Unfortunately Mr Burr, after several bouts, was ko'd while sparring with Shane. He took a kick to the side of the head then fell back onto the mat. He came around after a few minutes and appears to be ok although we called an ambulance and they've taken him into Rotorua hospital for a scan and observation.
It's just after lunch time now and everyone is heading back over to the gym to continue. This afternoon seem more sparring then specialty followed by power.
Check out the photos here...

Training - Thursday 22/02/07

Tonight Mr Pellow took the Dragon's Spirit Papatoetoe class together with the Auckland members of the NZ Juniors Team. You can feel the pride he has in his juniors in the way he described what they do in their training and what they have achieved. Near the end of the training he told them about the 128's that the juniors do at the end of each camp, after a day and a half of intensive training. (128's mean that you do 2x an exercise, then run across the hall, do 4x, then 8x, 16x, 32x, 64x, 128x. Then repeat with a different exercise - usually about 5 exercises in total - ouch!) Alisa then led the class in a set of 32's and you could see the strain on some of the club members faces. Mr Pellow explained that at the end of the last camp some of the junior members felt that 128's weren't enough of the last exercise and went on to do 256's.

Last was a demonstration of specialty with Cori executing a flying high kick and Jeremy a mid-air kick.

Check out the photos.

Training goes up a notch

This week Mr Pellow's training sessions have gone up a notch with some impressive sparring performances in conjunction with a few invited guests. On Monday night Chris Broughton and Estee Speirs from Impact Taekwon-Do club joined the junior team for some valuable sparring training. Estee is also preparing for Canada but as part of the Senior team.

Check out the photos of Monday and Tuesday night's training sessions.

Training - Saturday 17/02/07

Today was our regular Saturday training. Due to Mr Pellow having a wedding to go to in the afternoon the training session was early, 9am-12pm. Johs, Callum and Sam were up at 4.30am to drive the 4 hours from Kaio to Auckland!

The team practiced sparring, power and girls team pattern.

They started with sparring drills focusing on reaction time and effective counter techniques moving on to 2 minute one-on-one free sparring rounds in the ring with the remainder of the team observing and scoring. Even during training with their mates, Mr Pellow has instilled the desire to win with various prizes for the loser. The 2 minute rounds were fought with an increasing intensity and desire to win, especially amongst the boys.

Check out a few of the better photos.

Training - Tuesday 13/02/07

Tonight Mr Pellow's training session had a special visitor, Master McPhail, who worked with some of the team members on their individual patterns.

After some intensive one-on-one pattern review sessions it was time for the the girls team patterns to come under his scrutiny. Master McPhail gave pointers and some useful techniques for the girls to use to draw their individual patterns to a common team style. The girls team have only been practicing their team pattern together for a few weeks and we can see that they are rapidly sharpening it. A couple more months and they will be awesome.

"Master McPhail spots every little fault", said Jeremy.

A regular visitor to our training sessions, Toni, who has been away for the last couple of weeks due to an injury said that she could see a marked rise in everyone's confidence in their sparring. The team's performance seems to be improving rapidly at the moment.

Taupo Camp - Sunday 11/02/07

I've just got a few minutes to post this before we all head off home.

This morning it was up at 7am and over to the gym for patterns practice at about 8am. The coaches had another 10 or so interviews to complete while this was going on.

Next up was power training; girls team patterns and sparring training for the rest of the team. The girls team patterns are coming along well and they performed them in front of the team at the end.

Last up was the usual 128's of pushups, situps, squats, turning kicks (keeping your knee up, half with each leg). Three of the team (Shane, Jeremy and Candice) decided a total of 254 turning kicks wasn't enough and went on to do an extra 256.

Mark Hanna impressed the coaches enough with his continued training and sparring on Saturday to be invited to join the team for individual sparring (hyperweight). That put a smile on his dial.

I took a few photos during the morning which are at the bottom of this gallery.

Taupo Camp - Junior World Champs team 10/02/07

Today is the start of the first Junior World Champs 2007 team camp at Taupo since the selections were made in December. The day started with breakfast at 7.30am and assembly in the gym at 8.00am.

Sparring was first on the agenda and this was no walk in the park. Each team member faced up to someone their senior; mostly coaches, management and other non-team members helping out. I missed the early sessions due to having breakfast with my brother from the king country who was in town overnight. However, when I turned up mid-morning I watched some of the girls pitched against Mr Ballard (5th Dan) and Mr Pellow (6th Dan). The team were impressive! They weren't intimidated and showed great courage. They boys weren’t let off the hook either… everyone was challenged to 2 x 2 minute rounds. Afterwards they all discussed the exercise and worked out what they needed to work on to improve further. After lunch at about 1.30pm it was back to the gym for some game fitness exercises then a two hour specialty session.

Then it was down to the river for a swim and relax before dinner... it's been a fine and hot day here so everyone was on for a swim (although only about half the team went in when we got there - including yours truly).

The evening was spent with a mixture of chilling out watching another (you guessed it) Taekwon-do DVD, individual interviews with the coaches and team leaders (still about 10 to go Sunday morning), and a handful returned to the gym for yet more "tuning" of the bodies and techniques.

Overall there's a feeling that the team has gelled together really well. They're working hard, showing courage and conviction, supporting each other, and getting along well. 

Here are some pictures of the day's action for you.