Alton Ganslen's "Why I Want To Be A Black Belt"

I started Tae Kwon Do on January 28, 2015, when my grammy and papa signed me up. After talking to Mr. Strickland they thought Tae Kwon Do would help me with my anger, patience, focus in school and self-control. I didn’t know I would have to write a paper on why I wanted to be a black belt when I started, but WHO WOULDN’T WANT TO BE A BLACK BELT! Black belts have earned respect for their hard work and staying with it and that’s when I decided to work hard and try to become a black belt. During the process I have made a lot of friends, both higher and lower belt ranks. Three of my best friends at Tae Kwon Do are Karlea, Aniket and Bryce who have all pushed me to try harder.

When I got further into Tae Kwon Do I set another goal of becoming an instructor after watching the instructors work with students. I thought it would be fun to do the same thing because I like helping other people. I have been doing Tae Kwon Do for almost three years and for two of them I was on the Demo Team. The Demo Team practiced every Sunday for 2 1/2 hours and after many months of hard work we would compete against other Demo Teams. The Teams I were on competed in Orange Beach, Alabama and Dallas. I will probably join the Demo Team again since I had a lot of fun but I am taking a year off to play football on my 7th grade team.

One of the other things I had fun doing during my black belt journey was traveling with my family and grandparents to different tournaments. I really like to compete against other people and work to get better each time I do. When I was with my grandparents they would plan many stops along the way for us to visit. Some of the things we visited when we went to Nationals in Orange Beach, Alabama, were the USS Alabama Battleship and the Vicksburg National Military Park. I also really enjoyed playing in the Gulf of Mexico even though the water was cold. It is a lot of fun traveling and seeing different parts of Texas when going to Regional tournaments and other states when going to Nationals.

I am also learning self-defense techniques and how to protect myself from others if I ever have to. Some of the techniques I have learned are cross

hand grab and the wedge which have different ways to do it. I also got my patch in Raposa De Prata which is submission grappling or also called ground fighting. I have also enjoyed weapons classes. Some of these weapons I trained with are nun chucks, bo staff, escrima and the bamboo sword seminars. Out of the four weapons I have worked with the nun chucks are my favorite because you can do a lot of cool tricks and disarms with them. I also really like doing bo staff.

All of these are the reasons why I want to be a black belt and also to continue learning Tae Kwon Do.