A big thank you to everyone who made the trip to Sutherland’s dojang this morning for our final black belt class before next month’s grading!

I hope everyone took something valuable away from the session, and a special thank you to Master Sam Morgan for sharing his time and knowledge with us.

It was a great opportunity to revisit some of the fundamentals: keeping your weight low, pointing your feet in the direction of your strikes, rotating your body with your punches, and, above all, keeping everything connected so your whole body moves as one.

Your base, body connection and application underpin everything we do in Hapkido. It’s important to practise our movements, self-defence techniques and patterns at a slow, smooth pace to ensure we aren’t hiding poor fundamentals behind speed or strength. Get the basics right first, then build speed and power on that foundation.

Good luck to everyone grading on November 21! Keep those drills running through your mind, train hard over this final month, and most importantly, look after yourselves and avoid injuries.

We’ll see you on the mats!