What is taekwondo?
Taekwondo is a Korean striking martial art and is one of the most popular martial arts out there it combines kicks and punches to develop a fun, exciting and dynamic display that can be used to create artistic patterns to show technique or effectively used in competitive combat martial arts competition.
It involves:
- Sparring
- Patterns
- Self defence
- Fitness
- Board breaking
And a lot of fun!
Who are we?
The core of our club's values are inclusivity and fun.
We strive to make our sessions as available to everyone as possible while still ensuring that we are a strong competitive martial arts club that provides the best environment for you to train in and improve. Together the club goes to competitons all across the country to compete against other univeristies and taekwondo clubs. Competing isnt neccesary to join the team though, if thats not your thing theres no pressure at all plenty of our members are just here to learn and have fun together.
On top of training and competing together we also hold game nights, go for meals, drinks and lots of other things.
Coaching
All training sessions are run by our very own captain, Jason Neville, a 2nd Dan Blackbelt who has been training in taekwondo for over 12 years. Jason is a fully qualified Taekwondo Association of Great Britain (TAGB) instructor registered with the British Taekwondo Council (BTC). He has been teaching for over 6 years and is also an internationally recognised qualified Umpire and Referee. Jason holds current Enhanced DBS clearance, Level 2 First Aid, BTC Advanced Safeguarding Awareness and BTC/NSPCC Time to Listen for Club Welfare Officers certificates, along with professional indemnity insurance. He regularly trains with the TAGB England national squad and is a British University Taekwondo League (BUTL) national squad member. Jason has competed all over the UK winning plenty of medals and national titles along the way and in 2019 was a Highly Commended Young Achiever of the Year at the Fylde Sports Awards.
Training times
We train in the Sir Tom Finney sport centre twice a week, each training session is 2 hours long
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Our free trial sessions will take place on the 1st, 3rd, 8th and 10th of October.
If you're interested in Taekwondo come down and see if we're a good fit for you!
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Hours for our training sessions:
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Tuesdays 8-10pm | Sir Tom Finney sport centre | Studio Blue
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Thursday 8-10pm | Sir Tom Finney sport centre | Studio Blue
Socials
As a club we have socials about once a month, we do things like lazer tag, mini golf, games nights and we have meals to celebrate gradings and competitions. These socials are open to all club members and we will do our best to accomodate everybody who wants to participate in them.
Grading (Getting your belts)
We practice TAGB taekwondo which is a style of Chang-Hon patterns and semi-contact sparring similar to ITF style. We have 3 to 4 gradings per year which take place in Lytham St Annes with the Lytham Taekwondo club and we are graded by TAGB Grand Master Kenny Walton (9th Dan) who coaches the TAGB England national team.
Last year we had 4 gradings with a 100% pass rate.
Before each grading we have a pre grading where we make sure that you are ready for the real thing, you will not be put up to grade if you are not ready so don't worry. Gradings are not mandatory to train with us but are encouraged, you are only allowed to learn what is appropriate for your belt so if you do not grade you are not able to learn higher belt patterns or moves.
Affiliation
We are affiliated with Preston TAGB Taekwondo which currently only has university student members. It is a TAGB school and the TAGB is Europe's largest single martial arts organisation. We are very proud to also have close links with Lytham Taekwondo. All gradings are run through this club and we have guest instructors from Lytham come to teach us every once in a while. Jason is trained by Lytham Taekwondo instructors Bob (4th Dan) and Dianne Russell (3rd Dan) who have over 47 years of taekwondo experience combined and who won Coach of the Year 2023 at the Fylde Active Community Awards. Their teaching skills have been passed down to Jason and we are extremely lucky to have close links with such an amazing club. UCLAN taekwondo students are invited to attend monthly sparring skills classes and occasionally held seminars with Lytham Taekwondo.
Awards
UCLan Sports Awards
2022
- Most improved club - Winner
- Club coach of the year - Winner
- Sports club of the year – shortlisted
2023
- Sports club of the Year - Winner
- Sports team of the Year - shortlisted
- Red Rose Performance - Winner
- Red Rose Service Award - Winner
- Club Colours - Winner (x3)
National Student Taekwondo Awards
2022
- Most improved club – Winner
- Instructor of the year – Winner
- Indomitable team – shortlisted
- Newcomer of the year – shortlisted (Twice)
- Competitor of the year female – shortlisted
- Competitor of the year male – shortlisted
- Team of the year – shortlisted
2023
- Indomitable team – shortlisted
- Club of the year - shortlisted
- Instructor of the year – shortlisted (Twice)
- Newcomer of the year – shortlisted
- Competitor of the year female – shortlisted
- Competitor of the year male – shortlisted
- Event of the year - shortlisted
Uniforms
You don't require a dobok (uniform) to train with us and if you have your own we are happy for you to train and continue to wear that one.
You will only need to buy a TAGB dobok if you intend to grade or compete with TAGB. These are of a high quality and should last your whole time at uni (unless you outgrow it).
Committee
Please feel free to contact the following people with any questions you have
- Chair – Matthew Kinsella (mjkinsella2@uclan.ac.uk) (General queries)
- Vise Chair – Peace Ekeh (Pekeh@uclan.ac.uk) (General queries)
- Captain – Jason Neville (jdneville@uclan.ac.uk) (Training / Competition queries)
- Secretary – Adil Ahmed (aahmed95@uclan.ac.uk) (General queries)
- Treasurer – Kedma Martins (kmartins@uclan.ac.uk) (Financial queries)
- Social secretary – Angelina Allanson (lsallanson@uclan.ac.uk) (Any social related queries)
Discord
We post all our training and other important information in our discord channel.
If you want to join our discord community, please follow this link after purchasing a membership. 😊
Join our discord