master robert morris and i'm here from leeds martial arts and downtown renton every year we host the largest taekwondo tournament anywhere in the northwest where we draw competitors from all over washington canada oregon idaho and as far as montana so any  currently nine lee's martial arts schools with his name on it and before that he was had schools in california in the late sixty's and also in texas here in our martial arts school we serve the community and we start as young as four years old we have a program for just four and five years old called little kickers that's where they learn just the basics they learn a coronation agility drills and we try to get him going with their left and right so they can improve their bottom their balance and mine and learn a lot lot more martial arts skills before they get into a regular kids program our regular kids program consist of children between the ages of six and twelve and once once they reach the age of about thirteen they qualify to enter our teen adult class and that's where our basic taekwondo program we also have adults of all ages we promoted black belts into their sixty's men and women by billets into their sixty's also here in our school we have a fitness kickboxing and zuma classes as well as we have a brazilian jiu jitsu program and through all the lead martial arts schools they'll they'll have a pin to owners there where they have different programs in the school and some schools they have polaski zero that going on so you have to check all the different websites i think our website leaves martial arts dot org will have a lot of our sister and brother schools around the area here with their websites and you can check to see what programs they have as well not only do we serve  students in this area but a lot of students drive you know thirty forty five minutes to come to one of our locations to train and we have multiple families where there's more than one person training so you have mom and dad training sometimes the mom is doing taekwondo for some time as the dad sometimes a kid starts one of first then later on one of the parents or both of the parents will get started in the martial art program our belts our belt system is designed to be a goal setting system where you start off with a way below and you learn basic techniques i think we have four blocks that we teach at the white belt level and we have for kicks and you work on that and you get in shape we do a lot of core training where we focus on training in the abs in the lower back in the glutes and get  all of the students specially the teenagers and adults we like to really get them a shave and get them moving their body and sweating some of the most important things in the beginning and as they get moving and lose weight and build confidence they go through our bell system where we have a twelve belt that lead up to the black belt and one year before black belt we have a black belt a center journal where candidates will meet with a mentor every week all the way through the whole year and it'll help them lay out their road to black but what they have to do we have in durance test that we do so they're cardio is getting better and we have physical fitness requirements as well where they start off obviously low and then by the end of the year before black belt all the candidates are a lot stronger and a lot better cardio shape than they were at the beginning hi my name is sarah last doc and i've been training at least martial arts for about a year and a half as robert mentioned there's a number of families who train here together my family is an example of that my daughter started about two years ago lee's martial arts is very active in the community came out into her school gave a demo lesson and invited kids to come out and give it a shot and come and earn their wipe out my daughter was immediately interested in the program and so we're able to work out a schedule to allow her to come and train it wasn't very long that after she started training that i was interested in and started training in september of that same year i got very active very interested and it was a matter of we were here probably five days a week in december of that year my husband also decided training to start training it was a an example of he couldn't come into the class but he started doing private lessons and then was able to work a schedule out so now as a family were here pretty much five days a week training i can't begin to explain the things it's done for our family it's been unbelievable experience we feel like we have a second family here with lee's martial arts we're relatively new to seattle we're looking for a way to kind of get in and break in with the community and we couldn't ask for a better place i mean here in addition to the training that i do i'm in here two days a week working closely with the kids classes love the opportunity to come in and work with the kids who are new to the program  all that interested all that excitement and getting to see them start as wipeouts and now i have kids that i've been working with who are now working up towards their green high green and blue belts it's incredibly rewarding experience for me to come in and work with the kids  personally before starting with martial arts i went through a pretty significant weight loss after hitting hitting my goal i was looking for another opportunity to and another sport that would give me a chance to really work towards a goal martial arts was was perfect for that and so while i've been able to maintain my weight i've also been able to work quickly through the ranks with about and you know hopefully in the in the year or so i'll be ready to to train and study and test for my black  t you know it's an incredible experience incredible people great camaraderie and really pleased that that my family has become part of these martial arts family all of our students here we emphasis emphasis on exercise and getting them moving their body we have lots of encouraging signs around all of our schools not just here men but up in shoreline all the way down to coleman all of our schools we have banners and flags and new things that come up on the website that are always helping our students to get better every day and inspire them to become better at what they do inside here in the school and then also outside of the school to become better moms and dads  brothers and sisters better employees better employers were always preaching the five tenets of taekwondo which is courtesy integrity and dominance peer perseverance and self control all of our students learn about those five ten as they're progressing through the belt and as they obviously then they get higher bell they're living more of these tenets more often and that's one of the goals that massively put in all of his black belt instructors is to spread that first through the school hopefully through the school it's going to affect every community we're in we have a personal belief that every community needs a really good martial arts school i was carl van cleef been involved in taekwondo for about ten years my journey started at a different school that ended up closing down myself and my daughter were involved in the competitive sparring side of taekwondo and after that school clothes we found our way here to lee's martial arts taekwondo for myself in my own personal journey i started when i was thirty seven years old always been active but nothing real strict i didn't do anything regular so as soon as i started type one dove it gave me some goals to obviously try to achieve to become a black belt which is why most people into the doors i believe  but the exercise benefits i soon realized were beneficial to me so i started feeling better start losing weight was healthy start eating better and soon realize that i want to make it a lifestyle my daughter who started when she was seven years old and is now sixteen seventeen  is also had a quite a nice journey has been successful in the competitive ring nationally and internationally so it's made our family very close my wife was involved for quite a while until she had some health problems so she has since had to stop but plays quite the cheerleading role and support role as the soccer mom here at least martial arts we believe that  every student when they walk in can achieve the rank of life well a lot of times instructors will see the potential in the students before the students see it in themselves so we're always trying to inspire each person whether they're younger or older no matter what their body type is to keep training and to learn about that tenet of perseverance keep going when times are hard and then also to pass it on in class inspire other people as fire teammates and then outside of here inspire all your family and friends and coworkers as well to become better people i briefly spoke earlier about some of the different programs that all of the lees martial arts schools will have in their schools and here in our school ren we have a team called written type window at the day which is a hundred one c three nonprofit organization that raises money to help sparring athletes compete nationally and travel and help them with their quest to become the best fighters in the north west and hopefully throughout the united states what that is is here in our school want to hear about the level of greenbelt you've been practicing for eight to ten months and you know all the basic case you can come out and try out for our sparring team which is written taekwondo athletics also known as r t a an r t a will have two to four practices extra per week on top of their two traditional taekwondo classes and that gears them up for the rigorous aspect of the sparring in the ring at different tournaments also besides r t a we have let's call the black ball club and after you've earned your first belt you are eligible to be invited to the black ball club the bible club is one extra class per week and here in our school we have a rotating curriculum or where every month we teach something different to our students so they are not just getting  martial our self defense a small joint manipulation we also do things like wrestling jujitsu kickboxing and both staff and training in our black folk club and then when you get to the rank of one go up for a high red bell here in our school you can be invited into our masters club now out of the whole school maybe only five percent of the students get invited into masters clubs to select a group of students who have good self control good focus and they're eager and willing to learn and help each other and help the school so we teach them a little bit extra on top of the black belt club they may learn more hop kido than the black belt club they learn more than just the basics of wrestling they may learn some submission holds we're doing that they learn a little bit more advanced both staff techniques they learn more nunchuck techniques and they're the top like i said the top five percent of the school and all of our black belts are trained in a lot more than just type my main focus here at least martial arts is part of the r t a that robert talked about writing taekwondo athletics and aspiring team i still train as much as anybody else does on r t a and compete at some of the bigger tournaments i enjoy doing that still and one of my bigger roles is coaching which i really enjoy doing enjoy inspiring people helping people helping the kids and some adults to become better and  goals r t a has approximately twelve to fifteen kids most of them come regularly it's not super strict a lot of them have other things going on their life school is the biggest thing school in their home stuff r t a comes second although it's very important so they spend a lot of time in here doing that which keeps them busy and out of trouble i think it's great for kids to have an activity to keep them occupied keep them healthy keep them away from different aspects of society that a lot of kids find their way into with with idle time my name is nicholas smith i actually came t leave martial arts about two and a half years ago i ever actually came out to west seattle and i'm a part of the league's martial arts school there so one of the things that i love is the fact that these martial arts has a sense of camaraderie a lot of the schools interact with each other so that if you're in the shoreline school you can actually come and work out in the west seattle school and if you're in the west seattle school you can come down and work at the renton school and so extraordinarily time so my story of taekwondo actually started back when i was sixteen i had taken a few years of taekwondo and then graduated from from high school and then went off to college at the university of arizona one of the issues was i didn't necessarily have the best place to go and continue my training and so ten years later i actually found martial arts school so as you can see to my left it says perseverance which is one of the tenets of taekwondo and and then times when you think that you know you're not going to make it or if you're ever going to finish the goal that you started i was able to do that here so i feel  really happy and really excited and really privileged to be able to accomplish my goal of actually getting a black belt and continuing from there my name is michael from i have been training here since i was thirteen so i've been here about nine years around people that i know love me and support me always come down here this is the best place to be we actually have our break it on coming up we've had a couple smaller ones we had one in the back in our parking lot i think a year and the next year we had a mclendon it was a little bit bigger and then last year we actually did it with our summer camp in our red river days parade and we actually broke the boards down at the down at the red river days kids day and we made a big deal about it we raise a lot of money for community schools and rents and  helps people know what it is we're all about and this year i'm really excited because we actually are pairing up with several of martial arts schools and just making it really big having a big joint community martial arts for the for the community you see it's going to and really try to fundraise but the kids i saw last year from our school like they were so excited about it and they were to see them out there breaking boards you know working hard competing against each other also you know to see who would break the most boards was really awesome i wish when i was a kid i could've gotten money i could've got money as a fundraiser to bring boards instead of selling wrapping paper can you or anything like that i'd much rather broken