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Welcome to the ATA Nation podcast.

Students, instructors, parents, masters of Songam Taekwondo.

Welcome Back to the ATA Nation podcast.

This is episode 190 and today we've got a short episode for you but important.

I want to go over a couple of events that are coming up.

We are gearing up for the onslaught of amazing song on Taekwondo ATA Nation events.

And I want to hit through the ones that you might have not noticed, not heard, not signed up for yet.

And then I do also want to talk a little bit about something that you might not have seen.

And if you're a heavy tournament competitor, we want to make that we let you know about this.

So before we get to all of that, I want to start this week with our athlete of the week, ATA Nation.

We have another awesome athlete of the week with us today.

Hey, sir, can you introduce yourself?

I'm Ryan Bishop.

I'm a third degree black belt from Flemington, New Jersey, and I train at kick with martial arts.

Oh, man.

Awesome.

And who's your instructor over there?

Mr. Epstein?

Oh, yes.

Excellent.

Very good.

Awesome.

Okay, well, as an athlete of the week, I assume that you're probably a competitor, you like to go out and do some tournament stuff.

What's your favorite event to compete in at tournaments?

My favorite event to compete in is definitely creative weapons.

Traditional forms is a close second.

Okay, you're a traditional guy.

I like it.

Okay, good, good, good.

And the third degree form, that's a tough one.

All right.

Yes, sir.

You like those slow sidekicks at the beginning?

Yes, sir, I do.

I just started competing with it and I've gotten first place the two times I've compete with it.

Nice.

That's fantastic.

Okay, so what about your weapon?

What's the weapon that you like to use?

For me, I've done a couple weapons, but for both I do creative and extreme weapons.

I do both staff for both.

Now

that was gonna be my guess.

I was like, I bet this guy's a BO staff guy.

I think he's like, okay, so what is it about BO staff doing creative extreme that is like, hey, this is the one I like to do for both staff.

For me, I find the most creativity with both staff.

I think I can, like show my creative side with both staff the most.

And I think it's honestly, it's just my favorite weapon.

I like the strikes, I like how it feels to do it, and I like the satisfaction of doing a perfect form.

I love it.

I agree with you.

I've always thought Donatello is the best Ninja Turtle because.

Yeah, the.

The bo staff, it's the.

It's the one to go with.

So.

Okay, you're at a tournament and they say you have to skip an event.

What event are you skipping?

Traditional weapons.

Really?

You don't want to do the traditional.

You like the.

The extreme and creative.

You don't want to do the traditional.

I like creative and extreme weapons and traditional forms.

I don't.

I just do creative.

Okay.

I just do traditional weapons for creative stream weapons.

Just so you can do the other one.

Do you do.

For your traditional weapon, do you do the bo staff as well?

I do commas for traditional.

Okay.

Okay.

Why you choose commas for traditional over doing the.

The bo staff?

I like that commas is more like hands, so I can show off my traditional form side to the commas, so I'm better at it.

And I also like that it has kicks in it, because I like kicks.

Okay, that makes total sense.

Yeah, you don't get the kicking side of things in the jung bung form.

Okay, cool.

That makes sense.

Got it.

What kind of.

What kind of goals do you have for maybe this tournament season, maybe going on into the future, either competition or no competition?

What kind of goals are you setting for your martial arts training?

So obviously my biggest goal is to win world Champ, but my goal for this season is to make it to TOC in traditional forms.

Excellent.

Very cool.

Especially like starting that third degree form, you know.

But it sounds like it's going really well for you.

That's a tough one.

But it sounds like you like kicks, so it's probably a really nice form.

Now.

So as we look towards, you know, the future you're looking.

Trying to get some red letters, do that cool, you know, world Champ thing.

Are you focused on one specific area or you kind of thinking, you know, put your, you know, try to get it either the traditional forms, the extreme and creative weapons.

Trying to try a couple of different ways to get the world title.

My biggest goal is creative weapons World Champion.

I train that pretty much every day, to be honest.

Awesome.

That's very cool.

So I'm assuming you probably have some.

Some state, maybe district titles already in the.

In those events?

Yes, sir.

Excellent.

Very cool.

Okay, so, you know, as you're looking towards the future, you know, looking at your training, you've been doing this for a while.

Hey, you know what?

I forgot to ask you.

How'd you get started in martial arts?

I got started.

Actually.

It was a pretty big coincidence.

My Instructors are actually my next door neighbor literally lives five feet next to me.

So like I met them from them moving next to me and they really got, just got me into martial arts.

Wow, that's cool.

They were your neighbors?

Yeah.

You met from there and started training.

That's, you know, that's a good, you know, some neighbors just give like cookies or whatever and now they've, you know, given you the gift of martial arts.

Can't complain about that.

Okay, so what does it mean to you to be an athlete that goes beyond the belt?

So to me, to go beyond the belt, it means once you take off that belt or the uniform or you step off the mat, you maintain those lifestyle life skills.

You keep those life skills, you show them in your everyday life, whether that's in school, with your parents, with your friends.

Just when you go off the mat, you continue being a martial artist with the personality of a martial artist.

Like everything you learn from martial arts.

I love that.

Yeah, very cool.

Good.

Well, thank you for being an example of an athlete that goes beyond the belt.

Congratulations on being one of the athletes of the week and good luck in your training.

Thank you.

Oh, man.

Let me tell you, my inbox on Instagram is full of future athletes of the week that I'm setting up interviews with.

If you want to be an athlete of the week, make sure you reach out to one of the ATA brand ambassadors.

If you're not subscribed to the ATA's YouTube page, you need to make sure you are because you'll get not only this awesome show on there, but we'll do clips of athlete interviews.

And we always post the ambassador corner on there as well as some other cool things, so don't miss out on those.

And the ATA's YouTube page has the official videos for all the color belt weapons forms, all the black belt weapons forms.

I mean, it's got a lot of great resources on there then too.

So don't make, make sure you're, you're tuned in there.

Now if you are a tournament competitor, it is very important that you understand the 30 day rule.

It comes to point corrections.

This just is that if there is an error, if you think there is an error in the point system that after they post the points for a tournament in the state champion or the district or not district, the state champion or the, the world championship standings, you need to report that to ata headquarters within 30 days.

Now don't just look on your profile at the points, go to the actual standings.

That's where it matters.

That's where it it really matters.

But there has been a recent change in this.

In the past you have emailed ATA headquarters if you have had an issue.

There is now a form that you must fill out is the official point Corrections Request Form.

And this just makes it easier for headquarters to track everything.

Make sure you get all the information to them that they need because that's part of the issue is probably just like I got to know all the info.

So make sure that you're using the official form.

Now I'm going to put a link to that form in the show notes today because I don't want you to miss it.

That's going to be really important that you use that link if you have an error in your points or you think there's an error in your points.

Sometimes you think there is and then you find out, oh, actually I see what happened here.

I maxed out on these or whatnot.

So very important to be using that official form to report that to headquarters and stay within the 30 days day window.

Now another thing I wanted to hit was some of these events that are coming up guys that I.

Some of these events are just amazing.

First, if you haven't registered for Athlete Development Camp, this camp is like I think probably right now the closest in exhaustion level that you're going to get to.

Like the old school instructor certification camps.

If you go to Athlete Development Camp, you're going to get to to spar combat spar with the best.

You got amazing trainers.

And just the environment of being around these people is so much fun.

So Athlete Development Camp is in the summertime, June 18th through 21st in Arkansas.

You got to get registered for that.

I think, I think earlier that's all done.

I don't know what what we're on to right now, but you don't want to miss out on that now.

Second, the at MAX Gathering, right?

This is the fourth of the Max gatherings and this year it is moving to Texas.

Okay, so this year the MAX Gathering is going to be in Texas and that is going to be May 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

I'm sure you can still hop in on that then too if you want.

Gotta get.

This is an amazing opportunity to train with the best.

And you don't have to be top level to train with top level.

You want to be top level, you have to go train with the top level.

That's what you need.

Don't wait be like, I'm not good enough to go to Max G. No, that's ridiculous.

You've got to go to get to that level, we obviously have Spring Nationals coming up.

I'm not talking about that today except the empower her seminar at World Champ or excuse me, at Spring Nationals.

Make sure ladies, you get signed up for that.

It's going to be a great time though I can't join you at it.

And then the.

You know, there was one other thing I wanted to mention.

I can't remember which one it was.

Where did it go?

Oh, Team tryouts.

Team tryouts.

Team Mexico, Team Philippines and Team India are all doing tryouts as Spring Nationals.

And then of course, if you want to try out for Team ATA usa, you got to be at athlete development camp.

So great opportunity for everybody to go and sign up for those events.

Don't miss them, guys.

And then, okay, another quick shout out to regional camps.

Now these national trainings, this athlete development camp, max scaling, these are huge.

You should go to these, you should experience the that level of training, but you also need to be cultivating these relationships, these trainings with the people in your region, your region is your local family in ATA nation and building those bonds with the people that you're going to compete with the most, the people you're going to hang out with.

These are really important regional camps.

This is something that years ago was a huge thing.

It went away for a while.

Grandmaster MK has really worked on pulling these back in and our region loves them.

We do them every year.

It's building that relationship with other high ranks, other, you know, of your own rank in your area.

Don't miss it.

All right.

I was just talking to some people about something cool we're adding to ours in our region this year, but I'm not going to tell you on here, you have to wait.

Last but certainly not least, I want to give you guys a shout out.

I was looking just today at some of our stats on our podcast feed.

And this is not like YouTube and some of the other places like this goes out all over the place.

And so we don't have a comprehensive set of stats, we just have like stats in certain places from different things.

And I've switched hosting platforms just, you know, I don't know, a year and a half, a year and a half ago or so.

And so those have updated.

So, and, and so all of our stats from before that with the podcast are gone.

But today I look and we've got 10.8 thousand all time downloads on the podcast.

And that again is just in the last like year, year and a half, right?

And then like just in the last 90 days, 1500.

Right.

That's amazing.

You guys are awesome.

I just got reached out to from somebody in Germany who is our listener in Germany.

It's so great to to hear from people all around ATA nation that are tuning in.

And so I just want to hit these real quick.

Our best month in a while was September 2025.

That was a good one.

Let's see.

Unique.

We've got some good listeners.

Let's see.

Most of you are listening on Apple podcasts.

So I'm on Chrome, Spotify, Safari, Overcast.

Okay, thank you.

For you overcast people, overwhelmingly iOS smart.

I knew at nation was wise.

And then we've got countries all over the place.

Number one, United States.

Number two, Germany.

Our German listener, you know, rocking it.

I'm excited.

They're going to open a school there.

I think near.

Somewhere near there.

We're working on it.

I don't know.

We're going to get an interview.

We've got listens in China, Ireland, shout out to Mango Martial Arts there.

Spain.

We love our people in Spain.

Canada, South Africa, Austria.

Not even Australia.

Austria, man, so many South Africa is here.

Brazil, Brazil.

Guys, you need to pick up your game.

I'm not seeing enough downloads from Brazil.

All right, Finland, some downloads.

Poland, Italy.

I like that.

France, the United Kingdom.

Ireland is rocking it.

What's this?

Pakistan, Australia, The Philippines, Malaysia, India.

I'm a little sad we just shouted out your guys's team sparring thing and I don't see any downloads from India right now.

At least in the last.

I don't know where these stats, how long they are, but that makes me a little sad.

Okay, so I think you need to work on that.

Argentina, thank you for tuning in.

And Brazil.

Oh, I mentioned that already.

Anyways, guys, shout out to you.

Thank you so much for doing an amazing job of supporting the podcast.

We really appreciate every time we get a DM from you guys or see at a tournament and somebody says something, we really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would go and share this with a friend, especially asking them to subscribe to the ATA's YouTube page.

I've started this thing where at tournaments when I'm judging, if you've been judged by me recently, I'll introduce myself and then shill the ATA's YouTube page and tell everyone I'm judging to go and subscribe to the ATA's YouTube page.

That's what it's come to for me.

So, guys, anyways, I want to thank you so much for all you do in ATA Nation.

We wouldn't be here as a podcast without you, the listener, and we really appreciate it.

So get out this air this week and go beyond the Belt ATA Nation podcast.

Be sure to subscribe and share with your ATA family.