Athlete Spotlight (Newsletter Snippet)

Lee Dae-Hoon is an extremely accomplished Taekwondo practitioner from South Korea. Having grown up in the sport, he exceled and now is a 3 time gold medal champion in the World Championships, 3 time Olympic athlete with 2 medals and holds dozens of other gold medals. Above all this he is a humble man and family figure who lives by the principles of Taekwondo that we learn in our own school.

I want to point out a special lesson from Lee Dae-Hoon's words. "It's worth it to try your best until the end because you never know the result until the match is over." When Dae-Hoon made it to the Tokyo Olympics, he was tied in his first match 19-19. He lost the match in the end, but he never gave up trying to get in that last kick. How do we translate this to everyday taekwondo?

We as newbie practitioners of Taekwondo have a great potential. There is a world of possibilities for each of us. We can take our future and leap in with the mindset of trying our best, or we can squander it all thinking that a future in Taekwondo is pointless. If Dae-Hoon gave up when he saw his opponent scoring on him, he would have lost the second he entered the mat. His mindset was what made him a professional athlete and a black belt worthy athlete.