Women in Sport with Katie Catherall

In this week's Women in Sport column, Quest Media Network's Katie Catherall speaks to Jayne Heywood, a taekwondo teacher at Astley Sports Village in Dukinfield.

The Korean martial art of Taekwondo sees an athlete learning to choregraph their body to perform defensive techniques with an emphasis on head-kicks and jumping spinning kicks. 

This sport is something Jayne Heywood believes is a superb way of self-defence alongside keeping you fit. Starting taekwondo with two other female friends, it began as a way for her to exercise whilst also learning something that would be useful to her general life. 

‘The club we joined were very welcoming and as time went on, we moved up the ranks gradually’ she says. Jayne watched as her friends slowly dropped from the classes for one reason or another but for her this was not an option, she was hooked. 

‘I started helping out in some of the kid’s classes with a school friend who was now part of the instructor team and she supported me in reaching my black belt and then continuing through the various black belt gradings’ Jayne says. 

Now teaching Taekwondo at Astley Sports Village in Dukinfield, Jayne is able to guide a generation of people through this incredible art and watch them progress session by session. 

However, Jayne has picked up on some of the gender-based issues she has witnessed whilst being involved within the sport. ‘Parents would sometimes come to classes thinking of signing their child up and being surprised to see a female instructor, others have assumed that one of my male black belt students is the instructor and I have often felt that I have to work twice as hard to prove myself and change the mindset of people like that’. 

Gradually, these experiences are reducing, particularly with the likes of Jade Jones and Bianca Walkden challenging this stereotype and raising the profile of women within Olympic taekwondo to the public. 

Even in her own study Jayne knows of some inspirational female competitors but she thinks that it is ‘just as important’ to celebrate the vast majority of students who come to dojangs each week and work their hardest, mastering new techniques and juggling their training alongside regular life. 

‘The higher up the grades, the less women you see’ Jayne says and she is one of the most senior females still training. One of the issues women have with retention to the sport is returning after they start a family. 

‘Obviously the higher up the grades you go, the more time and energy you need to commit to the art and that isn’t easy to balance with work and family life for a lot of people’. 

The pandemic has left Jayne training mostly via zoom from the comfort of her home. ‘As we start to move out of restrictions I am looking forward to seeing my students and making sure I keep my progress on track as well as theirs as I believe it is important to lead from the top and show my students that I am still learning too, hopefully the next challenge will be another grading at some point in the not too distant future!’

Want more local sports stories? 

Head to https://www.questmedianetwork.co.uk/news/sport/ to see more of our coverage - from community and non-league football to local and county cricket, boxing, athletics, basketball, Esports and golf.