Highschool and Martial Arts Beginnings

My first year in "Francesc Ferrer i Guardia" highschool was by far the worst year I have ever spent in a class. Not only I was separated from my old school friends, I was surrounded by a large number of professional experienced bullies whose only goal was to make newcomers time as hard as possible. It was then when I decided to change football for Martial Arts.
    

    
I have to be honest in this matter. I didn´t decide taking Taekwondo classes because I was being bullied at school. The decision to start doing Martial Arts was taken the summer before entering high school. Learning to defend myself from those bullies that bothered me was becoming a great stimulus to keep on training and improving my techinques, but I would be lying if I´d say that it was the main reason for which I started doing Martial Arts.

There were many experiences and knowledge I gained during my first Taekwondo year. My interest in the Martial Arts was growing and growing. Every month I bought every Martial Arts magazine I could find, and progressively became more and more interested in someone whom I didn´t know anything about, but who was gradually to become my main role model and inspiration… Bruce Lee.
     

    
Learning how to do flying kicks and being able to kick head height was just great! However, at the age of 15 (about 1 year after I started taking my Taekwondo classes), my ego received a pretty hard blow when I found out that I was not the wild and dangerous street fighter I thought I was... That experience change my life and point of view toward Martial Arts. It made me grow much more than I could have ever imagined. It was then when I decided taking Martial Arts more seriously. I became a very disciplined and driven person. The first thing I did was signing up for my new "Jeet Kune Do" (Martial Art / Philosophy / Combat Style designed by Bruce Lee) classes.
   

    
Workouts in the new gym were very hard. I was the youngest student (the rest were adults, policemen and bouncers). The atmosphere there was totally different from anything else I had ever experienced. I didn´t it know by then, but I had taken a very important step, a step that would make me grow both as a martial artist and as a person… a step that would shape a very important part of my life. Keep on reading...