Taekwondo

Once upon a time… I was a young child whose parents enrolled her in Taekwondo at the local YWCA. I stuck with it for… I don’t know how long… but I was two belts away from becoming a black belt. And then I quit.

I never really appreciated the activity. My parents kind of forced me into it; I think they were trying to make me more ‘confident’ or ‘assertive’ or something. All I cared about at the time was playing outside with my neighborhood friends. I never wanted to break away and go to the Tues/Thurs night practices.

The taekwondo I was enrolled in was okay, but definitely not hardcore. It wasn’t until I was a freshman in college that I realized this. I decided to try out my university’s taekwondo club, and I was smacked in the face with a cold hard dose of reality: martial arts is not for sissies. And I was (and still mostly am) a sissy. I remember freaking out, because one of the leaders there encouraged us to work ourselves to the point of vomiting… you know… so we knew we were working hard enough. I was out of shape and a timid freshman… and I was terrified. I went to two practices before I threw in the towel and moved on to other things.

About 8 years later, I find myself re-visiting the thought of getting back into martial arts.

See, it all started with this ball. An ex-coworker (who was/is very… strange) left behind a ball that has leather scraps inside it, and the outside is made of chain-mail. Weird right? It’s a chainmail hacky sack. Like this one:

Chainmail Hacky Sack

Anyway. There are some shelves in our office that are about 63 inches on the tallest shelf. We placed this chainmail hacky sack on top, and I got the idea to try kicking it off its little post. So I did… and I think it surprised my co-workers that I’m able to kick higher than my own height.

Since then, my brother and I have been discussing martial arts quite a bit, and he’s been sharing his knowledge on the various types of martial arts he’s learned about on the internet. My brother took taekwondo as a youngin’ as well, (and like me, not for very long), and he has recently become quite interested in mixed martial arts. I think he’s planning to join his college’s jujutsu club when he goes off to school. He was telling me I should get back into martial arts, since I can still kick as well as I do.

The whole thing got me thinking about it. I think I’d like to try it again. Not right now… but maybe next year. I think it’s awesome to know how to defend yourself… but I view it as more of a sport/art rather than an actual survival tool. Still… it’d probably be pretty cool to try it again.

I searched on youtube for some videos of taekwondo competitions and came across this one:

Pretty badass.