Introduction: General Martial Arts Classes:
We offer a wide variety of Taekwondo classes for children, families, and adults, depending on age, skill, and desires. We start with our Little Tigers Class, a special class for preschoolers that teaches balance, coordination, safety, and many other skills through basic martial arts movements.
Most students will enter our beginner's classes, where they will learn martial arts basics and gain the fundamental skills and conditioning needed to be successful in our other classes. We also have a special Lady Tigers program for moms and women who can train while their children play together. Our adult or family classes offer many different students the opportunity to practice together at the same time.
Specialized Martial Arts Classes:
Our specialized classes include the Competition Team, where students prepare themselves for all levels of Olympic-style sparring competition. They may also choose to join the Demonstration Team, where they will learn high-flying extreme martial arts techniques (i.e. XMA) and perform at venues such as the Pepsi Center, Invesco Field, the Aurora Mall, Starbucks, and more.
We also teach a weapons class where students can learn the basics of martial arts weapons. We also offer a street defense class, giving students the opportunity to be prepared to stay safe in all situations. Advanced students can also take instructor training classes to take their knowledge of martial arts to the next level.
Three Components of Practice:
At our main headquarters for the Korean Academy of Taekwondo (KAT) in Aurora, Colorado, we focus on three main areas of martial arts - traditional Taekwondo, sport Taekwondo, and practical self-defense.
The most traditional aspects of Taekwondo are taught throughout our curriculum where students learn discipline, self-control and self-confidence while training hard and working their way up through the belt ranks, by learning World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) forms (poomses), kicks, hand techniques, defensive step sparring, and ground defense grappling.
KAT is proud to teach the WTF Olympic-style sparring, where two players, one red, one blue, put on full protective pads and spar against each other to gain points by kicking or punching the other player's chest protector (Hogu) and in adult divisions by kicking to the protected head. The match is continuous (not stopped by scoring a point), which teaches players important counter attack strategies and promotes match flow.
Practical self-defense is an important aspect to our training at KAT. Standing defense is made up of basic kicks, hand techniques and Hapkido joint manipulations. Sprawling, control, clinching, and falling techniques are taught as the transitional techniques between standing defense and ground defense.
Ground defense is especially important because many fights can go to the ground. To train for this, KAT offers a comprehensive grappling curriculum, which begins with how to fall and roll safely and works through dominant positioning and submission techniques.
Pre-mixed martial arts (MMA) mixed sparring/grappling is offered but not required for belt advancement.
