Coronavirus forced the temporary closure of all sporting facilities for four months in 2020 and placed strict limits on the ways people could keep or get active.
National governing sports bodies have faced unprecedented challenges to get members back into sport and facilities reopened as the world comes to terms with strict guidelines to keep people safe.
British Taekwondo CEO Ian Leafe, like many associations around the UK, has worked tirelessly to get his sport back and operational again.
Facilities around the UK have been given clear guidelines to follow, while clubs are facing increased challenges to keep sessions open – and Leafe admits he is a man on a mission to get taekwondo back up and operational.
And with cities around the UK now seeing a resurgence in coronavirus cases and in some areas a re-imposing of lockdowns and facilities shutting again – the challenge has never been greater for the sport.
"We saw, during the full lockdown, the complete closure of our club network. We were only able to get back in mid-July, so that was three or four months of complete shutdown,” said Leafe.
"Even when clubs were permitted to go back in July, many leisure centres, community club settings, church halls and schools, weren't permitting outside hirers of the facilities.
"Even to this day, only about 30 per cent of our club network has been able to get back. It's a pretty grim picture.
"The biggest issue we have is that people's physical and mental wellbeing is suffering.
"On one hand, the government is acknowledging that the physical condition of the nation is very important, the mental health of our nation is very important.
"But the contradiction is, you can go to the pub and there are people from different settings, but you can't go and do physical exercise in a COVID-secure environment.
"It's somewhat frustrating for people like myself who are trying to help people feel physically and mentally well.
"Sport is the only outlet that people have during COVID times.”
Double Olympic gold medallist Jade Jones explained the lengths to which British Taekwondo and its clubs have gone in order to keep people safe.
Although it’s a differing experience currently attending your local club – Jones has encouraged people to get back into training and practicing and emphasised it’s safe to do so.
“The last few months have been incredibly hard for everyone and the most important thing for people and their families is to stay safe and keep healthy,” said Jones.
“I know everyone is missing their taekwondo, clubs and instructors and how excited everyone is to get back fit and enjoying the sport again.
“I know British taekwondo have been working very hard to get people back and keep them safe.”
And Leafe explained how guidance and information was being handed out to amateur clubs around the UK as they face up to strict government parameters.
"We took a different approach to most, we put ourselves in the shoes of the club coaches, to issue a document as succinct as possible,” said Leafe.
"We created and populated a COVID risk assessment that the clubs could use, almost a checklist. It's all well and good conducting the risk assessment, but any good one needs a plan of implementation where you take the learnings of the assessment and you put them into reality.
"A lot of our voluntary and club coaches are not well-versed in this, so we took our risk assessment one step further and created an implementation plan template.
"It takes people through everything, before people arrive at the venue, what to do while they're there, how to operate afterwards, pinch points and queue areas where contact could be a risk.
"Then the actual training itself, what you bring and don't bring. We took that through a step-by-step implementation plan which people could populate.
"Then, once it's complete for their club, print it and email it to all of their members so they have it before they come to the class.
"This is a completely new position to people; they need to know what to do in the easiest form.”
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