Ninth Dan Essay

Sam Shelton, 9th Dan Thesis

Submitted to World Taekwondo Moodukkwan Headquarters

December, 2025

I began my taekwondo journey in the autumn of 1975 as a senior in high school. As I write this, I’ve been active in studying and instructing for over fifty-four years and have never considered walking away from it. Even when I’ve had brief forced breaks from regular dojang time due to work and education responsibilities, I continued to train on my own and with dojang mates outside the dojang.

I know that each of us that have spent decades studying and teaching have our own individual journey, but one thing I find interesting is that regardless of where we trained, who our instructors were, or what our favorite aspect of training has been, we all feel a deep love and respect for our art. I still enjoy teaching beginners of all ages, as well as students with all levels of experience and rank, but there seems to be a special bond with those who have spent a lifetime committed to learning and sharing taekwondo. Most of us have memories, and often photos, of ourselves in our youth breaking bricks, sparring, and demonstrating flying kicks, and while we can still teach those things, and even perform them at some level, we are far less physically able than we were in our youth. While that is the case, most of us are far more physically capable than peers our age who never trained, or who did so for just a few years.

Joint injuries, or just age-related wear and tear, mean we must adjust the way we perform some activities, and we learn through experience what works for us now. The Tenets of Taekwondo guided us to where we are, at least to a large degree. While all the tenets of Courtesy, Integrity, Perseverance, Self Control, and Indomitable Spirit are valuable and worthy of applying to our lives, I find that Perseverance and Indomitable Spirit are the ones called upon the most to face the personal challenges of being a taekwondo practitioner in my 70’s. My colleagues of similar age and older seem to find this to be true as well.

We all seem to share a belief that taekwondo has been a gift to us that has improved our lives throughout our lifetimes, but in a different way now. We enjoyed the physicality of it, pushing ourselves to be better fighters, break more boards, perform higher jump kicks, and endure the conditioning of long workouts when younger and our bodies operated a little differently. Now we cherish that we have the discipline to persevere when we cannot do all the things we once did at the same level, and that our indomitable spirit carries us back to the dojang day after day and week after week to continue doing the thing we love. We do this not just for ourselves, but that others may have the opportunity to benefit as we have. We see our students training at the various levels we once trained at. We share in their enthusiasm of meeting goals, improving technique, and learning new skills. We strive to guide them to gain the most from their training and to encourage them to view it as a life journey, not just a hobby to be practiced for a time and then discarded.

While it’s very fulfilling to train and share experiences with others who have spent decades in the journey, it’s critical that we don’t sit on our laurels and think we have done it all or that we have all the answers. If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that we don’t train in every way the same as those we trained under. Taekwondo has given us much, and we have contributed to taekwondo with our teaching and study, but those coming behind us are continuing that with research, inquiry, and pushing to grow and become even better. I admit that I prefer much of the training methods of fifty years ago, but I recognize that many of the newer methods are better for my students. This creates a tension in teaching that involves explaining that taekwondo is an art of growth, and not stagnant or stuck in the past. Instead, the past is the foundation and very solid, and the structure of taekwondo today is slowly built upon it to create a powerful structure for the future.

I initially learned the Chon-Ji patterns beginning in 1971, we learned all the poomsae through Choong-Moo. Much was changing in South Korea at the time with the politics of the Kwans, the Korea Taekwondo Association, and ultimately the Kukkiwon/World Taekwondo Federation. My original Master/Grandmaster Dr. Daeshik Kim guided the dojang I trained in and through changes he experienced eventually required that we learn the Palgwe poomsae and we dropped the Chon-Ji patterns from our curriculum. Later still, we were directed to establish the Taegeuk poomsae as our basis for gup promotions, and we eventually focused totally on them and over time phased out of the Palgwe poomsae. Once we implemented the change to the Palgwe poomsae system we also adopted the Koryo to Ilyo poomsae system for all Dan promotions. I’ve taught the Taegeuk Gup and Koryo to Ilyo Dan Poomsae consistently for the past several decades.

The changes of the past were challenging, but challenge creates growth. And we challenge our students to aid in their growth. The experiences we gained have led us to where we are as instructors to our students, and while we instructors with decades of experience share much in common as discussed above, we also each have our individual methods of reaching our students to bring the best out in them.

I personally experiment with different methods of teaching based on what I learn from fellow instructors, but I also get creative and try things that occur to me as potentially beneficial. These ideas develop as I watch my students train and interact with one another. Occasionally I’ll see a gup student working through a problem and find an answer either on their own or with my help or the help of another student. That answer to their issue can then be tested with other students and if it turns out to be effective can become a tool for others going forward.

This is not to discard the training methods I’ve used all along, at least not for the most part. I use new things I learn to enhance training but keep the old for when it works best. It’s an entirely different classroom environment in the dojang now than it was fifty years ago and that requires different approaches to running a dojang.

I was one of the first students of a start-up dojang that met at a YMCA. My head instructor, Jack Everette, was a second dan and two of his students, both green belts when the dojang opened, did most of the instruction under his guidance. Mr. Everette trained under Dr. Daeshik Kim and received his promotions from him. We rarely saw Dr. Kim in the early years. In the beginning our classes consisted of only men ranging from age sixteen to their early thirties. We were all eager to train hard and didn’t concern ourselves too much with injuries, we didn’t try to hurt each other, but when accidents happened it was just part of the activity the same as if we had been injured playing football or some other sport.

Before long a few women requested, and were allowed, to train. This was still the early seventies and all the men in class were very nervous about sparring the women for fear of injuring them, though the women proved themselves very capable very quickly, still it was a change from a young men’s group to a co-ed one.

Much later the program was opened to younger children. Initially no one under the age of twelve was allowed to train, and under the age of fourteen was discouraged. As we began to accept younger students training methods necessarily had to change to accommodate the capabilities of the different age groups. It was a long learning process to come up with lessons that challenged different age groups, allowed them to grow and develop skills, and that also kept them safe from injury. Injuries were a much greater concern for the younger students than for the adult men we began with and much effort was taken to avoid them.

In my current programs I teach different age groups and even have one class for ages three to five. I had to seek advice from others and experiment over several years, to become confident working with these young children. In my gup system for this group, I have created sub-gup levels to allow me to recognize some advancement on their part without promoting them beyond their level. For example, gups nine, eight, and seven each have five sub-gups with different belts based on colors, stripes and bands. In this system my students can “promote” and be recognized for their effort fifteen times while still holding a gup rank of ninth, eighth, or seventh. Students can spend three or more years below gup six even if they promote each three months. This allows me to keep them motivated without having to promote them to an intermediate rank before they are ready. Capable students who learn quickly can move up much faster and may skip some of those sub-gup steps. I explain all this to the parents in the beginning and both they and the kids appear to accept it just fine. I know many other instructors have similar systems that they use for younger kids or for special needs students. This has all developed over the years to meet the needs of the changing student base of taekwondo.

As the old dojang population of primarily young adult males has changed drastically and I now have students ranging from age three to some in their seventies, with a roughly a 50/50 male to female balance in all age groups, it’s wonderful that so many now take advantage of what taekwondo training offers. The expansion of variety within our student population is encouraging as so many now receive the benefits of taekwondo training, but it has required much effort for us as instructors to adapt our teaching methods to accommodate those changes.

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The above addressed mostly my journey as an instructor, but there has been a very personal training journey for me as well. I was not an athlete when I first began training. I grew up on a relatively poor farm and was required to work the fields when my friends were playing in sports leagues. I was strong physically but had never been taught team sports or game rules. I only played in pickup games in the nearby neighborhood on Sunday afternoons.

No one I knew had ever trained in any martial art when I began, and so even the folks that started when I did who were star athletes in school sports, didn’t necessarily outperform me. I learned to my surprise and delight that I was an equal to the big men on campus when we trained together in the dojang. Perhaps because I had never experienced success at any sport or physical endeavor, I think I worked harder than many of the others. It was just another thing to them, but to me it was a chance to be good at something.

As the years passed, most of them moved on to other things, most never even promoted to black belt, but I was passionate about training and developing skills that I had never imagined I could have. My instructors began to give me some extra attention and double promoted me a couple of times, and I won a few tournaments. I loved the sense of accomplishment. While the way I train and experience taekwondo has changed, that love for what it has allowed me to achieve has never gone away. Dr. Daeshik Kim instilled in me a sense of honor, service, and pride at being able to assist others in their taekwondo journey. None of my early colleagues remain as far as I know. My initial instructor stopped teaching and advancing after 5th dan due to physical impairments, and I moved directly under Dr. Kim around that time.

I’ve continued to train, I don’t spar nearly as much as I did when younger, my kicks are not quite as high as they once were, and I’ve had a back surgery and a knee issue that I must stay aware of when doing certain activities. Still, I’m flexible, strong for my age, can still kick pretty well, and can spar for a couple of rounds with some of my students, but just from time to time. To be turning seventy-two this month, I find the ability to be as physically capable as I am a great gift that I have received from my taekwondo training.

Taekwondo has not only helped me in the dojang and with my general health, it has also benefitted me greatly in other areas. I was not a studier in elementary or high school. I could get decent grades without it, and I worked hard on the farm after school, and when in my mid-teens we lost the family farm, I went to work full time second shift at a gas station. I didn’t want to study schoolwork and didn’t have much time, so I just skated by in school. I started taekwondo training just before my senior year in high school, working it into my schedule so I could attend class at least once weekly. While I learned lots of techniques, poomsae, self-defense, and sparring, my instructors drilled into us self-discipline, explaining how important that was in all aspects of life. They were strict, and pushed us, and we learned.

I eventually attended college, while working a full-time job. I don’t believe I could have maintained the effort to complete a four-year degree while working full time if it had not been for the self-discipline I was taught in taekwondo class. I had never really studied, and I could get away with that in high school, but college was different and much more challenging. I had to learn how to study to keep up my grades and I actively thought about how, if I could achieve the things I did in taekwondo class, I could make it in college. This self-discipline helped me in many ways in many stages of life and still does to this day.

One other benefit I am very thankful for came to light in my late 40’s. My first career was in accounting, but I made a mid-career transition, first to pastoral care and eventually to work as a crisis mental health first responder. Both careers involved much work in hospitals, some in psychiatric facilities. Most who work in hospitals are aware of the violence that happens regularly there, often in Emergency Departments but elsewhere as well. These violent incidents are the result of many factors, patients under the influence, mental breakdowns, violent reactions upon receiving bad news, and more.

Once I had responded to a couple of these at a hospital where I was working as an assistant chaplain, hospital staff took notice and I began to be called to respond, along with the head of security, when threats were developing or violence was occurring. While most of my interventions involved blocks against strikes and then follow up takedowns and restraint until law enforcement arrived, (I never struck anyone in these situations), I know that the focus, timing, and mental toughness I developed through my taekwondo training got me through those situations, and there were many of them over several years, all while I was in my late 40’s and early 50’s.

My taekwondo journey has molded my life and affected every aspect of it, from giving me the ability to focus through college, cope with personal hardships, and even respond appropriately to violent attacks against myself and others with enough skill to subdue them without either them or me being injured. I owe much to those who taught me, those who trained with me, and those who allowed me to teach them and who in turn taught me much in return. Taekwondo has been a gift to me, and I hope to continue sharing that gift with others for a few years to come.