ray quadros
1st poom | september 2021

Hello Masters and friends, Taekwondo has been a long journey with its highs and lows.

I first thought Taekwondo was about being cool and learning patterns and self-defence, but as soon as I started, I knew that wasn’t the case. As soon as I stepped into that hall, I knew something else was to be learnt.

Slowly becoming a higher belt, it became more obvious that taekwondo wasn’t just about the kicking or the Poomsae. It was Discipline. This started to drive me more towards taekwondo the further I went up, with me starting to strive for Discipline in areas that I couldn’t maybe care less about.
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After becoming a blue belt, I decided to take taekwondo more seriously than I already was. My parents were constantly pushing me trying to go further beyond, so eventually I gave into what they were saying, and I went to warriors for the first time.

I always had a view on warriors where it was all very intense, and I couldn’t be able to keep up with the activities. That’s still partially true but, it wasn’t as intense as I thought. In fact, it was much more laid back as I had first thought. But before all that could happen, lockdown struck.

This was a big event as it moved taekwondo to online. This change was affecting how we learnt and how we were learning new things. Over time, this started to affect the areas we could not do, like: board breaking, sparing and self-defence. This proved hard as I struggled to learn new self-defence online. This lockdown continued for what seemed like forever. But eventually, we were able to come back into person.

And here we are now, me, grading for black belt. I’ve never thought that I would get this far in my taekwondo journey, but with the help of my friends, masters, and parents. I was able to get to this point.