About this podcast
Honest Conversations with Masters of their craft about life and Olympic Sport Issues
Episodes
The newest 20 of 46 episodes
- Change The Hogu And Pass The Kangol · 1 h 12 min · Season 11 Episode 3A fight-off is supposed to settle things. Instead, it can expose everything that’s shaky underneath a sport’s selection system. Coming back from Daytona, we talk through a…
- How A Surprise Fight-Off Upended The USA Taekwondo Grand Prix Final · 33 min · Season 10 Episode 2They trained, they paid, they earned the points and then the rules seemed to change right in front of them. We get into a USA Taekwondo selection controversy tied to the World…
- Stop Mic’ing Up The Drill Please · 1 h 16 minOlympic taekwondo is changing fast, and sometimes the clearest signal is what coaches complain about when they think nobody’s listening. We start with the human stuff, travel…
- We Argue About Monkey Kicks And Metrics · 1 h 19 minA Grand Prix can reveal the future of taekwondo in real time, and Paris did exactly that. We’re coming off the floor with a full breakdown of what felt tighter, what felt broken…
- Weasel Words, Plane Tickets, And The Grand Prix Pick · 1 h 13 minSelection should feel like a finish line, not a moving target. After a powerful weekend story from Guatemala that puts gratitude, access, and opportunity into perspective, we…
- Backflips, Blue Belts, And Boardroom Politics · 1 h 50 min · Season 10 Episode 1A youth sports organization can survive bad calls on the mat, but it can’t survive rules that only apply when they’re convenient. We sit down with Abdul, a longtime AAU Taekwondo…
- Die In Advance, Train On Purpose · 1 h 20 minThe best fights are simple. The best training usually is too. We start with a hard-edged mindset from the warrior tradition “die in advance” and use it as a reality check for how…
- What Happens To A Sport When You Keep Moving The Goalposts · 1 h 20 min · Season 9 Episode 5We catch up after a busy stretch of travel and use Lima and the Korea Grand Prix to question what modern taekwondo is rewarding right now. We argue about rankings, wild cards…
- Stop Buying “Experience” And Start Training · 1 h 26 minModern taekwondo has a problem nobody wants to say out loud: if the fastest path to “winning” is just making the chest protector beep, what are we training athletes to become? We…
- Roller Skates, Fake Clubs, Real Consequences · 1 h 11 minYou can feel it when a sport starts rewarding politics more than performance, and that’s the nerve we hit here. We talk through the latest AAU Taekwondo turbulence, including a…
- From Galactic Champions To TikTok Team Picks · 1 h 30 minThe fastest way to kill a champion is to teach them that excuses are normal and that optics count more than results. We go straight at that problem from every angle: how…
- Standards Over Hype · 1 h 8 minPaper titles are cheap, but a real reputation costs years. We start with satire aimed at belt factories, fake “governing bodies,” and laminated legitimacy, then get uncomfortably…
- What A Mexico Seminar Reveals About Taekwondo Culture · 1 h 38 min · Season 10 Episode 1A storm knocks out the power, phone flashlights become the lighting plan, and 250 Taekwondo students still want to spar. That’s where we start, because a seminar trip to Merida…
- Stop The Twerking And Start Running The Event · 1 h 11 min · Season 9 Episode 2A tournament can look polished and still be broken where it counts. We get raw about what we saw and heard around recent national-level events and why “finishing early” and…
- What If Athlete Development Started At Home · 1 h 7 min · Season 9 Episode 1A Memorandum of Understanding might be the most “powerful” document in sports, mostly because it lets everyone pose for photos while nothing changes. We start with that idea and…
- Why Registration Deadlines Keep Moving In AAU And USA Taekwondo · 1 h 16 minDeadlines that keep “extending” aren’t just a scheduling quirk, they’re a tell. We dig into what’s happening around AAU Taekwondo and USA Taekwondo national championships, from…
- World Cup Lessons For Building Champions In Soccer And Taekwondo · 1 h 9 minThe World Cup has us locked in, not just because of the goals, but because it exposes what “excellence” really costs. When we watch the best players in the world and the cultures…
- Three Olympic Medalists Versus A $348 Registration Fee · 1 h 23 min · Season 8 Episode 11You can feel it when a sport stops rewarding honesty and starts rewarding compliance, and we are not pretending that’s normal. We open with the North Carolina vote fallout and…
- Put The Notion In The Basket Ref · 1 h 0 min
- Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys, but I know the Clowns · 1 h 22 min · Season 8 Episode 8Eighteen new Taekwondo clubs created in the final 48 hours before a voting deadline is the kind of detail that makes you stop and ask one question: are we building the sport, or…
