On 17th September 2017 Palcic TKD UK were proud to host this year’s UK International Super Seminar with ITF sparring legend Mrs Katya Solovey, and sponsored by Might Fist Doboks. This is the third year that we have had the pleasure of hosting a seminar with Mrs Solovey in the UK, and we can genuinely say that every year the seminars get better and better.
Mrs Katya Solovey is very famous in the ITF world and of course needs no introduction. Along with her husband Oleg Solovey, they consistently produce some of the very best ITF fighters in the world. Katya herself is of course a multiple world champion and one of the leading fighters of our generation. However what is less well known about her is that she is also able to translate this wealth of information and knowledge into a very informative and exciting seminar.
One would think that the language barrier would be a problem, but this simply isn’t the case, Mrs Solovey is always accompanied by her amazing assistant Ms Victoria Sokolovska, who is also a very accomplished practitioner in her own Right. More to the point, her English is amazing and very clear and she is able to translate some of the very finer points of Katya’s knowledge, so that everyone can understand and develop.
This year was particularly special, as we were holding the seminar on the same weekend as a large UK fighting show, on which up and coming ITF sparring champion Tural Masimov was to compete on. Being good friends with Katya and Victoria, Tural kindly offered to help out on the seminar. It is fair to say that this addition made a great seminar into something even better.
The energy between all three of our seminar guests was amazing, and the knowledge being given was incredible. The session started off with a decent warm up and fitness using some very novel and entertaining partner routines, including twists on various boxing routines that make them work very well for TKD sparring.
In attendance at the seminar was over 60 black Belts, and a few 1st Kup grades. Some had even travelled from abroad to attend this excellent session. All of them were enjoying the warm ups and making mental notes for their own classes.
From the warm ups then, the rest of the session was pure HIGH LEVEL sparring drills and routines. Everything from simple advice into how to launch into an attack, to very in depth knowledge of how to control the fight. There were lots of new partner routines added to this year’s seminar, as well as some excellent counter attacking drills. It was all very serious and focussed, but as always with Mrs Solovey, taught in a manner that is also a lot of fun and entertaining.
Even thought the session was 3 hours it flew by very fast and it was quickly time to finish this session with some cool down stretching and photo shoot.
As mentioned, it is always a pleasure to have Mrs Solovey in the UK. Both Katya and husband are extremely professional, but also very approachable and friendly. We very look forwards to seeing them again soon, and would highly recommend anyone else to take advantage of such knowledge and book them.
I would also like to thank our sponsors for this event Mighty Fist; it is in only through support that big events like this are able to happen.
Tae Kwon
Paul Palcic
