We've got an extra large episode for you.

Let's get started.

Welcome to the Ata Nation podcast.

Students, parents, instructors, family members of Ata Nation, welcome back to episode 164 of the Ata Nation podcast.

My name is senior master Zach Hayden, and I am your host for today's episode.

Wait, you've been your host for all the episodes?

That must be me.

Anyways, we have a gigantic episode for you today.

Not only do we have an awesome athlete of the week, but we have updates from the training department with it with chief master Skiles and special guest Senior Master Turner.

So you do not want to miss out on all the news that is going on across ATA Nation.

This is your place to stay in touch.

Please make sure you share this with a friend, subscribe on YouTube.

Make sure that you check out all the important things coming up in ATA Nation.

So without further ado, let's get to our athlete of the week.

And then right from there, we're talking to the training department.

Let's go.

At Nation, we're super excited to have with us another excellent athlete of the week.

Can you introduce yourself, sir?

Hi, I'm Austin Fagan.

And where are you from and who's your instructor?

I am from Darien, Illinois.

I train at Successna Martial arts and my instructors are Chief Master Patty Barnum, Chief Master Kelly Shoop, Senior Master Dukes, Mr. Walters, Mr. Kenton Shoup, and Ms. Faithly.

Excellent.

What a great crew of instructors over there.

One of which is a brand new ninth degree, right?

Yes, sir.

That was pretty exciting.

Speaking of ranks, what rank are you?

I'm a first degree black belt, sir.

Very cool.

And what got you started in martial arts?

What.

What made you think about doing Taekwondo?

So I think, I guess I had a little.

I was a little interested when I walked past it, but then my mom was like, she was like, why not sign up?

And she signed up.

I was reluctant to go at first, but I went.

And I'm glad I made that decision because when I came out of that class, I knew I was hooked.

Awesome.

Very cool.

And did you happen to go to the world championships this past year?

No, sir.

I did last year.

Excellent.

Very cool.

So we're in the beginning, we're just starting a brand new season of kind of competition of, you know, we kind of all think of this as the new year for taekwondo.

What did you.

What were kind of your focuses last season and how did that go?

Well, my focuses last season was I was more focusing on traditional events and I really wanted to get state champ.

That's what I was basically focusing on for traditional forms, and I did achieve that focus.

I achieved that goal.

Nice.

Good job.

That is awesome.

And did you do all of last year?

Have you been a first degree for a while?

Did it in the first degree division or did.

Was it in the color belt division?

Yes, sir.

I was in black belt.

Yes, sir.

Excellent.

Very cool.

Okay, so now we're kind of gearing up for a new season, you know, and everybody's got different thoughts on seasons yet.

Some seasons you're going really hard for certain things.

Some seasons you got.

You're.

You're.

You're, you know, going back a little bit and working some more things, maybe testing or whatnot.

So what are you looking at for this new 25, 26 season?

I'm looking at more of tournaments and competition.

I feel like I want to focus on just trying to be better and trying to see what I can improve.

What.

What kind of events are you looking still?

What?

The traditional events and if the traditional ones.

What's kind of your favorite traditional event?

I would say I'm more focusing, like, a lot on traditional forms and weapons, so probably traditional forms.

Cool.

And what's your traditional weapon of choice?

What do you like to use?

I like to use nunchuck, sir.

Nunchuck.

Single song.

Strong.

Very good.

Excellent.

And your traditional form?

Very cool.

If you had to pick an event that was maybe not your top event, not your favorite event, what event would that be?

But that's hard.

I. I love every event.

Good answer.

Leave, probably.

But if I really had to choose, I'd probably say I choose one of my weaker areas.

Probably more of sparring.

Gotcha.

Are you involved?

I know a lot of people these days are involved in one of the team sparring events.

Is that something that you're a part of?

Yes, sir.

I'm part of both, sir.

Very cool.

How do you like that event?

It's awesome.

It's a.

You know what?

I really think it's a.

A fun way.

Even if sparring might be a little, you know, not your top thing or something, that you're maybe a little weaker at.

Doing it with a team is so nice because you can work together.

You can help each other.

Have you found that the case for you in team sparring?

Yeah, I found that more fun than the traditional events, just the plain combat and traditional firing.

It's so much fun to cheer your team.

I mean, that's just so.

Yeah, you know, the hype, sir.

Exactly.

The hype.

It's there.

I hear you got Any big goals for this season?

Yes, sir.

I am aiming for district champ and a world champ.

And to make this even more specific, I want to be a district champ and a world champ in traditional form, sir.

Nice.

I love the specificity.

We know goals you set or goals you get, you got to be specific about those goals.

You can tell your instructors have been doing a great job.

I'm partial to that.

Senior Master Dukes, he's one of the vanguard masters that I was a part of as well.

So he's a.

He's a favorite of mine.

That guy's cool.

So, hey, what's it mean to you to be an athlete that goes beyond the belt?

Beyond the belt?

I would say taking the life skills you learn in Taekwondo, say self discipline, respect, courtesy, integrity, never giving up, perseverance, like making friends and applying them to your life.

Like, once you apply them to your life, you're going to feel happy that you actually did, because that's going to help you.

That's just going to help you throughout your life, 100%.

Have you started school yet for the new school year?

No, sir.

I start school in 13 days.

13 days, very good.

Have you, as you.

You've done Taekwondo, you're going beyond the belt.

Have you found that learning these life skills, going beyond the belt, has helped you at school, with friends, other areas outside of Taekwondo?

Y has helped me a lot.

Like, if I'm nervous, I feel like I just take some of those life skills.

I'm like, come on, Austin.

You can do this.

I love that.

What great advice, sir.

Well, sir, congratulations on being one of the athletes of the week that the ambassadors have picked.

Thank you for your time and thank you for being an inspiration for other martial arts out there.

Ata nation, we have twice the full house today of awesomeness.

Coming from the training department, we have Chief Master Skiles.

How are you this morning, sir?

Fantastic.

I got a little kickboxing workout in this morning, so I'm ready to go.

I saw you had some potassium, got your banana eaten.

You're all ready to go.

Protein bar my banana.

I just need to get my alarm in me and I'll be good to go for the rest of the day.

There we go.

And Senior Master Turner, how's it going this morning, sir?

It's going phenomenal, sir.

You know, just rocking our almost last week of camp.

So we're ready to.

To let summer die and get back into the swing of things full force.

We're back to school, man.

All our kids are in school already.

Around here, not up Here.

Yeah.

You got a tournament coming up.

Is that a.

You got a tournament?

I don't know what that is.

That's something that's happening.

Yeah.

November 14th, 15th.

There's apparently something going on.

I don't know.

Atlantic City.

Yeah.

That's a cool place.

I've never been.

I heard that.

I heard the host is amazing.

I've heard good things.

I've heard good things.

Those metals are pretty sweet, too.

They are looking pretty sweet.

Very.

I heard there's something special about this one.

I don't want to give it away yet, but I heard there's something pretty special about that one there.

People have what I heard.

What I heard that.

Yeah, I like.

You know what people Come to the Nation podcast for the Top Secret, the Inside Track.

Speaking of Chief Measure sky, you got so much going on in the training department.

Give us some updates, man.

From a.

From a training schedule for between now and January.

It is packed.

We've got virtual classes.

We've got regional trainings.

We've got, of course, Fall Nationals.

We've got stuff going on here in Little Rock.

So if you want me to, I can just go from the top.

I can maybe go by topic and just run through the things that we have.

Let's do that.

We've mentioned on the last couple of episodes this virtual training for the Legacy members, this new free option.

Super cool.

You want to hit those real quick because we have been.

We've been talking to people about it on the podcast.

Yeah.

So the first one starts this month, August 30th.

Like you mentioned, it's free to all Legacy members of all levels is you can train in your school, you can train in your living room, as long as you got some space.

Depending on the topic, I do recommend licensees to do some group training.

So if you want to get your Legacy members there in your school, all training at the same time, that'd be super helpful because then that way they can be my eyes and ears on the floor.

And we can.

And we can.

We could do a group training, make it so much more effective and fun.

Right.

We're training together.

It's always more fun when you're in a group than in front of a camera by yourself.

As a matter of fact, one of the trainings we're going to do later in the year, I'm actually going to be probably going to be teaching on location from a school who's going to have training going on behind me while I'm teaching the class.

I'm pretty excited about that.

Adventure.

So it's going to be pretty neat.

But yeah, we start this month with color belt forms.

September is a couple black belt forms.

October is a couple color belt weapons.

November's board breaking color belt versus black belt board ranking.

So it's going to be tips and ideas that you can utilize for the how you demonstrate your technique, how you set up your boards, that type of stuff.

December is all about Legacy pro.

So teaching the life skills.

And then our newest thing that I introduced at Worlds, which I'll be doing again in fall and January are the, are the 10 class management skills.

So again it's free.

You can just go on an rsvp.

We'll always send out reminders, you know, the week leading up to it in case you lost the zoom code or whatever.

But we're, I'm pretty excited about it.

Think of it as kind of like a continuing education program that ATA is offering for free to all your legacy members.

Super cool.

They need to go to atamarcialarts.com and it's in the event you go to the, the calendar and then the training and the, the RSVPs are there.

So definitely make sure you check those out.

That's pretty cool.

Yes.

Or on the legacy, the legacy page too.

Okay.

On the legacy page as well.

Excellent.

Good to know.

So that's the virtual stuff.

Now you got a ton of in person things both between going around the country doing some stuff and then at like all nationals and stuff.

So you tell me what you want to hit next.

Well, the, the other, the other last thing that I have is virtual wise in November 7th and 8th.

I have the legacy facilitator research on the 7th and the certification and or member training on the 8th.

So any of the licensees that need to research do their legacy facilitator recertification or any of the new licensees that we have or maybe just some legacy members.

The one I did earlier this month, I had three or four just legacy members on there they wanted to.

Because we go through all the forms in detail.

I mean that one's a long one.

That's a six hour day.

It's, it's, it's, it's pretty brutal on the body stand in front of a camera for six hours.

But yes, it's a lot of fun and we do it because it's necessary.

Right now regionally, since you mentioned the regional tournament or the regional events we got Senior Master Turner and his counterpart Senior Master Suozzi have been offering and are going to continue to offer regional ATA max Seminars.

I'll give you the dates and then Master Turner, you can talk about the event.

September 14th, they're doing one in.

Senior Master Suazi is in Oregon City, Oregon.

September 21st is in Punta Gorda, Florida.

That's in connection with Ms. Brooke Barrows tournament.

Senior Master Turner is going to be there.

There's something extra special with that event.

I'll let him know, let him talk about that.

And then September 27th in Rockland, California, Grandmaster Jaime's senior Master Suazi is there as well.

So Master Turner, why don't you talk about the, the, the seminars themselves and then mention that extra special thing going on in Florida.

Yes, absolutely.

So we're very happy to be able to be out in the region helping the instructors and, and licensees and of course the legacy members with the ATMX curriculum in their, you know, comfort zone in a sense.

So we're coming to you.

This seminar itself tends to be a two part seminar.

The first half of it is really geared towards our licensees, our instructors and our legacy members on how to not only teach the curriculum, how to operate it, there's also some financial implications that we go through on how to operate it and use it into your school and operate it as a business in a sense or as an additional program.

So that's the first half of the day.

The later half of the day is really geared towards our athletes and we kind of tailor it to what the region or the host is looking for, whether it's a, you want more weapon based, more kicking based, more form based.

So we tailor it to what the licensees are doing there.

So we've kind of compelled like six different seminars that we are able to offer so that way we can come back to that same region or that same host multiple times and give them a different seminar every single time.

So we know there's so much curriculum in the ATMX program that it's almost like too much to kind of fit into a you know, two hour seminar.

So we kind of chunked it up to like what's the most important to the person.

So if you want to work on a weapon specific now it doesn't need to be all the weapons, it could just be like I know Master wants to do, I think both staff and hands at one of the seminars.

So it's really just get dedicated to those weapons and that area.

So that's what they want to work on.

So then I'm sure he's going to go back the next time and maybe do commas and more kicking things like that.

So we're super excited to be able to offer these regional seminars to really get to the people.

A lot of times they are in conjunction with another event so that if you're already going to be there, we try to like double it up so you don't have to make two trips.

So that's what we're doing down in Punta Gorda.

We're super excited.

You know, I think the secret that everyone's heard about is that I'm there to go get a public sub.

Maybe that's just my own secret why I'm going down there.

That was, that was a small caveat to, to me going, yeah, that's, that's a requirement anytime I'm in the South.

But no, but.

So what we're doing down in Pita Gordon is actually a three part.

So on Friday, of course they have the first ever regional team Sync and team Demo competition will be happening that Friday.

Along with that they have their team sparring in some of their 4th and 5th degrees so their actual tournament events.

But that will be the first ever regional tournament for team seeking team Demo.

Then I'm following that on Saturday is the rest of the tournament activities, all the regular competition.

And then on Sunday we're doubling down and that's going to be the ata Max regional seminar.

So three days in beautiful Punta Go to Florida.

The venue is incredible, sits right on the water.

It's gonna be awesome.

So we're excited.

I have got a couple of questions about the atmx then first if a team is looking to come and travel to compete at that with now we've got ata easy signup.

What's the, what's the registration process for that?

So right now the way it's working is you have to register for a team ID which we can give you the link and we'll post it definitely for everybody to have.

I know Master Scholars has it there.

It's, it's.

It's in multiple spots on the atamartialarts.com so that you can find it in multiple spots.

But first of course is getting your team id.

And I've been very fortunate to be on the, on the end of this.

And we have a ton of new teams.

I see we have like a.

We have an entire team from Texas being formed because now the new rules allow you to build for demo team at least from the entire state.

So we have that.

We have Team Canada just got registered for a team ID.

So Mr. White up there, he's, he's going all in.

So super Excited for that.

So we have some new teams that are getting registered.

So first is the team id, the secondary.

Then depending on the regional event that host will have a separate link for.

So you're not gonna sign up to ata?

Easy sign up, but just, you know, we all know that there's enough going on with that.

So.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah.

So for this term itself or misses soon to be Master Bear Master candidate Barris will have.

She has a separate link to register for this event.

And then each individual tournament that.

That's hosting one of these events, whether we'll have a separate link where they can compete at.

So Atlantic City, we might be able to.

There's one out in Atlantic City there.

Yeah, this is team syncing.

Team demo is happening at this.

Oh, yeah, that host.

What a generous host to be able to do that.

That's so nice.

Okay, cool.

So I think it's.

It's important for people to know.

We don't want anybody to show up and be like, oh, I didn't know I needed a team ID or anything like that.

So.

Good, get your team id.

Like I said, we've talked about this in the past.

A lot of the concept, what we've done with Team Seeking Team demo is try to make it formulate a very similar path to team sparring.

Yeah, sounds good.

Okay.

And then the next question is if maybe I'm a student and I'm like, hey, my instructor, you know, it'd be really cool if we had one of those regional trainings at our school or I'm a licensee and I'm like, hey, I want you to come to Indiana, hang out.

I don't have any cool food or whatever, but what is the process for me maybe having an event, one of these Mac seminars to my area Master scholars.

You want to take this one or.

Yeah, I mean, if you have.

If you have Master Turner's contact information or Master Suazi's contact information, feel free to reach out to them directly.

They'll get back with me.

Or you can just contact me directly, email me, call me here at headquarters, say, hey, I'm interested, doing this.

And then I'll put you in touch with.

With one of those two guys, and then you guys can work it out within the schedules.

That works best for.

For.

For whoever that instructor needs to be.

And what's nice is that it's an ATA hosted event.

So, you know, you get all of the ATA promotion, you know, master marketing behind it as well as that.

So it takes it out of the school owner's hands to do it.

You may be the host or having the right location, but it's an ATA powered event where training credits are also approved, I believe, for this as well.

So, you know, there's some other things like that that, that work into a conjunction with it as being an official ATA event.

Cool.

And as you said, these are, these two part things.

Are people able to, like if I've got students want to come for, they're not on the business side or whatever, they can just do the athlete side.

We encourage that.

Okay.

And we encourage, I mean, you could technically only take the first half as an instructor, but we, we strongly encourage you to do both because what we tend to do a lot of times is during that first half of the seminar, we go through some of the instructing.

We pretty much teach you what we're going to teach later on that night.

And then what happens is not only that, but we actually put you in, in real time teaching scenarios with your students who you're the most comfortable teaching.

We've all been to those, those national trainings where we have to get in front of, teach in front of our peers.

And we, we never teach to the same degree that we would back in our school.

So I, like the last time I did it, I was fortunate to do it in Chicago.

And I'm sitting there and we had one instructor who came and he brought like six, seven students.

So when it came to teaching, he got to teach his students in real time and he was training on it and it was so much more comfortable because these are people that you're literally teaching every single day.

So it's nothing different.

And you're going to be the most comfortable doing it versus trying to teach your peers.

So it's, it's, you get that on the job training right then and there.

And plus you have myself or seem Aswasi there to kind of give you some tidbits and help you out at the same time.

We're there to give support.

You know, we're, we're emotional and physical support as much as needed.

Excellent.

Okay.

Very cool.

Love it.

I'm gonna have to see about bringing one of those.

I know you were in Chicago, but maybe we'll get you over Indiana stuff.

Hey, I'm down.

Okay.

And just head straight across.

Yeah, there you go.

You know how long that would take to charge, right?

Not so great.

Yeah.

I was gonna say the other, the other regional seminars that we're offering right now are the regional weapon seminars.

Chief Master Kaminsky is out on the road Scheduling these.

We've got one October.

He's got one October 4th in Canada.

We've got one.

Another one in October, fourth down in California.

Senior Master Barrett is going to go down to Marietta, California and do double bomb Monkey for that region.

And then he's in.

He's in Duluth, Georgia, November 9th.

And then he just sent me one or two the other day that just got put up on the website.

I don't have them updated on my sheet here.

He's got, he's got another one in Chief Master Bryce this region I know Master Senior Master Coffran and Chief Master Kendriva are teaching a seminar in November.

And I think he's.

There's another one that I don't have on my list at this time.

So same place.

Go to the training schedule, look at the events.

You can see all of those that are coming up.

So those are great.

And again, licensees, if you're interested in hosting something regionally, let us know.

Reach out to me.

If you have Master Kaminsky's direct contact information, reach out to him.

But we'll just, we'll.

We'll try to get it coordinated.

He's already scheduling stuff for 2026, so let's go ahead and fill up the calendar for next year.

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

Well, I noticed I was looking at the fall national schedule, and I didn't see any weapons on there.

And so I thought to myself, honestly, I thought, I'm fine with that.

I haven't.

I'm so sick of seeing some of these weapon things anyways.

And we have these, we have these regional trainings that I can have them, you know, I can come and do them and then pick and choose a little bit more and whatnot.

So tell us about, you know, this, this tall national schedules.

Yeah.

So I started looking at things and, you know, I get a lot of feedback and questions and requests and all this kind of stuff and on topic for topics at these national events and all these kind of things.

And I just, I started looking at what we've been offering for the last five years coming out of COVID with all of the color belt weapons curriculum that we've created and offered.

Every event, they've been so weapons heavy.

Then with the updates that we've made to all the black belt forms.

Before I did this, I did go around, I made some phone calls.

I was like, hey, what would you, what would you say if there weren't any weapons being offered at Fallout at a national event?

And they were like.

And just like, you're like, oh, well, you know, for me it's not a, it wouldn't be such a big deal.

And I said, okay, I'm thinking about doing it.

They're like, well, that would be something quite different, Master Skiles.

And I said, well, you're right, it is.

And I'm always been a little bit different.

So I said, you know what, let me give it a shot.

But with that in mind, it wasn't just, hey, I'm going to axe the weapon stuff.

There's a reason for it.

You know, we've really over the last year have really dived into as a company, our core values.

Right.

Senior Master Lee talks about it all the time.

It's up on banners.

We put it in our promotional things athlete development camp.

You know, the shirt this year was culture.

And then we had a lot of the attributes from all our core values listed on the back of the shirt.

And when I started putting together the list of seminars that I wanted to do, they all seemed to have a real common thread to them, which was growth and having a growth mindset.

And so I said, I want to dive into it.

I want to embrace that theme for all of the trainings.

And then of course then Senior Master Lee came to me and said, hey sir, I want to kind of bring back the old world conference style schedule where you kind of have a business track of things and then you have the physical stuff.

I said, okay, that's fine.

And what are the topics?

And again, all the topics had a very similar theme to them.

It was growth growth mindset.

So really embracing the growth mindset concept for this fall national.

So everything is about growing your school numbers.

And we have, we have business seminars, talk about new members, grow your revenue, grow your legacy students by, by using the internship Chief Master Wegman is going to, is going to expand upon that during that.

And then on the physical side, it's all instructional instructor development and legacy development based instructors.

Grow your legacy, grow yourself as an instructor.

So I've always kind of kept the theme from the physical stuff of having like personal development and an instructional development style courses.

I'm just kind of not leaning more so for the personal side of things.

Really the only personal one that's in there.

It's kind of like the black, the two black belt forms that we're going to do, but that you could also say is a growth mindset focused seminar because it's creating some, some continuity, right.

And consistency in the way we're teaching the third and fourth degree black belt forms for growth of your students, growth of your instructors, growth of the tournaments, growth as a judge.

So it really.

That's kind of where we all focused everything.

Master Turner's got a seminar on the ATA Max.

Doing the team sync and team demo from a business growth mindset and developing your teams and growing that aspect of your business.

The sparring and combat stuff is all about taking the curriculum that we offer and understanding as an instructor how to teach at a basic level and teach those.

Teach that curriculum at a champion level.

So growing your students and growing yourself as an instructor.

So you get the common thread there.

Yeah, we've been since 20.

Since.

Since 2020 super heavy on the weapons.

So I'm doing a little social experiment.

We'll see what happens.

Well, and I like I.

The growth mindset.

I love that idea.

I think it's.

I looked at the schedule yesterday.

I was signing up one of our instructors and I was like, I like this.

I personally need, you know, to do some stuff that isn't some of the weapon stuff.

And I just taught, you know, our black belts.

We just did the double bong monkey form.

I used the amazing.

If people haven't checked them out, the written versions, the brand new written protech versions on the ATA martial arts site are fantastic.

And then the videos and it was such a great resource.

You know, you get all the details, all that.

I mean, and I can go back to it.

I love doing a seminar live with the weapons, but I don't know about everybody else.

You know.

A week later, I forgot what you said about this one tiny move here.

So I got to go back in the video anyway.

So, yeah, I, I'm excited about this social experiment.

I'm always, I'm always okay with being part of some weird social experiment.

That's fun.

Hey, you know what?

I it.

We'll see what happens.

If it works, it works.

If it doesn't, it doesn't.

If I'm not mistaken, you're supposed to fail forward, you know, Absolutely.

We've got to try new things.

Part of being a growth mindset is you got to try something new.

If you don't try something new, you're not growing.

What's.

What do you guys say?

Growing at the extremities, growing at the.

Growth and extremities, failing forward, all part of that.

Those are all attributes that are in our growth mindset, core values.

I appreciate that.

Senior Master Lee is, is.

Is has enough confidence in me to trust me and say, hey, let's try it and see what happens.

Master sky, if it doesn't.

Guess what?

There's going to be another national event in about six months after this one.

We can always go back.

We'll all know that it didn't work.

When we see a bunch of weapons on this, when it's Hall's weapons, we'll be like, okay, we know what happened next.

I really want to, I really, you know, with all the facilitator training that I do and, and, and getting back into teaching, some of the legacy seminars that we've been offering at the, at the world events and even just getting the phone calls and emails from, from licensees, I really want people to embrace these instructional classes because the magic happens on the floor.

If you want to retain your students, if you want to get referrals, if you want to get new students, you gotta have to have a top notch product.

And a top notch product is only as good as the servers.

We've all been to restaurants where the food was amazing, but the service was subpar.

You don't go back and vice versa.

You know, we've been where service has been great and the food and the atmosphere, you know, the at the food is, is okay, but you like to go because the atmosphere was good, the people were nice.

So we want to find that happy medium where we can have a great environment, great food product and the service is, is top notch as well.

So I really want people to embrace the instructional side of things and really focus in on that.

Because like you mentioned, there's going to be a regional weapons seminar somewhere.

There's going to be another national event, there's going to be a camp, there's going to be, there's the online weapons curriculum, there's a resource for it.

So I just want to really encourage people to give it a shot, embrace it, see what happens.

And I want to, I want to jump in and double down on that real fast.

I think sometimes we get so caught up on and having all of this knowledge that we forget that the delivery of the knowledge is sometimes more important than the knowledge.

Yes.

And knowing more forms, those things are always going to be added benefits of course into our tournament culture.

But at the same time, inside of our school, even, even for my school, I would say less than 10 of my student base really competes now.

My judges and they need to know it, but how they deliver the information is so much more important.

And I pride myself on, on being a relatively confident and competent instructor.

And I've also liked to think that my, my juniors underneath me are also the same and they've taken hundreds of seminars, you know, fortunate enough and they came back from Worlds and the number one.

One they talked about was the 10 class management skills.

And they've implied they, they came back and directly applied more from that seminar than they have.

And you know, they've done the gpongi, they've done the commas and they've done all these other weapon seminars.

We're not on that cycle.

They want to learn it for themselves, which I think is personally for them.

But as far as application directly back into our school, that we've already seen growth directly related to one of these seminars, that 10 class management skills one I think they were, they came back and they were fired up from that one more than I've seen on any of the physical side of things sometimes as well.

That's good to hear.

Thank you, sir.

That's awesome.

Yeah, you're right.

You're.

You don't shamelessly plug things.

I can't imagine.

I'm good at this.

It's a great, you know, reminder, you know, we got to take action.

It's about the delivery, it's about what we're doing.

You know, and even if you're a, if you're going to nationals as a student, you know, we might have our legacy members, your regular black belts out there that aren't licensees or whatever, yet you get better at your own stuff by being able to teach it to others.

I mean, we all know that that's the best way to, to learn the details, really get good at it.

So outside of Fall Nationals, you know, we've talked about these regional events going on.

Anything else?

I know we've got a camp in Little Rock.

We've got a tournament in Little Rock.

Anything else going on that you want to hit?

Can we, can we double down on one thing from Fallen Nationals?

Yeah, for sure.

Again with this, this is something we've always talked about is, is the beginning of those days on, on that Thursday, you know, tends to be for our, our legacy, our licensees and things like that.

Again, one thing that we start with atmx and now that I know that that Team USA is also jumping in on is that we're, we're offering seminars that are for the students and color belts as well to train at national events.

So on that Thursday night, I've already, I've already created a healthy competition with, with Senior Master Isaacs that we're going to see who could.

At the same time, ATMX is offering our Battle Royale while they're doing their team sparring.

Their sparring training champion seminar.

So you know that Thursday night it is going to be rocking inside of there and it's not meant for necessarily just licensees, but this is meant for the students.

People that are coming in and are going to be there, they're coming in early and a chance to train at a national level seminar.

I remember being a young student, my first time being able to train at a national event.

I was like, I gotta train.

I get to train amongst the stars in a sense.

So we have that.

So we have the ATM Max battle royale happening which is open to 8 and 8 and up color belts as well.

We've had yellow belts participate in this seminar all the way through masters.

And then at the same time you have the training like a champion with Team USA and some of their coaches and stuff.

And what we love about it, I'm sure I speak for Master Isaacs and Chief Master Kaminsky when I say this is that it doesn't just allow myself or Master Swazi or Chief Master Kaminsky, Master Senior Master Isaacs to teach, but that next generation, of course we have people like Mr.

Walls and Mr. Raffle who are constantly helping us out.

Then on the other side you have AJ Smith and Joe Rowan and you know, the captains of these high level competitors.

But these are the guys that they're, the students are watching compete on a day to day basis.

I haven't competed in.

Well, I've competed at Worlds but it was not, it didn't go as planned.

But you watch Mr.

Walls and Mr. Raffle and these guys compete.

That ring is flooded.

When you watch that 4th and 5th degree team sparring division, it's flooded because you want to watch these elite guys watch what happened at Team USA like it is, it's there at the moment of team sparring.

And that next generation, these up and coming 4th and 5th degrees who are 10 times better than where we were at as, as you know, fourth to fifth degree in our prime.

But they're also teaching forward.

Not only better than us, I think at martial arts they're phenomenal instructors and it's given a chance for them that teach that next generation.

So that is one thing.

It is happening at Fall Nationals shamelessly.

I think you should take the atmx1, but if you want to do some sparring, I'm okay with that as well.

I won't be mad.

But you will get one point off in your next tournament because you were in that seminar, not at mine.

Don't, don't have one of the ATMX team As your center judge on Friday or Saturday if I see you in.

Sparring and you're like hey sir, I saw what you guys were doing.

It was looked so much fun.

I'm like yeah six.

Totally kidding, Master Stevens.

It won't happen, I promise.

You know you're getting.

Getting extra.

So good luck.

Yeah, no, I forgot about that.

Definitely go check those out.

The, the.

The battle royale will be amazing.

Yeah, that room is going to be pumping that night.

That's gonna be amazing.

So Master Skyles, what else we got on the agenda?

Yeah, so what we're.

We're finishing out the year with a bang.

And you mentioned it kind of you lean to.

It was the Camp Jongsu.

We're coming back again.

Last year we had just over 70 participants.

We did, we did an on the spot sign up at the end of Camp Jongsu last year we had 50 people already pre register before camp was over last year.

So we're already, we're already in the 70 range.

Our goal is 100.

So we have some spots left over.

It's not too late.

Go online.

Kim Jong Su is phenomenal.

And this is, this is the camp where we have.

We do have some tracks.

We have some business focus seminars, we have instructional.

We have some personal development time.

So Chief Master Wegman and I are putting.

We're putting the final touches on the schedule and what actually is going to get taught.

So we're pretty excited about it.

It's here in headquarters.

So you can stay where you want.

You show up, we have a couple meals, we do a little social thing on the first night, that kind of thing.

And then camp is over and we roll right into the first ever Huli Classic, the first tournament back here in Little Rock and in some number of years.

So we're pretty excited about it.

It's going to be amazing.

So okay.

Chief Master Skiles.

Camp Jiangsu.

I've got a student that was interested.

We're just looking at timing.

Do you guys have any idea yet?

Like I know it says Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, something like that.

Yeah.

So I'm going to make the final decision on the schedule of whether we want to start early Wednesday morning, go all day Wednesday, all day Thursday, like maybe a partial day on Friday to get.

Let people rest up, get over as I need to make sure with the, with the regional schedule.

Are they doing any competitions Friday night or is it all going to be all day Saturday?

I know in this region they typically do some events Friday night and then the rest of the day Saturday.

So if I can get people out in the morning or by, by, by lunchtime on Friday that I may want to start and do all day Wednesday, all day Thursday, a little bit of a morning training session finalized type of thing and then send everybody off, let them rest up and get ready to, to come back to the tournament.

So we'll have that schedule out very soon.

Master Wegman and I are putting the finalization on the topics, the schedule, all of that stuff.

So you guys are going to have to do some of the training outside.

If you guys get 100.

I mean we were packed in there last time.

You guys are.

That's gonna be awesome.

Yeah, so I mean we do have some extra maps from the sound stage.

So I'd heard like if we have to push some of the chairs back and put extra mats.

Yeah, yeah, up to the edge we'll do it.

But yeah, 1100 is our goal.

I think we're, we're real close to the 80 mark which I'm very happy about.

Awesome.

So that, that, that 20 spot left, you get your PDP points and it's really, it really sets your mind right.

One of the feedbacks we got last year was one of Chief Master Wegman's, that goal setting conversation that he had and we really got some good feedback.

It really made people think about where they want to be in that one year, three year, five year plan and really help set their goal.

Not just in their business but in their martial arts training as well.

Because the camp Jongsu is, is about laying that path towards mastership and beyond.

So we're really encouraging that third, fourth, fifth degree rank to be there.

We want to make sure you know now what it's going to take for the future.

Yes sir.

That's awesome.

Well, you do have a completely packed schedule for the rest of this year and I'm sure already starting on packing up the 26 calendar, you know, heading to St. Louis, all the cool stuff coming there.

So any last things, Senior Master Turner?

Probably they want to see you in Atlantic City.

I mean Florida and then maybe some Atlantic City on what weekend is that?

So we're in Florida on the, I fly down there for the 19th and 20th and the 21st.

So the 19th is, is the, the Friday night Team Sync team demo.

They're fourth and fifth degree, some of their team sparring.

Saturday of course is the tournament Sunday.

We'll follow up with the ATM max regional seminar.

I get back, I'm home for 24 hours and then I'm out to South Africa.

Oh yeah, they've got their big event there too, right?

They.

They do, yeah.

So we're super excited.

You know, sometimes we've seen a lot of growth in South America with the Pan Am tournaments.

We've seen a lot of growth in Euro.

I was very fortunate to be out there and now getting a chance to go down to the ATA South Africa to be down there for their ATA South African cup challenge.

I'm super excited.

I think Master Isaac's the only person who recently has taught in more continents than I have, so I'm trying to catch up on them.

So I'll be down in South Africa, down there for their official tournament and then doing some trainings across the board, from ATMX stuff to some traditional stuff and sparring and combat as well.

So we have that going on and then from there we flow right into Fall Nationals and then to this tournament happening down.

Yeah, sounds good.

Excellent.

Well, while you're down in South Africa or any of these international places, you ever tell them, you know, if they want live broadcast, maybe some ATA Nation episodes from other countries, I'm happy to come out and do some promotion and things like that.

I'll see if I can get a plus one for you, sir.

Don't worry, chief.

Master Skiles, any last things for AT Nation out there today?

No, just as you mentioned, we do have a lot of things on the schedule and I just want to just give kudos to all the instructors like Senior Master Turner Suazi, all the instructors that help me make all of this training possible.

Because I don't teach at all.

I don't teach most of it.

They do and I couldn't do.

And the ATA wouldn't have the caliber and the amount of trainings that we have without these incredible instructors.

And like Master Turner mentioned, we're already starting to develop the next tier of instructors and bringing them up, which I think over the last six to seven years is kind of refreshing.

It's something that.

That's kind of a newer thing in the organization, is really building up that next generation of instructors.

So I just want to.

Kudos to all of them.

And again, if anybody's interested in any type of a regional seminar, reach out to me and we'll see what we can do to get you on the schedule.

If not this year, definitely 20.

We want to start packing up the 26 schedule already.

Yes, sir.

Well, thank you gentlemen for your time today.

We really appreciate it and we'll see you at a training soon.

Thank you, sir.

All right, thanks, AJ Nation.

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