Did you see the athlete of the week this week?

We've got him for an interview.

Let's get started.

Sir.

I will live with perseverance in the spirit of Taekwondo, courtesy for fellow students, integrity within myself and to become a black belt leader.

Welcome to the ATA Nation podcast.

Students, instructors, parents, family members, members of AT Nation, thank you for tuning in to the ATA Nation podcast.

This is episode 142.

We are continuing our series, partnering with the junior brand Ambassadors.

Hey, did you listen to last episode with all the amazing junior brand ambassadors?

It was so much fun to have them all on the interview.

If you haven't checked that out, make sure you subscribe to the podcast or of course check it out on YouTube.

You can see it there.

Now we're continuing this series.

We are really excited to be highlighting these awesome athletes across the country.

Make sure that you are tuning in, checking these out and then if you know these athletes or you've seen these athletes at tournaments, say hi, say congratulations, encourage them.

You know, one of the things we're talking about at our school is belief.

Yes I can.

And part of helping each other build a Yes I can attitude is encouraging each other.

So we want to make sure that we are doing that.

This is our second episode this week.

Because we have our junior Baron ambassadors earlier.

And now we have an interview with this week's athletes of the week.

Special guest interview.

At Nation.

We are back with another awesome athlete of the week.

This is Mr.

Omar Dibb.

How are you, sir?

I'm doing great, sir.

How about you?

I am fantastic.

So first, before we ask you some questions about your training and so on and so forth, where do you take martial arts?

Who's your instructor?

I do my martial arts and Winners for Life.

And my instructor is Mr.

Madriga and senior Master Cabrera.

Excellent.

Very cool.

Now with your training.

Actually, what belt are you?

I didn't ask that.

I am a second degree black belt, sir.

Very cool.

Awesome.

What got you started in martial arts?

You know, was there something that made you excited about it or parents throw you into it?

What was it?

Yeah, it was kind of like a mixture of all of those.

Like when I was like seven, I was like trying a lot of different sports like basketball, swimming, soccer, all of that.

And then one day, like my mom was like picking me up from school and then someone was advertising for or giving out flyers for Winners for Life Taekwondo.

So then my mom took one and asked me, do you want to join it?

Do you want to try it out?

I was like, yes, sure.

And then once I did my first class, I instantly fell in love with it.

It was, like, really good.

I enjoyed it.

Awesome.

Very cool.

Now, as an athlete of the week, that means, you know, you're out there training, doing lots of things, competing.

What kind of competition is your thing that you like?

I love this in competition.

Yeah.

Like.

Like what event?

I like.

Yeah, yeah.

What's your top event?

Like, my top event is probably one of the creative or extreme events.

Like, more specifically, extreme weapons.

Extreme weapons.

What's your.

What's your weapon of choice?

What do you enjoy competing with?

My favorite weapon is double nunchucks.

Double chucks.

Okay, very cool.

And you said extreme.

The extreme version.

You like to get to throw them up and catch them and stuff.

Throw them and then flips and everything.

Nice.

Excellent.

Now, before getting started in martial arts, were you like a gymnastics person?

Did you do flips and stuff?

Or is that something that you've got into joining?

I got into it, like, at first I didn't even realize I'd be doing, like, you know, such crazy things.

And then now it's like, it's really cool to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I know for me, I was just at a school program talking to kids, and the first question they always ask me is, oh, you're a black belt.

Can you do a backflip?

And I'm like, yeah, no, but you could probably tell them, like, yeah, I can do all kinds of flips and stuff.

So you're cooler than me that way.

Well, so, hey, if you, like.

We promote all events.

We think all athletes, you know, we like to train in all the different.

Aspects of martial arts.

But usually athletes have a thing that they love, you know, they gravitate towards.

And then one or two things that they might be like, hey, if I didn't have to compete in this one.

Or if I didn't, if I had.

To pick one I couldn't do, which would be the first event that you would kind of maybe drop off, probably.

It would be sparring.

Interesting.

Okay, very cool.

It's just been.

For me, I think it's really neat to see all these different athletes.

And I like to ask what they love to do.

And then one thing they might not.

Because so often we see these athletes, they're doing all eight events.

You know, we're training hard, but it's good to see that everybody's human and they have some things that they like a little bit more and some things that they don't, you know, and you're like, okay, you know, I can be like that guy, you know, stuff like that.

So I love it.

Very cool.

Are you heading out to in a couple of weeks?

We've got spring nationals.

You heading to Fort Worth, Texas?

Yes, I am.

Excellent.

Excited.

Do you.

What kind of goals do you have for your.

Maybe for your training right now?

Some short term goals, maybe some long term goals.

What are you looking at trying to.

Achieve for your training?

Like, for short term, I like, focus on, like, you know, tournaments upcoming, like spring nationals.

Just like focus on like all the things I compete in.

Try to like, clean it up, improve, you know, it's all like a learning experience.

So that's what I'd say.

But for long term, probably get more, you know, titles if I can keep working for the world titles and maybe even like Pan Am or European champ.

Yeah.

Have you been to any of those events?

The Pan Am or the.

The European Championships?

No, I haven't.

Those are on the list.

Things you want to go to sometimes.

Yeah, me too.

I'm.

Same way.

I've got him on my list.

Like, I.

I want to go to that.

That'd be fun.

Yes.

Okay, cool.

Now, as one of our athletes of the week, what is.

What does it mean to you to go beyond the belt?

What it means to me to go beyond the belt is that, like, you apply the things that ATA teaches outside of the physical aspect.

Like, it's about like life skills.

So, like, you can apply them anywhere you go, like at home, at Taekwondo, at your school, like, wherever you go, you apply the skills, which just makes you a better person and you'll keep them for the rest of your life.

So that's what is really special about it in ata.

I love that.

Super cool.

You said you, when you started, you were doing lots of different sports.

Do you find doing martial arts, Is there something just different about martial arts than other activities?

Yes, I think it's different because, like, not only the life skills, it just like kind of like how they do like competition stuff.

It's like more like, you know, diverse.

There's a lot of things to do and then different goals you can achieve.

And so that's probably what makes it.

That's true.

Yeah, for sure.

I love.

I agree with you.

There's so many aspects.

I mean, sparring is totally different than weapons, which is, you know, then traditional weapons is totally different than creative and extreme weapons.

There's just so much variety that you get to do.

So.

Yeah.

Very cool.

Well, Omar, I really appreciate your time today.

We in ATA nation are just loving seeing these Inspiring stories of young athletes, adult athletes all across the country, all across the globe that are working hard and not just applying the skills like you said to martial arts, but going beyond the belt and applying those outside of martial arts.

So we really appreciate your time today.

Thank you so much for being an inspiration.

Yes.

Yes, sir.

Thank you so much for having me.

I appreciate it.

We love it.

Thank you, sir.

Yes.

You're welcome, sir.

Thank you.

We want to thank Omar for a great interview.

Super cool to talk to these athletes.

We've been saying that we've got these coming out every week for quite a few weeks now.

Some of the episodes will be paired.

With another interview with somebody else, some different people across ATA Nation.

If you have somebody you think we need to interview, let us know now with that.

Lots of upcoming events in ATA Nation.

Make sure you're checking out atamartialarts.com districts is going to be here before you know it.

So make sure you are checking out those district championship locations.

Make sure you're getting your hotel rooms.

None of the registrations or any of that will be available until much later in May.

Remember, the process for this, if you are new to this, is that all of the regional tournaments have to get done and there's some all the way up to the first weekend in May and then all of those get tabulated and then there's a short amount of time that online you have to double check to make sure your points are correct and put any revisions in.

Not the regular 30 days.

They'll that'll all go online.

We'll mention it here.

You'll get emails about it.

I'm sure if you're getting the ATAs emails and then they will open up districts registrations and it will be a short amount of time.

So make sure you're ready.

If you haven't already and you are planning on probably being able to compete at districts, you need to go over to ATA Easy Signup to create an account.

If you don't have an account on ATA Easy signup, go ahead and do that because that'll save you time.

Talk to your school owner about that.

Maybe they've set up an account for you.

Some have, some haven't.

A lot of you already have yours because you've done it for Worlds and Nationals.

But for a lot, for some people, District championships is the first time they are using that system.

Now across the country, everyone's going to be using that system soon.

So we'll probably bring you more updates on that as we get a little closer to implementing the at easy signup for every regional event.

It's going to be a big thing and just moving towards some cool new systems, some cool new things to help our tournaments continue to be the best in the nation, in the world.

For tournaments, for, for martial arts tournaments.

We're, we're, we've got it down.

So lots of cool things going on.

I'm excited to see a bunch of you guys in Fort Worth.

Until next time, make sure you are out there going beyond the bell.

Hey, so here's the deal.

Those you guys listen to secret part, because we've been adding these onto YouTube, we've been splitting our viewer base, which is not bad.

We're reaching more people.

But I would love to see make sure you're hitting the subscribe button on YouTube and make sure you're hitting the subscribe button on your favorite podcast player.

We want to make sure people are getting this and share it with a friend.

Right.

Share on social media now that we've got the YouTube links in there.

So just let everybody know about these awesome athletes and then all the things that we have in the archives of the 18 Nation podcast and all the different things.

So make sure you get out there, share it with us.

We'd really appreciate.