Acknowledging sources of wealth
It is important, in this growing global community where information is so readily available, to give credit where it is due. I learnt it back in school days, they call it "referencing". I just didn’t quite carry it across to other aspects of my life until recently.
It only takes one person to make one remarkable comment before it sticks in your mind for the rest of your life.
For me, it was at a birthday dinner for Richard Huynh a couple of years back; could’ve been last year. It was straight after a tournament and I was commenting about some of ATA Morley’s students and their technique. I kept referring to the style as "Richard’s". It is quite distinct. If you go to a tournament – keep an eye out for them in the Poomsae divisions, they’re great to watch. Then Raffaele DiRenzo (the Head Instructor of the Morley branch) rightly corrected me by saying it was "his" style. I didn’t quite understand it immediately, and I eventually did; especially after he said "you’ve got to give credit where it is due". Since then, this statement has been stuck in my mind when occurrences require acknowledgement. It took one person to make one remarkable comment and now it’s stuck in mind. I am grateful for that episode at the dinner.
I remember training in the Mandurah class one night, and Kim Seng mentioned something similar along these lines. His words were "you must remember your roots". He was going on about being humble, I think. That despite whatever heights you reach, you always remember where you started. Certain (tournament) players have gone on to reach great levels, yet they may fade the memories of their first instructors, their first club they were with. One example that Kim Seng used was the fact that some players stop entering club level tournaments after they go on to bigger and better things.
I remember one fighter who told me that he didn’t bother with entering certain championships. He only wanted to enter the Selections Tournaments – the other ones were too "low" for him. I guess this is a "forget your roots" type of mentality. If you think about it, without the quality players at the "root" level, how else would everyone get better? How would the quality of that club level tournament be raised? We all started there, at the club tournaments, at the state tournament and then on to the national tournaments. I know I will certainly keep entering our own ATA tournaments – if permitted.
Also while putting together this website, I also acknowledge where information is taken from. I don’t know much about writing source code for the web. I don’t know how to create forms. Yet they’re all here. The layout for this site has been (in my opinion) heavily modified, yet I still credit the designers by whom I based it on.
In that regard, I still credit a lot of my taekwondo background to all my instructors. I started out in Kardinya with Frank Williams, a 1st Dan black belt. I got to Blue Belt before he closed that centre down and I had to train in Samson under Jinho Jo (4th Dan Black Belt at the time). I also had a few state training sessions with Master Sok Pong Kim. I got my 1st Dan under the tuition of Jinho Jo, then he also "retired" from instructing classes and the club went to Jason Caird. I trained there for a while before I took time off for schooling. Then 6 years later I returned to Kim Seng.
Is there somebody out there that you would like to thank for shaping your life and/or your taekwondo style? The way you think today? If so, please comment and let us know – give credit where it is due!
Kim Seng says:
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:27 pm
It is important to remember where you started your Taekwondo journey. You may move on to other instructors in times of need, and you will always be part of that “root” (where you came from) system. Each instructor you have will train you and coach you to your potential and the style imprint they pass onto you will form your eventual “style”. There is a part of each instructors “style” within each student member. Eventually you develop your own particular style, and each of your instructors had something to do with it.
The instructor will shape it for you in accordance to your individual strengths. So we must always remember our roots and how we progress and learn all the good things about Taekwondo along the way. We are fortunate we have such great instructors in the ATA who have been involved in Taekwondo since the early 1970’s, and are still very active in the martial art and sport of Taekwondo.
Roy Khoh says:
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:38 am
As a developing instructor myself, I have learned that the wise and experienced instructors take the development of each and every one of their students very seriously and want the best for them.
Another lesson I learned was that the instructor not only imparts knowledge but tries to develop their students to be better than themselves and only then can the art of taekwondo get better each time, the continuous cycle goes on forever ie. from one instructor to the student and when the student becomes the instructor it gets passed on to his students and so on.
Roy Khoh says:
June 5th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Thanks goes to Jason Caird for finding this article, reading it and calling me to inform me of my first instructor.
Originally, I wrote “… in Kardinya with Frank (I don’t remember his last name now) …”
I have since corrected the article to be correct with “… Frank Williams … “