When he was a kid, junior Mario Lazaga wanted to be a one man army capable of taking on many people at once. After seven years of training, Lazaga has finally reached his secondary black belt in taekwondo.
“When I first started, I was nine about to turn ten, and I remember that I wanted to learn how to fight and be cool. Now that I’m older, I think, ‘OK this is actually useful stuff’, if I ever go to a big city and anyone tries to mug me, I know how to get them on the ground without getting hurt and without hurting them too badly,” Lazaga said.
Throughout CHS, many students are involved in a sport, but some students such as Lazaga have been doing martial arts since they were a kid. Many of these forms include taekwondo and karate. According to Lazaga, there is a big difference between karate, taekwondo and other styles like kung fu.

According to Master Yoo, head of Master Yoo’s World Class Taekwondo, “Number one, karate came from Japan, taekwondo came from Korea. Secondly, right now taekwondo is an Olympic sport, which means it’s a very safe martial art. Third, taekwondo uses a lot of kicking techniques and lower body strength. It exercises your lower body, karate is a lot of ‘hand’ technique.”
Senior Cameron Martin, who instructs at Adamson’s Karate Studio, had a similar idea between the distinction of the different martial arts saying that, “It’s kind of specific, a lot of it’s where it’s coming from, it’s a little bit different. Karate as opposed to taekwondo, if you’ve seen it in the Olympics, it’s a lot of kicking, while karate uses more punches than kicks, and kung fu is a little bit different from China, using many of the ‘animal styles’, like the stereotypical things you see in movies.”
In popular culture, there are many stereotypes in martial arts. According to Lazaga, as a kid watching all the different movies, he wanted to be a good fighter, but after learning taekwondo for so long, he said that movies portray a stereotype that martial arts is just fighting, but in reality, there are significant differences.
According to the American Taekwondo Association (ATA), taekwondo is a form that came as an amalgam of different Chinese and Korean styles. Taekwondo can be broke into three words; tae, meaning “to kick or jump”; kwon, meaning “fist or hand”; and do, which means “the way.” According to the ATA, taekwondo is a style famous for its wide range of kicks.
“I know for a fact that my master at my taekwondo school, the way he teaches things is different than the way other masters do, and that makes a big difference. I might have not learned the same mental skills if I did karate or had a different master,” Lazaga said. I have been to different international competitions, and there are some schools that focus strictly on form, and others on sparring, but I think my teaching is more focus-based and goes through all the mentalities that you need to learn.”
Karate on the other hand, literally translates from Japanese to kara meaning empty, and te, meaning hand. According to Oxford Dictionary, it’s, “an Asian system of unarmed combat using the hands and feet to deliver and block blows, widely practiced as a sport.”
“Karate is definitely different. A lot of the sports are team sports, so a lot of times you’re working in teams, while karate is very individual. It’s difficult to explain, because the culture is a little bit different than any other sport I’ve played in the past,” Martin said. Also, many times when you play a sport for a long time, you’ll have a coach for a few years. Especially when I was growing up, we had a different coach each year in Carmel Dads Club, but I’ve had the same karate coach since I was 5 years old.”
Though both styles of martial arts may be different in form, style and focus, both Lazaga and Martin concur that martial arts has helped them in places other than the dojo.
“It builds that subconscious goal-setting attitude because I remember that when I was about to get my black belt, they made you go to these long seminars and made you focus and memorize everything you’ve learned before, and then when I came back to school after summer break, I realized that I was more in focus with a larger picture of school and homework,” Lazaga said. “It wasn’t just, ‘Do the homework,’ anymore, it was, ‘I gotta remember everything that I learned before,’ That’s when I asked myself, ‘Why am I doing this. I never did this before’. That’s when I connected the dots.”
Furthermore, the two martial arts are also very similar in the fundamentals taught. Sensei Adamson, who runs Adamson’s Karate Studio said, “Here at Adamson’s, and I’m sure this is true with other martial arts schools, we do a lot of goal-setting, and goal-attaining I believe that this becomes habitual, and this becomes addictive. When you set a goal and achieve it, that’s true confidence, number one. Number two, it feels good, and you want that feeling again, so then you set another goal. And then you achieve it, and this is addictive.”
As a prospect for a school sport, though, both Martin and Lazaga said it would be cool, but would not be applicable in the school setting.
“It might be difficult for martial arts to be a school sport because there are so many different varieties of it. If you pick one, it will isolate the others, and you also have to find someone who is knowledgeable enough,” Martin said.
As the popularity of martial arts as a sport continues to grow, Lazaga and Martin both said it is a good way to learn life skills that you will use in the dojo and outside the dojo.
“They teach you to focus on a certain task,” Lazaga said. “All the different life skills they teach you are applied everywhere, and a lot of times also in school. They teach you how to work as a team, how to be sure and remember certain things. It just collects to have a massive effect. Overall, that drive I learned keeps me on track on whatever subject needs to be dealt with.”