IT is not everyday a national head coach comes to Hamilton, but Palace Martial Arts students got to learn from one of the best on Tuesday.

Australian Taekwondo national coach (poomsae), Yukyung Song, visited for a session with students, sharing her knowledge on skills and techniques.

It was late notice, but the seminar was the first of its kind.

“This is the first seminar ran in regional Victoria, so it is exciting,” Song said.

“We don’t want regional Victoria to be left behind, we want to bring them up and give them opportunities.

“I am good friends with Muhktar and he said I should come down because there are lots of passionate people here and I managed to have time in the school holidays to come here.

“Going to see what level they are all at, but I want them to have more interest in Taekwondo in general first.

“I want to give them something they can practice on their own, and also to learn the meaning of each exercise.

“I want them to know what it is for so they can understand why they’re doing it and can learn new techniques.”

Song was appointed as head coach in 2016 and led the Australian poomsae team to the Oceania and World Taekwondo Championships in that time.

Originally from Korea, Song started in the sport when she was five years old.

“My club was more into poomsae and demonstration instead of the sparring, then I became a high-performance athlete when I was in middle school, then I did lots of competitions over there,” Song said.

“When I started university, I found out about Australia and decided to come here to study

“I didn’t want to stop when I came here, so I looked around and fortunately I met the national coach back then and he gave me some opportunities.”

Palace Martial Arts’ Master Muhktar Kadiri said it was an exciting opportunity for locals to learn from such a prominent coach.

“We are very happy, seeing how busy she is and for her to come all the way from Melbourne, we are excited,” he said.

“What I am trying to do is to get the spotlight on the smaller country towns to help kids take their taekwondo to the next level.

“(There will be) general knowledge sharing and some of the kids have a lot of potential and they can ask other questions as well.”

As events start to increase, the timing is also beneficial, and Kadiri thanked the group for making the seminar a success with minimal planning time.

“Thank you to the parents for facilitating this with such short notice. To have these numbers, we are very happy,” he said.