Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Breaking news from the ATA training department. Let's hear all about it.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Sir. I will live with perseverance in the spirit of taekwondo, courtesy for fellow students, integrity within myself, and to become a black belt leader.
Welcome to the ATA Nation podcast.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Welcome, students, instructors, masters, parents, everyone who is part of ATA Nation. We are so excited to have you back. This is episode 106 of the Ata Nation podcast. My name is senior Master Hayden, and I am your host for the show. I actually thought we weren't going to have a show this week. We've got some cool things planned, some coming up, talking to some other ambassadors, talking about some other cool events going up. But I had this email come in my box this morning and it said, breaking news. And I thought, you know what? This is really interesting, cool news for At Nation. And I thought I would share it with everybody who might not have seen it yet. I know a lot of times in ATA, we are always struggling to get information out to the masses because there's just lots of different avenues nowadays with the way social media is, email, snail mail, word of mouth, all these kind of things. And it's just hard to update everybody at one time. And that's one of the reasons I like to bring these kind of things up on the podcast, is to make sure that we are helping ATA Nation stay informed on all the cool things going on. And let me tell you, there are so many cool things going on in, you know, some stuff I can't even tell you about. It's so secret. But this I can tell you about. So maybe you saw it, maybe you haven't seen it yet. We're excited to share it with you. The ATA training department has released from presiding grandmaster Mk. Lee and the masters council some updates to the standards for board breaking at international rank and midterm testings. Now, these are the requirements. These are the updates for the international testings and rank testings. These are not the testings at your local school.
These are testings that are through ATA headquarters, either on the national level, the regional level, the international level. So things like world championships, fall nationals, those kind of things. All of these updates that they release today from the Masters council go into effect at World Championships 2024. So if you are planning on testing or midterming at world championships 2024, this is going to be for you. You need to start training for these updates so that you are ready for that testing. And then proceeding from there, they will be instituted at regional testings that are official through ATA headquarters, testings that are at nationals, things like that so again, not necessarily in your local school. Every local school has some additional requirements or some different requirements. The national standards really pertain most of all to those more higher rank students that have to test and do midterms at those kind of events. Lower ranks are invited at certain ages to do that. And of course, the national testings are also limited in age. So our local testings a lot of times have some different requirements and things because the school owners have some freedom and especially because the ages at those are much younger than the ages at these national international testings, which are those higher ranks, things like that. So here are the updates. Number one, the breaking of the boards must be in succession. And ATA has done a wonderful job of including video examples and explanations for each of these as well. You'll be able to check those out. I'm sure it'll go out on all the social medias and you can talk to your instructors if you are testing at one of these national or international events starting at world championships 2024. So what it means is that the boards must be in succession. You have to do break number one, then two, then three, then four, or however many you're required. But if one of those doesn't break, you stop immediately and reset everything for your second attempt. This is a change from what we've done in the past. You would attempt all of your board breaks and reset whichever ones didn't happen or, excuse me, didn't break.
Now they're going to be in succession. So if I break number one, number two, but not number three, I stop right away, bow out, go back, reset those and start at one again. So I have to break all of my stations in succession as I'm doing my attempts.
For those of you who are new to some of these updates or these updates are new for everybody, but if you've been around the ATA for a long time, we're always looking, the masters council grandmaster are always looking for ways to make sure that we are producing the best possible martial artists. And we've had changes in the board breaking requirements in the past, many times because we're always looking for ways to improve the quality of our martial arts. So anytime you see a change, this change that we're going through today, I want you to think through, hey, why is this done? To help us improve? What is this helping me improve? Because that's the goal. The master's council, the grandmaster are always looking for ways to help us improve as martial artists. Oftentimes when we're met with change, we're given the opportunity to see these changes as a positive, or we can see changes as a negative. And it is important for us as martial artists, as black belts to see changes as an opportunity to improve ourselves. So breaking in succession being one of the big updates.
The second update would be board setup distance. This has been something that's been talked about. I know if you've done any trainings with Grandmaster Caruso, chief master Skyles, Grandmaster, they've been talking about making sure that we bring in the space between board breaks. A board break should look combative. It should be like you're attacking one or two people. It shouldn't look like you're walking from beating up one person, walking across the street to another person, and walking across the street to another person. They should flow. This requirement says you must set up the stations close enough to each other so that you do not take more than a double step to reach each board.
Brakes should flow smoothly from one to the other and should be performed in a combative style.
So again, this is just the idea of making sure that our board breaking is looking like what it should. It's not just a demonstration of power, it should be a demonstration of a fight, of a combative situation.
There are some gear requirement rules that are updated here. If you are 60 years old or older, you're permitted to wear safety gear when braking. If you're 59 years old or younger, you are not permitted to wear safety gear when braking. Now here it has a couple of bullet points. If you're 59 and younger and you feel you require a medical exemption for this rule in order to perform your brake, please first consider selecting techniques that you can safely perform without gear. So this is one of the great things about us being able to pick our own board breaks. When I started, we weren't able to pick our own board breaks. There were assigned board brakes for each rank. You kind of had a little bit of choice, but not a lot of choice. Now you're able to pick your own board brakes. So if you need, let's say, a foot pad for a round kick, then don't pick a round kick. If you feel that you have to have a foot pad for a round kick, don't pick a round kick. Pick something else. Pick a know. Change your brakes so that you can demonstrate it without safety gear. That's what they're wanting us to do there. Makes perfect sense.
It says if you do request a medical exemption, you must do so in writing. ATA headquarters may request medical documentation before making a decision. The big thing is just making sure that we are performing techniques that don't take safety gear. Here's the real thing is you don't get to wear safety gear when you're on the street. You're going to have your bare hands. That's what you're going to have. And again, we're just trying to make sure that we're improving our students quality all around and the performance of it.
Board holders, I'm super excited about this one will only be required to wear their helmet with their face shield and their chest protector when holding. So you only need your hand pads or your feet pads. I love that. I'm all good with wearing my head pad. I've had my head almost taken off and man, some follow through with those kicks. That chest protector is not a bad thing so totally get those board color requirements. Males age 59 or younger will break brown boards. Males 60 and older will break either blue or brown. Ladies 59 or younger will break blue boards. Ladies 60 and older can break either blue boards or green boards.
Now if you attempt a board break that's above your minimum requirement and you're not successful, you will be required to stay with the choice for the remainder of your attempts for that testing or midterm. So if you decide that you're 65 and you're going to do a lady 65 and you're going to do blue boards, you can't go up down to green after you've tried your first attempt. So just make a wise choice there. So you might be asking yourself what are the scoring rules now with this? A completed break is defined as breaking all stations in succession during a single attempt. We talked about the succession of the board break, so you had to break basically all of your boards in a single try. Now, it doesn't have to be the first try. A first attempt could be the second attempt or third attempt. First attempt is three points, second attempt is two points, third attempt is two points and any boards left unbroken. So if you didn't break one or whatever, that's zero points.
There's a video here and talk about how you go through the bowing in and bowing out procedure.
Definitely check that out. I'm not going to go over that here with you guys. I think the video probably does the best job.
If you've been to world internationals, it's pretty standard. It's pretty easy to understand how it's done, but you definitely want to check that out and make sure you understand once you bow in, you don't touch your boards. I think that's a pretty standard thing that we should know about.
Just like in an attack, I can't move my attacker and then hit him. If I see that my board holders have moved and my board is not where I set it originally, I want to stop, raise my hand, get permission to reset and go from there and repeat the bowing procedure.
Now, I really like this one. Board setup time and the procedure. So there's videos for all these. Like I said, ata training department has done a wonderful job. But demonstrate how prepared you are by not taking an extended amount of time to measure and adjust each station multiple times. Checking the height, distance and position of your board stations more than one or two times is not encouraged.
Again, as martial artists, we need to think about this as a fight. I set my boards, I give them to my board holders, and if they're a quarter of inch high, a quarter of inch low, left, right, whatever. I don't get to say to the bad guy on the street, hey, can you bend down a little bit? I can't kick there. Can you move to the left a little bit? I can't kick there. We're picking our techniques, so you should be able precision. One of the attributes that we talk about often is making sure that we put the correct target or correct part of our body on the target in the right way. If we're going to demonstrate precision, it's not about putting the board exactly where we need it. It's about putting our foot or hand exactly where we need it. So we demonstrate as martial artists our skills by making sure that we can set up quickly set the boards. I had a student who did this fantastically third degree black belt of mine. He would just basically hand the board holders this, say here, this grain, this direction, this is the technique. And then he'd say, I'm ready. And he just hit them where they were because that was how prepared he was for his board breaks.
There's thing talking to here about the judges. You can look over that board positioning tips. Although it is not mandatory that you avoid positioning your board holders with their backs to the judges, you are strongly encouraged to position them so the judges who are directly in front of you can see the boards.
What's more important about your setup is the combative nature of it.
If I'm sitting on the panel and I'm watching, I can tell if the board broke or not.
If you have to have them with their back turned a little bit just to make it a good combative situation, you can do that. But try your best to make sure the judges can see all the stations, the board setup. So regardless of the number of boards you are required to break, it is not required that they be positioned as if they are separate attackers. Boards can be placed close together as if striking the same attacker multiple times in succession.
When selecting techniques to break with, consider combinations that can be done in rapid succession and can be performed in close proximity. So things you don't have to run across the ring or whatnot. You can have stations in front of each other. So one, you break it, those board holders move away and you break the next one, especially because you have to do them in succession anyway. So you don't break the first one, you're not going to the second one anyways. Pretty easy.
So that covers the majority. There's a few other little things in here that you want to check out about holding boards, about what the judges expectations are, how to bow in those kind of things. But I think I covered the main points that are definitely new and different for our students. Now, if you are not someone who does this at worlds and nationals, this doesn't really matter to you right now, but you might consider thinking about how your board breaks look, just even on your local level at your school to really work on that combative nature of your board breaks. And I think it's just going to make us all around better martial artists.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Here's what's going on in Ata Nation.
[00:15:45] Speaker A: A couple of upcoming events that you want to definitely check out. There's rank advancement training, virtual rank advancement training online. Those are some trainings that you might want to take advantage of, but a big one. And we're going to have a guest come on and talk about this in a couple of episodes, the ATA Max gathering. This is the second one of these. Last year we had someone come on and talk about how great a time it was.
You want to check that out. It's May 3, fourth and fifth in Little Rock, Arkansas, there at the ATA headquarters. The ATA Max gathering is going to be awesome, so make sure that you check that out.
All the regions are having their different camps, and there's some international camps coming up then, too, the european camp, which chief master Shriver is going to be on the show to talk about. Not just the european camp, but the trip out there and all that kind of stuff in a future episode, I think next week, actually. So that's something that you might want to check out as well as get yourself registered for spring nationals. Going to be a lot of awesome stuff going on at spring nationals. We've gone through the schedule. We've told you all about it. If you haven't registered, you are missing out.
ATA Nation. That's kind of a special episode with breaking news.
I like to just make sure podcast is another way to keep ATA Nation informed about all the cool things going on in ATA international and all the things happening. So if you found that helpful, awesome, next week, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled interviews and things like that. So until next time, ladies and gentlemen, get out there and take some action.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to another episode of the ATA Nation podcast. Be sure to subscribe and share with your ATA family.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Secret part. So I know some of you guys are, you know, color belts, younger students. You're not necessarily impacted by that news. But you know what?
I think it's interesting, and I think it's worth sharing with everybody. Hopefully you found it. Yes. Interesting. Who would you like to hear on the podcast? What subjects would you like to hear? I've got some ambassadors coming on. We're going to be talking about some upcoming events, some life skills, some things like that. So shoot me a DM, reach out on Instagram or the Facebook group that we have set up as well. Okay, guys, talk to you later.
