Summer 2021
When the lockdown started in March 2020, the Xavier Taekwondo Club began to offer weekly online classes to its members. The club also ran weekly social media workout challenges for its members to keep active during quarantine.
The club brought in an online guest instructor from New Brunswick to lead one of its weekly sessions. Some of the competitive members of the club also attended online sessions with a national level coach from Ontario and athletes from all across the country.
The competitive members of the club also participated in the online series of the Atlantic Taekwondo Training Camp, which typically happens in person in August of each year. The online training camp featured coaches and athletes from all across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI. Club members also participated in the online “Taekwondo Kicks Corona” class - an online class taught by Olympic and international athletes, which had approximately 1500 attendees from 25 countries.
When restrictions were lifted, the club began to run in person classes. With a modified schedule and programming, the club was able to offer classes to a majority of its membership. As the restrictions changed, so would the clubs programming and schedules.
The competitive side of the club had also begun to look at new ways to help its athletes. In the winter of 2021, the more experienced athletes participated in a workshop with a mental performance consultant to improve their competitive mindset in competition. In the spring, they had a workshop with a professional dietitian to help the club’s athletes learn how to best fuel their body for competitive sport.
Taekwondo Canada also started to offer online referee seminars and the club had two members participating.
The club was able secure funding to help them purchase the 2020 Armor training system, a system designed for Taekwondo and Martial Arts to help measure speed, timing and reaction for kicking that can be used at all levels of the club.
During the second lockdown the club immediately started its online classes, and brought in different online instructors from Ontario, Nova Scotia and Senegal. In June the club was honored to receive the 2021 Sport Nova Scotia ‘Sport Makes a Difference’ award for Taekwondo.
In July they had its largest Black Belt testing with 16 participants receiving their black belt or degree of black belt. Many of the members who have achieved this have been a part of the program for eight years or longer. Ten members earned their first degree black belt, five members earned their second degree black belt and one member received their third degree black belt.
Currently three members are working towards becoming Nationally certified assistant instructors with NCCP and Taekwondo Canada, and two are working receiving their next level of certification to become certified club coaches.