As Bruce Lee said: don’t fear the fighter who knows 1001 ways to kick and can do them all quite well. Fear the fighter who’s done one kick 1001 times, because that fighter has mastery.

So this one is simple – it means STICK AT IT. Panther Taekwondo teaches its students not to give up and not to give in – to keep trying until we get the thing that is important to us.

There are no shortcuts to mastery

I was once invited to give a demonstration to Royal Mail staff.  As part of the display, I did a spinning kick – twisting through 180 degrees then kicking an apple balanced on somebody’s head.

Afterwards, a lot of people wanted to know: how did you do that?

If you do something 3000 times, it becomes as natural as eating. This is one of the lessons Panther Taekwondo teaches best: the will to carry on, and the persistence and discipline to make those 3000 kicks.

For the first 1500, there was no-one standing in front of me. Then for the next few hundred kicks, there was someone there but a lot of padding in place in case my kick missed. Then, when I was sure I had mastered the move and could do it without thinking about it – I did it for real, with someone’s real head right there.

There are no shortcuts, no quick tricks to get you through. There are only practice and repetition. If you want to do well, be the best, really amount to something – keep practising.