Kim’s Taekwondo staying engaged with students despite closed studio

Students at Kim’s Taekwondo Moose Jaw may be missing their studio time while stuck at home during the pandemic closures, but that doesn’t mean they’re completely missing out on their training with the martial arts school.

Instructors Nathan Douglas and Warren Miller have been keeping up with students and families through their screens, dropping weekly training videos and workouts to keep everyone at Kim’s Taekwondo on their toes. 

“We find that it's really been helping to keep our school connected,” said Douglas. “Lots of students are seeing what others are doing and it helps encourage them to keep up with doing classes, while we can’t be actively training together.”

The studio has been posting workout videos to Facebook regularly and privately sharing pre-recorded video classes with all of their studio members to maintain their training schedule.

They’ve also been issuing weekly challenges at the end of each class, for families to conquer and share with instructors. 

“Students, family members, whoever's in the household can partake in the challenge, and then what they do is they've been messaging in, sending videos of them doing these challenges as a family,” said Douglas. 

Engagement has been great, said Douglas, who is seeing tons of students interacting with the weekly challenges and going through their training classes with dedication — sometimes more than once, according to the view counters on some videos.

“It's been actually quite incredible,” said Douglas “Students are taking the classes and completing them, not just kind of starting the first five minutes and then shutting them off, so that’s been awesome to see.”

The studio is even keeping up with its Student of the Month initiative while at a distance, a recognition that mostly works the same way as it did when students are training in-person.

“When we have a student that's been really showing that they've been doing lots of the challenges and participating in classes, we like to recognize that effort,” said Douglas. 

Student of the Month is still chosen based on enthusiasm and participation, even while training is relegated to everyone’s living rooms rather than the studio, and the chosen student is featured on Kim’s Taekwondo social media each month.

It’s important to Douglas and the studio to keep everyone connected while in-person classes are cancelled, and he feels like the Kim’s Taekwondo community is in agreement with the sentiment.

“We want to make sure that our families and students feel like we haven't just disappeared,” said Douglas.

Kim’s Taekwondo offers classes for all ages, from toddlers to adults, but the studio really likes to focus on the family aspect of the sport. Training together is good for both physical and mental health, said Douglas.

“We very much are a family school and we're really encouraging families to train together,” said Douglas. “We just love to see that happening because we feel like it's just something that families can do to keep themselves active. . . especially in times like these.”

Reopening the studio in the future is unclear as of yet, said Douglas, but Kim’s Taekwondo is elbow deep in plans to move into a new, renovated location where they hope to be able to resume regular training by the fall.

“It's going to be a top-notch martial arts training facility for our school, and we’re just kind of waiting to see how things look throughout the summer,” said Douglas. 

Keep up with Kim’s Taekwondo and their weekly workout videos on the studio’s Facebook page.