Encouraging Our Students in Portland to Lead the Way: The Black Belt Way
The foundation of our martial arts academy is Taekwondo (Tae kwon do), a martial art that comes from Korea. We believe that Taekwondo principles help people improve individually and encourage them to grow into the strong leaders that our society needs. Our winning Taekwondo culture is impacting the youth by pointing them in the right direction. Our purpose as a Leadership Taekwondo academy in Portland is to help everyone discover their self worth. We understand that each individual is unique, and some are born with advantages that others don't have, but the act of working through your disadvantages can become your greatest strength in life. We empower the youth and equalize the playing field.
We back that up with real standards, not just words. We only award official Kukkiwon Black Belt certification, no shortcuts, no made up ranks. We've produced hundreds of Black Belts and brought home 14 national titles in Olympic sparring over the last four years. More than 60% of our students are girls and women, and our competition team and Black Belt class are both majority female. W1 is not a franchise. We're 100% locally owned, Cedar Mill based, and community supported, including through the W1 Foundation, which we founded to help our competition athletes cover training and equipment costs and rewards them for their results.