Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a happy new year and all the best for 2025! As we prepare to begin the new year, it is important to look back at the previous one as well. 2024 was a great year both for myself and the school as a whole.

For me personally, the year started with the difficult decision to leave the Dojang I had been training at since January 2014 in pursuit of a higher level of training that suited me better and would help me rise to the standard I wanted to exemplify to my own students. This turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made, as it led to me joining Widnes Martial Arts and training under Master Karl Martindale. Not only has this elevated my training, helping me to win two Grand Champion awards, but it also helped make training even more enjoyable by giving me a community of like-minded Black Belts who share my passion for training, as well as being great fun to spend time with. I’m extremely grateful to Master Karl and the rest of the team at Widnes Martial Arts for welcoming me into their Dojang and helping me push my limits, a lot of what I have achieved this year would not have been possible without them. I couldn’t have asked to find a better Kuk Sool family to spend my time with.

As a school, we have progressed nicely. Our number of students has doubled since the start of the year, and we have had lots of students progress through the belts at a great pace. Our standards for quality have become stricter recently, and it has been great to see all of our students pushing themselves to ensure they surpass these requirements. We have had students compete in three different tournaments throughout the year, coming away with many Gold, Silver, Bronze and Copper medals, and even two Grand Champions!