My 2nd Taekwondo Tournament

I’ve been a student of taekwondo since 2018. I started because I had some sudden, unexplained weight gain after my youngest son turned two and I needed some sort of regular exercise. My oldest son was already a student, so I started going with him to the Saturday morning family classes and found I really enjoyed them. From there, I attended more and more because I enjoyed the variety in workouts and I suddenly found myself a red belt when Covid struck. By 2021, we could train in studio again and I tested for my black belt that fall. You can read more about my TKD journey: Pre-Black Belt Test, Post-Black Belt Test, Black Belt Graduation.

This April, I competed at the Utah State Taekwondo Championship. This was my second year doing black belt poomsae (forms), and what a difference a year makes.

I take photos at a lot of our tournaments, but my oldest was able step in and get some photos of me while I competed. Thank you, Tommy!

Last year, I was nervous as hell. This year? I felt calm, decently confident... and even took on a second challenge: competing in mixed pairs with Van, a fellow AMYS parent. There aren’t many of us over 40 still throwing kicks, so that felt extra special. We learned cheonkwon, the 7th dan form, in just a week and only practiced together three times. We also had no competitors, so we refused to put a ton of pressure on ourselves. Cheonkwon was fun to learn and getting a gold medal for it was even sweeter.

Next was individual poomsae: Pyeongwon and Sipjin. I love sipjin, but pyeongwon challenges my balance and strength big time. It's beautiful and looks simple, but it’s NOT. It's frustrating to watch myself knowing I can kick higher, but then I'd be stumbling.

I had a few moments of panic right before it was time for Jessie and I to compete when I realized I was missing a step in sipjin. My teammate/competitor Jessie quickly realized what move I was skipping and I was able to get it fixed, but damn, that was scary!

Lookie how high I can kick when the pants don’t try to break me! Photo by Master Samery

I know that taekwondo uniforms look like we’re just wearing PJs, but they are NOT designed for curvy girls. The fabric is stiff and has zero stretch. Poomsae uniforms specifically are even stiffer because they are expected to make snappy noises when we do poomsae, and when I sweat, the fabric sticks to my skin. I get it, but argh!! I had to drop some money to figure out a solution that didn’t give me major sensory issues. I bought a very-overpriced undershirt from Lululemon that helped with the sweat/sticky fabric issue.

THEN I bought a whole 2nd uniform two sizes bigger so the pants had more give in the hip and thigh area. I was suffering from knee pain after workouts because when I kicked, my knees would hyperextend because there was no give in the fabric at my hips. Of course, that meant they were too long, so I had to alter them at the cuff AND make the rise shorter. They are officially the most comfortable TKD pants I’ve ever owned. Unfortunately, no one allows us to buy the top and pants in different sizes. I’m always on the lookout for discounted uniforms now.

Jessie was the only competitor in my age division and I squeaked out gold by 0.33 points. It has been wonderful training along with her these last couple months.

It's very easy for me to watch videos of poomsae athletes who are younger than me; athletes who've probably done taekwondo since they were little kids, and compare myself. But then I remember:

• I started taekwondo at 39.

• I've had two kids.

• I'm dealing with health challenges most people never see.

I'm showing up and I'm proud of my growth. The Wise and Inspiring Mirna Valerio once said something that I often replay in my head: "You start where you start, it's gonna be a journey no matter what it is. You can't compare yourself to your former self or anybody else. You have to be in the moment, and then you move from that moment forward." 

Now the big question... should I compete at USA Taekwondo Nationals?? It’ll be at the end of July and in Ontario, CA; where my sister lives. And they changed the format of poomsae competition for black belts and I won’t know what forms I’ll be competing in until MOMENTS before. Hmmm…

2025 Utah Taekwondo Championship

I had the privilege of creating a tournament poster for the Utah Taekwondo Association and their state championship tournament coming this spring. Since I was able to photograph a bunch at last year’s tournament, I used a handful of those photos for this year’s poster.

I even managed to use a photo of my youngest son. He’s the red belt on the right breaking a board with a tornado kick.

The fun challenge with these was color-correcting all of the reflected light on everyone’s white uniforms. It’s something most people don’t notice, but our white taekwondo uniforms reflect everything, and the mats at this tournament were bright blue along with very yellow fluorescent overhead lighting. Even when I look at the poster now, I see a few spots I wish I could go back and correct a little more.

Photographing these tournaments is a photography challenge all in itself with needing high speed in pretty low light.

Because I was on a roll when working on this, I went ahead and made versions that were social media-friendly for FB events, Instagram story, and more.

I’m really happy with how these turned out and I’m looking forward to being at this year’s tournament to take photos again. I am still deciding if I will compete again myself.

Our Holiday Card - 2024

I love to create holiday cards; especially for my own family. You can see my past holiday cards here.

I’m actually frustrated that my family hasn’t managed any professional photos since the end of 2020. But, I am hoping to remedy that in 2025. If anyone can recommend a photographer in Salt Lake City that is good at posing families, please let me know.

For us, 2024 revolved heavily around the sports my kids play; soccer, taekwondo, track & field, and cross country. My husband is an assistant coach on one kid’s soccer team. I have a black belt in taekwondo and often help train kids for tournaments or belt testing. I’m sometimes a hurdles coach for our track team and I do all of the social media for our track and cross country teams. I also take photos at soccer games, track and XC meets, taekwondo tournaments, and belt tests. Because of sports commitments, we didn’t even manage to squeeze in a family vacation this year. The trip to Missoula, Montana we took for a track meet didn’t count!

So yeah, my husband and I feel like all we did was work and drive kids to and from school and sports this year. I’m not resentful, we both feel that it’s important to stick with a team if you’ve committed to it. But, DAMN we’re tired.

It was only appropriate that our holiday card to reflect that sentiment. I had no shortage of photos of my kids in their respective sports, but alas, no photos of the four of us except for a selfie or two (at a sporting event no less!).

On the back, a brief rundown of what my kids were up to with their respective sports and photos of my husband and me doing what we felt like we did all year…. taxi driver, photographer, asst coach, and day job to pay for ALL the sports.

I’m really happy with how our cards turned out.

I had them printed at my local Office Depot on card stock. I ordered some really cheap kraft paper envelopes from Amazon (that I won’t order again because the adhesive didn’t work). I printed addresses using my old HP laster printer to make things easier.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Yule, Saturnalia, Solstice, Festivus… whatever you celebrate to make winter feel less dreary.

Utah Taekwondo State Championship Poster 2024

My kids and I have been students of taekwondo for about a decade. My oldest and I both have our 1st Dan black belts and my youngest will test for his this spring. You can read about my TKD journey here and here.

I have done a lot of graphic design work for our studio over the years too. My taekwondo master is involved with the Utah State Taekwondo Association and last month she asked me to create a poster for a state championship tournament.

My boys and me from 2018 and 2020.

We haven’t had a state tournament in Utah since 2019. In 2020, all tournaments were cancelled (remember that pesky pandemic?). Then, when tournaments started coming back, USA Taekwondo changed things up. They created regional Grand Prix tournaments that were required for athletes to qualify for Nationals. This essentially rendered our state tournament moot.

Martial arts tournaments are expensive to run and difficult to organize, so I get it. Why put on a tournament if we don’t have to? My kids competed in 2022 because our West Grand Prix was in Reno, NV (driving distance for us) and Nationals was home in Salt Lake City. Last year, we opted out of taekwondo tournaments because they were in Portland, OR and Jacksonville, FL. That was more expensive travel than we wanted to do.

USA Taekwondo has decided that our state tournament can be a qualifier for athletes who want to compete at Nationals… they just have to win gold or silver in their event(s). Awesome news for our athletes and even more awesome for athletes who want to get a little tournament experience, but want to have to travel to get it.

Back to the poster…

I did a quick Google search for taekwondo posters to see what others have done in the past. Most have photos of taekwondo athletes and since we haven’t had a tournament since 2019, I didn’t want to use old photos. Instead, I searched through my own photos of athletes from our studio at various events over the years and turned them into cartoons using Procreate on my iPad.

First I made a save-the-date graphic. I didn’t even know the tournament venue yet!

These are the two photos that I used for this first graphic. I took them at a sparring event we hold every few months at our studio. The first photo is of my son sparring his friend attempting to kick him in the head. He missed, haha!

I drew the athletes on separate layers and exported them separately so I could move them around independent from each other. This allowed me to make my son look a little larger and more proportional to his opponent, who’s like six inches taller than him. It also let me adjust the two girls sparring so Irene is making better contact with her opponent.

Oh, the random stuff that went through my head when creating these… including having to put them all in long-sleeved, white uniforms, gloves, and competition footwear called Daedo socks.

Most tournament posters feature sparring athletes because, let’s be honest, it’s one of the most exciting events to watch. Now that I know more about other events, like poomsae (forms), I enjoy them, but sparring always draws the most spectators.

Even so, I wanted to include more events, so off to my photo archive I went. This is the final poster once they figured out a venue and the little details:

Here are the various photos I used:

I snapped this photo at the 2018 state tournament of one of my instructors, Master Samy Moras as she competed in nunchucks. I was still learning the right settings for shooting indoors, hence the motion blur. She composed a YouTube video about that tournament you can watch here.

This photo is from the same state tournament of my friend Liam, doing a flying side kick as part of his board breaking routine.

A fellow student, Breanna demonstrating the black belt form keumgang in last spring’s black belt test. She was testing for her 2nd Dan black belt.

A former instructor, Logan doing a beautiful flying side kick during his 2nd Dan black belt test a few years ago.

A fellow student, Mirai, demonstrating poomsae during her black belt test last year.

I’m pretty happy with how the final poster turned out. I even managed to redesign the Utah State Taekwondo Association logo to something a bit more legible. Their old logo used a tough font to read and it never actually said “Association” on it. It said “Championships.” That redesign was tweaked even more this week to the final logo below:

What a fun project to work on! It was really soothing working in Procreate on these drawings and having fun with the folds and wrinkles of the uniforms. Plus, I was able to take my iPad with me to the trampoline park when my kids had a play date.

Now the most pressing issues: Are my kids going to compete? Am I??? My kids have done it before. They’ve competed in sparring, poomsae, and board breaking. I’ve never competed. I’ve never wanted to spend the money or stress about having to learn and essentially cram new poomsae in a short period of time. So we’ll see.

Black Belt Graduation

My oldest son and I both earned our Kukkiwon 1st Dan black belts in taekwondo back in October of last year. You can read about my taekwondo journey and me feelings regarding the test here and here’s a rundown of the test itself and my thoughts afterward (spoiler alert: it was really fucking hard).

What does that have to do with art or graphic design? Nothing. But this is my blog and it was pretty cathartic for me to write out my thoughts, so there we go.

We were finally able to have our graduation ceremony a couple months ago in March. Apparently it took a long time for the official certificates to get here from Korea.

Friends and family were invited to attend. Our master instructors were there along with a few studio instructors who were integral to our training. This was seriously a team effort!

The beginning of the graduation involved a trail run up a pretty steep hill where we were all presented with our black belts. I was the LAST one up the damned hill because I didn’t see which direction the group went and I went the wrong way. Also, it was ridiculously muddy, I almost fell multiple times.

We took lots of photos at the top of the hill and then headed back to our studio.

This photo is me with my husband. Anyone who has parented a child through the physical and mental preparation that goes into a martial arts black belt test would agree that there should be a black belt for parents. We have watched quite a few parents go through it and we wholeheartedly agree that they've earned their own kind of black belt.

Compound that with supporting your spouse going through the same-but-different preparation too and you have the level of awesomeness that my husband achieved. It took me a long time to put these feelings into words; which is apparent since our black belt test was months ago.

Part of me didn't want to test alongside my son because I worried that I would focus too much on his training at the expense of my own. My husband was the rock that supported our preparation and it took on multiple forms... Pushing our son when he wanted to quit or refused to listen to me anymore (which was a lot). Commiserating with me and offering ice/heat/massage/ibuprofen when I was in pain. Humoring me when I questioned why the hell I was doing this. Cooking dinner pretty much every night, including the 4-5 nights/week for 2-3 hours we were at the studio. Encouraging me to go to class when I didn't want to, but in a way that wasn't a guilt-trip. Coordinating with other parents to make sure we had support during our black belt test. Making sure uniforms were clean, sparring gear was accounted for, and belts and weapons were always in the car.

I don't know if I would have passed if I hadn't been able to put parenting (and sometimes adulting) on the back burner many nights and I feel like my husband earned this belt almost as much as me.

Wholeheartedly, thank you babe.

Back to the graduation…

We headed back to our studio and changed into uniforms. Our master instructor said a few words about what being a black belt means and how hard we worked for them. Then we all got our belts, one by one.

Actually, there IS a tiny bit of graphic design in this post because I do most of the graphic design for our studio. Here is the printed program I created for our graduation. These were 8.5x11 inches, folded in half, and printed on card stock at our local Office Depot. I kept the color scheme simple with black, gray, and red.

The back cover had a bunch of messages that I asked parents to write to their kids and there is one message from my husband to Rachel and me (the two non-kids). I felt it was a bit too personal to share publicly, but it looked beautiful too.

Lastly, here’s a video one of our master instructors made about our test. She’s pretty darned good at it.

So, that’s it.

But you know the crazy part? I’m thinking about testing for my 2nd degree black belt in October of this year…