Leadership Training is always one of the most significant events of the year for our organization. It gives us an opportunity to spend two full days together with our staff and potential staff members, working on movement concepts, improving our teaching abilities, and discussing Bok Fu Philosophy and its leadership principles. This year was no exception and was a wonderful weekend with our Bok Fu Do family!

First, I want to thank Grandmaster Lee, Master Buckley, Master Ozuna and all of the black belts for spending their time with our students and lending their expertise for the weekend. We also really appreciated having our Bok Fu Do brothers and sisters from KO Kung Fu spend the weekend with us. Master Ozuna’s students always bring a wonderful energy to our events and having Mr. Curran, Mrs. Curran and Ms. Dong as a part of our black belt panel was a treat for our students. Grandmaster Lee’s friend, Grandmaster Arquilla, also honored us with his attendance during the weekend. His insights were thought provoking for our students and we enjoyed having him as well as a few of his students in attendance as well.

Saturday we held our seminar at Stone Valley Middle School. The seminar kicked off at 8am with a warm up routine followed by some basics training. We opened with some comments from Grandmaster Lee and then dove straight into a couple hours of training with a seminar format led by Master Buckley. The group made tremendous improvements on their basics and learned some new ways to improve their stance training. We also go to spend some time in the morning reading a dissecting Bok Fu Philosophy with an emphasis on leadership training notes. It was easy to see the light bulbs going off in the room as the notes were being read and students were connecting with what they were hearing. After lunch we trained more with the black belt leading groups on standardization. The application of the techniques seemed to be very educational for everyone and we found everyone reaching new understanding of the key principles in the basic techniques. Towards the end of the day, we got to hear passages from Master Buckley and Master Ozuna’s thesis books and had the chance for some of our students to comment on what they had learned. To wrap things up on Saturday, Mr. Hodge was asked to put on a demonstration of his material. He demonstrated some techniques from his degree on a dummy and the students got a taste of what the 2nd degree black belt is all about. Mr. Hodge had been testing for this degree for some time and had been working very hard on his goal. After his demonstration, Grandmaster Lee and Master Buckley presented Mr. Hodge with his 2nd degree black belt!

Sunday was spent with our seminar attendees testing for new ranks. There was an incredibly supportive energy in the room and it was apparent that everyone was not only focused on making sure that they performed well, but also on cheering for their classmates as well. Our lower ranking students had the opportunity to train on the mat with the staff members and got to see some people coming up on their black belts. At the end of the day there were belt and stripe presentations. Regardless of the result of the testing, each person on the mat on Sunday should have been very proud of their efforts. Grandmaster Lee commented that it was the most spirited group that we’ve had and he was thrilled with the supportive environment.

We want to thank everyone that participated in Leadership Weekend 2014. It was a wonderful weekend and gave us a renewed energy and appreciation for Bok Fu Do! We thank you for being a part of it! This was just a quick recap of the weekend along with a few pictures. Stay tuned for blog posts coming up from some of the attendees with their thoughts from the weekend as well.