Hayden Breese has shown he is a patient man, after waiting six years to be promoted to a taekwondo master and seventh degree black belt.
It was hardly what you would call a smooth journey to the eight-hour grading, battling through cancelled flights and being forced to catch a three-hour Uber from Auckland to Rotorua.
He was understandably thrilled when he passed.
"It is the accomplishment of a life goal," Breese said.
"You realise that you don’t change as a person as a result of having a different label, but the journey that you take to sit that test is really the making of that next stage of your skills and development.
"Having that goal, and aiming for that goal, helped me push myself hard and gain more skills and develop as a person — that’s been, I guess, the most rewarding aspect of it."
He was especially proud to be the first master in the South Island — and the response from the taekwondo community had been heartwarming.
"It’s really positive to see the reaction from the other clubs and instructors [and] find it quite inspiring and see that someone from the South Island can progress through and get to that level.
"You can see it means a lot to them also, and it means that the area’s developing in terms of its capability and expertise."
Taekwondo athletes are required to wait "a number of years" — in Breese’s case, six — before being elevated to the next level.
"It’s kind of like a carrot being dangled in front of you, but it just gets further and further away.
"You’ve got to really show a lot of perseverance going for that goal."
It was the rewards he reaped as head instructor at Threshold Taekwon-Do School that kept him in the hunt, he said.
Taekwondo had a "sneaky way" of getting people physically fit, but also taught them life skills and how to find themselves as a person mentally.
"There’s a lot of reward from coaching people and seeing them advance and progress.
"People come into the school in all kinds of shapes and sizes, different degrees of either low confidence or overconfidence, and so it really helps to balance people out.
"It’s a real kind of a thinking person’s fitness, because there’s a lot of science built into the martial arts, so you really have to use your brain to understand the techniques, and how you do those properly to achieve the outcomes."
Breese, who began training taekwondo while a pupil at The Taieri High School in the early 1990s, has previously been named best overall black belt at the national championships and has been grading pupils as an examiner for over 10 years.
Through his promotion, Breese has been invited to become a senior examiner, grading pupils throughout the country aiming for their black belts.
