I have, throughout my childhood, practiced multiple martial arts, though never for any extended period of time. My life up to 2000 had me dabbling in two different forms of taekwondo, kung-fu and uechi-ryu karate. Other than personal problems that made it hard for me to maintain... external commitments, the leading cause in me discontinuing practice always tended to be the quality of instruction. (Kung-Fu is an exception... I stopped attending because I had to move.)
Back in 2000, I practiced ATA taekwondo. The school I attended actually rented space from a church and it wasn't until I had attended for a while (probably a handful of months) that they moved to their own location. I was progressing at a consistent and easy-to-understand rate. After I obtained my Yellow belt, the striping method took hold and, for reasons I never understood, my progression plateaued. I was doing the form perfectly for weeks and still no stripe. I watched others in my group getting stripes when I was doing the form better but... no stripe.At the time, I was very bad at talking to people outside the family so I never found out why I didn't get my stripe and just drifted away from practice. (This was also before ATA started using the membership method where you had to commit to at least a year, so it was easy to stop paying and be done at the end of the month.)
Why do I talk about my martial arts history? Contrast maybe?
A lot of things have changed since then. I'm close to a decade older. As surprising as it might seem, I'm down right extroverted compared to what I was then. I'll admit that though I'd say I'm more capable of effective communication, I might be just as likely to be a mute as I was then. Long story short, I'm much more mature than I was then. Credit where credit's due: I praise Heather for all of my growing up. She's a goddess.
Late last year, I decided to give martial arts and ATA another shot. My research phase existed of finding the ATA schools within feasible commuting distance and trawling through their websites. It included making snap judgments based off of pictures of the school, descriptions and pictures of the instructors and student bodies, etc. etc. I don't think I liked the look of the schools in lower tampa bay, plus the Kowkabany do-jhang was closest to our house.
Master K intimidated me. The combination of his short hair and beard made him look like a Harley biker.. It made him look like a biker. No, not a biker, like the Russian bad guy from Street Fighter. I can't describe what my first impression was when I went in to talk with Master K about schedules, fees, etc. I was so hyped on the I'm-going-to-talk-to-someone-damnit adrenaline and that really trashes my memory and, if you know me, it's not really good to begin with.
My continuing exposure to both the instructors and the students that they draw to them still has the wonderful ability to surprise me almost every class. It's the little things that matter. Master K is embarrassingly current on my blog, even during the stints when I didn't post an update for a huge amount of time. My programming project actually interested him. Mr. Bartlett is a wonderful sparring partner after you ask him to take his punches from freight train to mid-sized sedan.
Is this the kind of quality I should be able to expect from an ATA school? No; I have a feeling this school is something special.
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