Inspiration to Pursue Tae Kwon Do

[matt.m]

What was your inspiration to begin Tae Kwon Do? For me it began as a cross train for hapkido. Then it became more important to me as a physical therapy aid. Tae Kwon Do to me is/has many faces. It is a great and complex art full of beauty and grace. However, it is a learning curve, you don't begin to understand it, at least I have found the normal student does not until Green belt at least.

 

[IcemanSK]

What was your inspiration to begin Tae Kwon Do? For me it began as a cross train for hapkido. Then it became more important to me as a physical therapy aid. Tae Kwon Do to me is/has many faces. It is a great and complex art full of beauty and grace. However, it is a learning curve, you don't begin to understand it, at least I have found the normal student does not until Green belt at least.

I started in Taekwondo at 14 for a lot of reasons. I was one of the kids who got picked on in jr high, so I thought I'd take it in high school. (Little did I know that kids change in high school & I didn't need it once ). I really benefitted from the stretching & physical aspects of TKD, but the belief in me that my instructor had made ALL the difference in the world. I am a living example of what encouragement & teaching someone to not quit (indomitable spirit) is all about. I wouldn't have believed college & grad school were possible if it weren't for the life lessons I learned in the dojang.

When I was a yellow belt, I figured a jump spinning reverse crescent kick was the height of TKD training. Now, I rather spend an hour working on a form or 2. My inspiration used to be my next belt. Now its passing on the art to my students.

 

[terryl965]

MIne was not inspiration but more of admoration: When I moved to California I was looking for a hard core Karate school and what I found was water down soft stuff, until I wonder into Master Kim dojaang this little guy was kicking so fast and hard and throwing all these people around. I stay and watched and after class he walked up and said you here to train and I said I was watching and he said you here to train and I thought does he not understand I was watching and then he said please get up and he waived at me to come on his floor and he throw a roundhouse and stopped it right against my chest and said you here to train and that started a wonderful relationship for many years.

Man I really miss the old days.
Terry

 

[Kacey]

In all honesty, when I first walked in the door of the dojang, it was unwillingly; I was there because the guy I was dating dragged me in - on the order of "try it, and if you don't like it, we'll do something else" - by the end of the first class, though, I was hooked. I'm still not sure why, I just know that something in that class fit for me, and I've been doing TKD ever since that day - February 2, 1987.

 

[karatekid1975]

Well, I started in TSD. I wanted to learn self defense for a job I had at the time. I looked at a couple of dojangs, but my TSD dojang just "felt right." I didn't know anything about "styles" and such, but I soon learned that it was actually a mixure of styles (jujitsu, a little Hapkido, and thai boxing on top of TSD). So it was a perfect fit for what I wanted learn MA for.