Training Tae Kwon Do: A Turning Point in My Life

I am originally from Lima, Peru. I work full time and I attend school full time . I have lived and worked in Peru, Spain and currently in the US. I have met people from different cultural and social backgrounds. I have come across many different people and many different events that make my life full of experiences. One of the experiences that has deeply influenced my life has been training Tae kwon Do. When I was a child, my friend Antonio invited me to join a Tae kwon Do club located in my neighborhood, El Rimac. I accepted my friend’s invitation without knowing what Tae kwon Do was, but my friend explained to me that it was some kind of martial art. “It is the kind of martial art Jean-Claude Van Damme does,” my friend said. It sounded difficult but I was a fan of Jean-Claude Van Damme, so Antonio’s explanation was enough for me to go with him to the Tae Kwon Do club.

I was almost fifteen years old when I went to my first Tae Kwon Do class. Training was really hard because Tae Kwon Do is a very physically demanding sport and also because the instructor, or sah bum nim in Korean, was very demanding with the training techniques such as sparring. Tae Kwon Do has different styles such as traditional style, ITF style and sparring style. The style that I used to train was sparring. Training in Peru was very different and back then I used to train three days a week for two hours per day. Before tournament season I trained six days a week, twice per day, and about two or three hours each time. During my thirteen to fifteen years of training I have joined a lot of tournaments in Peru. Sometimes I won and sometimes I lost. One time I almost lost by knockout when my opponent hit me in the face with a spinning kick, or dolmyo chagi in Korean. It took me many years and a lot of work and dedication to sharpen my skills, and sometimes I was able to knockout my opponents.

After gaining my black belt back in 1996 I joined an open national tournament in Peru. I had around six fights that day. Some of my opponents were college students, military officers, and students from other Tae Kwon Do academies in Peru. That tournament was one of the best moments of my life. I defeated strong contenders and I felt like I was on the top of the world. The feeling was even better because my father was there watching my fights. One year later, I again became the National Champion of Peru in the black belt division.

Those two moments of victory showed me that when a person works hard and is dedicated, that person will always move forward and improve in life. I also learned that no matter how difficult or hard a situation can be, when a person is willing to take some punches, life will always pay back.