By Riya Ravuri

At the age of five, senior Pallavi Srinivas developed a fascination for karate after watching her older brother’s involvement with it and sticking around when he would go to class. After observing her daughter’s interest in the sport but wanting her to try something different from her brother, Pallavi’s mother, Renuka Srinivas, decided to sign her up for a martial art that holds many parallels to karate: taekwondo.

In taekwondo, the multicolored belts represent athletes' progression through the sport, with white being the baseline belt for beginners and black being the most advanced belt, having a total of 10 degrees. Starting with the white belt, Pallavi was able to rise through the ranks over the years, finally receiving her first degree black belt in 2016. She didn’t stop there, however — she received her second degree black belt in 2018 and is currently working towards getting her third degree black belt, which she can only receive after training with her second degree black belt for a minimum of three years.

Through taekwondo, Pallavi notes that she often experienced the physical obstacle of not being as strong as those around her, especially when she started training to obtain her black belt.

“Building strength was a hard thing for me to do,” Pallavi said. “Becoming a black belt was a shock because everybody was so much stronger and it was just kind of freaky.”

As Pallavi strove to overcome the barrier of physical strength, her mother recognized that everything Pallavi was going through was part of the long, necessary process required to reach her desired goal in taekwondo.

“[The struggles are] all [a] part of doing [taekwondo],” Renuka said. “You just can't keep passing levels without actually giving it the due effort that's required.”

According to Pallavi’s brother Pranav, who had inspired her to start taekwondo in the first place, Pallavi developed fundamental life skills as she overcame obstacles on her taekwondo path.

“As [she] tried to raise [her] belt levels, I definitely noticed a developing level of focus and discipline, but also confidence in terms of abilities,” Pranav said. “Martial arts is like a journey — it sets you up for understanding what you want, going through certain points of adversity to get there, accomplishing goals on the way and learning the value of hard work and discipline.”

Pallavi says these skills helped her handle her large junior year workload. Although balancing her schoolwork and practicing taekwondo was difficult at times, Pallavi describes that her taekwondo participation actually helped her persevere during stressful situations.

“Having taekwondo there keeps me headstrong,” Pallavi said. “It gives me something to work on because I know that I'm the type of person who can get distracted easily if I don't have a goal in mind, so it definitely gives me something to focus on during the week.”

In addition to the mental strength that Pallavi was able to gain over the years, Renuka explains that Pallavi’s mastery of the physical skills practiced in taekwondo are necessary in life.

“All these martial arts teach you how to use techniques for self defense, which I think is very important for every person to know,” Renuka said. “You never know in what situation you would need to use it. [With taekwondo], you have the power and you know the techniques to do it.”

Echoing this, Pranav sees the importance of learning self defense through having these unique martial arts skills. He also emphasizes that taekwondo develops not only physical strength but also the knowledge on how to use that strength.

“I'm thankful that she took up taekwondo because I think [in addition to protecting] herself, [she could also] protect other people if that ever came in handy,” Pranav said. “But at the same time, [it teaches] you to have discipline about not to use [force] unless it's absolutely necessary. It's probably taught her a lot of self control in terms of emotional maturity.”

Pallavi credits her taekwondo teammates and friends as people who have helped her grow into the person she is today, both physically and emotionally. She describes the satisfaction she feels as she competes with her teammates.

“I made a lot of really nice friendships [when sparring in the class],” Pallavi said. “They're the ones who really motivated me to just keep on going and keep going to class. When everyone is competing with each other, it’s more fun — it motivates you to work harder. It makes you feel really powerful when you're just fighting people — there's nothing really holding you back.”

Photos courtesy of Renuka Srinivas || Used with permission