As i write this post I can count three people on my chat list who are cutting weight, and letting the world know of their misery. Adding myself to that list, it is obvious that taekwondo is more than just a hobby. It is a way of life that requires you to have a huge amount of resolve, and sometimes to make some uncomfortable personal sacrifices. To the public, this sport of ours is sometimes mysterious, sometimes awe inspiring, and almost always misunderstood.

Imagine if you were one of the basketball players on the other side of the big red curtain, and for about an hour each day you would be constantly distracted from your game by a rhythmic, thunderous yelling. During the brief waterbreaks you might take a peek around the curtain’s edge to see if there were any spare courts, but you would only see a horde of bare foot, colorfully outfitted people doing things with their feet that no basketball player would imagine doing. And, if you were one of those badminton players in Rockwell watching the beginning of practice, you would probably be struck by how sharp fifty people look, with their kicks and punches and even jumping jacks all completely synchronized. To any outsider, all of these things must be at once mysterious and awe inspiring. But what they don’t really see is how much of it extends into our lives outside of practice. If you chose to stay beyond the PE class, and perhaps even got your green stripe after your first semester as an actual club member, taekwondo becomes an inseparable part of our daily routine. Taekwondo, for those of us in the MIT Sport TKD team, is not just a curious hobby, but a way of life.

I am writing this article as a tribute to those who are now making the ultimate sacrifice for the sport of taekwondo and for the team. Those are the hungry individuals who are seeking enlightenment of their body and mind. If you have ever tried cutting weight, you know that during the week before the tournament, a strange obsession with calories and working out takes ahold of your body. I never understood why we go through this – is it because we are MIT students, and natural masochists? Or is it a different trait as MIT students, or as martial artists, that we can go to such lengths once we are devoted to some cause? Either way I have seen the resolve reflected in the eyes of people who have only one goal in mind – to get under that weight cut-off – whether they are a blackbelt cutting for nationals or a green stripe going all out in order to fight with their C team.

All of this determination will pay off, in the end. The moment that you step off the scale is probably the happiest moment in any tournament day. For me, that moment is as much a victory as any of the actual fights. But true to the sport, victory in both cutting weight and sparring comes as a result of weeks of training, and is not a outcome from the performance of just that one day. As taekwondoists, you will step off the bus and into the gym knowing that you have trained enough to defeat the scale, and to defeat your opponent. Whether you are rewarded with a gold medal or a bagel and gatorade, you know it’s well worth the fight, and more than deserved.