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2940A SEBelmont St.
Portland, Or 97214

North Portland 
 8427 N. Central Ave.
 Portland, OR 97203

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Tenets of Taekwon-do
The words we live--and train--by.

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Bonnie Martin
Age: 27
Website Manager

"Over the past few years I've lost about 60 pounds. It's beena huge transformation for me on many levels. Part of that has been a dramatic increase in my activity level. For example, five years ago I had a hard timewalking a mile but last summer I was able to ride my bike to the top of Mt.Tabor a few times.

"My eating habits have made a much larger impact on my weightloss than exercise has, but exercise is very important in maintaining weightloss and I will need to keep active for the rest of my life. I'd also like to lose about 20 more pounds. I get easily bored with going to a gym, so I waslooking for a method of fitness and exercise that would be interesting for me.Taking a martial art seemed like a good idea since I knew that it involved alot of learning and that there would always be skills to improve on.

"Additionally, I've always greatly admired those who weregood at a martial art. Growing up I was not able to participate in sports and I was amazed by martial artists who were able to demonstrate such athleticism and control over their movements. It seemed to me like the height of fitness. My brother and I watched a lot of martial arts movies when we were younger so itwas something that frequently came up for us.

"So now that I had lost a significant amount of weight and felt that I could actually pursue a martial art, I decided that I'd give it a try. I was nervous at first because most of my comfort zone and achievements in life have been involved with intellectual or artistic projects: taking onsuch a specific "sport" was a bit daunting in the beginning. Knowing that one of the tenets of taekwondo is perseverance helped me push through that until I became more comfortable in classes.

"My only big expectation was that I'd be learning a newskill, and that has certainly been met. Taekwondo has actually turned out to bemuch more complicated than I thought it would be. I had no idea that so manyl ittle things would be required just to stand correctly, much less throw a punch or a kick correctly. As I haven't much been involved in physical activities, it's been a new experience for me, and Ithink a very valuable one.

"The biggest benefit so far has been the realization that I can do taekwondo. During the first month that I attended classes I had some big doubts about whether I was "athletic enough" or "cut out for" something like taekwondo. Again, the fact that perseverance is one ofthe tenets helped me tremendously because it showed me that I wasn't expected to get everything right the first time, and that I was encouraged to keep trying.

"Since I work at home, it's beneficial for me to have a group activity to attend during the week. This allows me to get in more social time than I would otherwise, and that's definitely beneficial for my relationships with others. I believe I have gained some overall personal confidence from my taekwondo training as well, and I hope to see that develop further as time goes on."