Hope that this blog encourages readers that might be interested in martial arts to look for a good martial art instructor and school and join. 

I started martial arts when I was about nine years old. I joined Karate at that time -- that was in the seventies.  I have been practising Taekwondo for about 6 years now and enjoying martial art more and more.

Why joined martial art ? My parents asked me to go and practise martial arts due to negative experience with kids within the neighborhood where we used to live (today, we call this bullying although I did not know that it was bullying at that time). We used to live in a not so nice neighborhood where the kids I played with are not the nicest.

Why Karate ? I joined Karate because the school was the nearest school where we lived. My parents and I did not know much about martial arts.

I practised Karate for about two years or so. If I remember correctly, I made it to green belt. I told my parents that I did not enjoy Karate although now looking back, it was not because of Karate at all that made me quit martial arts. 

I think that it had more to do with the way martial art instructors taught at that time than with the martial art itself. The martial art teaching methods for children were vastly different than today. Practising Karate at that school was hard.

Sometimes, instructors kicked or punched kids at the stomach whenever they saw that the kids did not kick or punch with full power.  Every moth or so, all students had to run miles and miles barefoot on hot sunny days. That was tough !

There was no encouragement for children, it was more similar to a hard military drill. I as a kid at that time had the feel that it was another form of bullying -- there was not a fun experience at all.

As I had mentioned at the beginning, 6 years ago I started martial arts again. At that time, I was primarily looking for my eldest son who was about to turn 6. I thought, it was a good time for him to start martial art. Based on my childhood experience with martial art and martial art school, I put a lot of emphasis on choosing the right school and instructor for him so that he has fun doing it.

I was looking for a good martial art school and instructor for a long time until my former neighbors introduced me to his new neighbors at theirs BBQ party in early summer of 2001.

The new neighbor introduced himself and told my wife and me that he runs a martial art school. He is very polite and polished.  That made a very good impression on us, and I asked him more questions about his school and martial art program for kids. I thought, this is a good co-incidence since I have been looking for martial art school for a while.

The next day, I registered my son and myself at his school for a 2 week try out period -- the plan was only to register my son however my son will only join martial art if I join.

It turned out that he has been running an ITF (International Taekwondo Federation) Taekwondo school in the neighborhood for years. I heard of Taekwondo before but never heard of ITF. 

Since then I have been practising TKD although last year we changed school to WTF (World Taekwondo Federation) as we moved from East to West Coast, and it is difficult to find ITF TKD school here in the West.

I will write later about the difference of ITF and WTF style of Taekwondo.  In short, without going into too much detail, ITF is a more traditional style than WTF. ITF puts a lot of emphasis on techniques that are clean and beautiful to look at  where as WTF more on athletics and endurance.

More to come later....