Post by midgetninja on Sept 23, 2009 17:53:05 GMT
When I was 14 years old I got into watching martial arts movies (Van Damme, Bruce Lee, Steven Seagal etc) and would attempt to copy some of the kicks.
My Dad came home from a car boot sale one day with both volumes of Grandmaster Chos "Complete Martial Artist" books, I was fascinated, it was my first glimpse of Taekwon-Do... I decided I wanted to be a martial artist. Unfortunately there was no Taekwon-Do near where I lived so I opted to start training at the local Judo club. I loved it. I trained pretty hard and got to a decent standard but was never great at it.
Once I became a student I moved into town and co-incidentally the guy I sat next to one day mentioned he had started Taekwon-Do the night before, finally I could try it out properly instead of just following books.
I started the next night in ITF Taekwon-Do and haven't looked back - but I still used those books for inspiration - Grandmaster Chos back kick alone just always made me want to train harder!
I finally had the opportunity to train with Grandmaster Cho on Tuesday in East Kilbride.
Although I am not in the A.I.M.A.A. association I was made to feel welcome by everybody.
We trained hard for 2 hours and I found Grandmaster Cho to live up to all my expectations, at nearly 70 years old he put most of us to shame!
Thankfully I managed to get those (now 18 years old) books signed by Grandmaster Cho and I told him how he inspired me to start Taekwon-Do in the first place, he smiled and said that is good to hear and thanked me!
To finish I would just like to thank everybody involved for putting on the seminar and welcoming us in - Taekwon-Do is so fragmented these days with the politics and in-fighting that is was nice to be invited in to train.
My Dad came home from a car boot sale one day with both volumes of Grandmaster Chos "Complete Martial Artist" books, I was fascinated, it was my first glimpse of Taekwon-Do... I decided I wanted to be a martial artist. Unfortunately there was no Taekwon-Do near where I lived so I opted to start training at the local Judo club. I loved it. I trained pretty hard and got to a decent standard but was never great at it.
Once I became a student I moved into town and co-incidentally the guy I sat next to one day mentioned he had started Taekwon-Do the night before, finally I could try it out properly instead of just following books.
I started the next night in ITF Taekwon-Do and haven't looked back - but I still used those books for inspiration - Grandmaster Chos back kick alone just always made me want to train harder!
I finally had the opportunity to train with Grandmaster Cho on Tuesday in East Kilbride.
Although I am not in the A.I.M.A.A. association I was made to feel welcome by everybody.
We trained hard for 2 hours and I found Grandmaster Cho to live up to all my expectations, at nearly 70 years old he put most of us to shame!
Thankfully I managed to get those (now 18 years old) books signed by Grandmaster Cho and I told him how he inspired me to start Taekwon-Do in the first place, he smiled and said that is good to hear and thanked me!
To finish I would just like to thank everybody involved for putting on the seminar and welcoming us in - Taekwon-Do is so fragmented these days with the politics and in-fighting that is was nice to be invited in to train.
