Taekwondo at Berkeley

<p>Hey guys!</p>

<p>I'm an incoming freshman interested in joining taekwondo at berkeley and I have a few questions.</p>

<p>1) The schedule for taekwondo is tuesdays and thursdays and weekends. If I can't make it on one of the days, will the instructor mind. This is owing to the fact that I have classes on that day.</p>

<p>2) How intense is it? I've done karate before but I'm looking for a fun interesting work out and an opportunity to earn a black belt?</p>

<p>3) Is it true that you are forced to participate in competitions? Is competitive participation required to advance to the next level?</p>

<p>well hopefully someone with more experience with taewondo can answer…but i know the basics!</p>

<p>1) You mean the club right? (they also have taekwondo PE classes) The instructor wouldn’t mind since they don’t really keep track of people. </p>

<p>2) It’s a pretty good workout! There’s some people who have started as white belts, and stayed four years and moved up to red/black belt. My TA for my taekwondo PE class was a red belt, and he didn’t know any taekwondo before he went to Cal. I can’t say much since I only did it for half a year, but I saw the test for black belts, and it was pretty intense. This guy had to fight against 5-6 people (one on one of course), and besides kicks, and etc, he had to break a lot of wooden boards.</p>

<p>3) don’t know about the competitions, but i know after every semester, they let you sign up to take the test to move up to the next belt. There’s a day where everyone from white belt to red belt are sorted into groups to take the test to advance to the next level…</p>

<p>@totalcaprice How does this work for someone who earned a First Poom Blackbelt say 7-8 years ago at another martial arts institution, but stopped afterwards?</p>

<p>well you’d still be a blackbelt, so you could probably just sign up for the club and maybe talk to the master about it…Master Ahn (head of taekwondo) would probably let you know which section you should attend </p>

<p><a href=“http://ucmap.org/clubs/#tkd”>http://ucmap.org/clubs/#tkd&lt;/a&gt;
its $120 a semester and</p>

<p>Schedule (it should be for fall, but it doesnt say so im not sure)</p>

<p>Tue/Thu 5:00p - 6:30p: White-Yellow/Green
Tue/Thu 6:30p - 8:00p: Green-Blue
Tue/Thu 8:00p - 9:30p: Red/Black
Tue/Thu 7:30p - 9:00p: Demo/Poomsae (135 RSF)
Sat 9:00a - 10:30a: All Levels</p>

<p>I also think there’s a competitive team that’s part of the club that you could join if you are interested</p>