March 28, 2025 • 11 mins
This podcast episode prominently features an interview with this week's distinguished athlete of the week, Omar Dibb, who shares his journey in martial arts and the values he embodies as a second-degree black belt. We delve into the essence of perseverance, courtesy, and integrity, which Omar articulates as foundational to his training and competition. Throughout our dialogue, we explore the significance of applying the principles learned in martial arts beyond the dojo, emphasizing the development of essential life skills. As we continue our series spotlighting remarkable athletes from across the nation, we encourage our listeners to engage with and support their peers in the martial arts community. This episode serves not only to highlight Omar's accomplishments but also to inspire others to strive for excellence both within and outside of martial arts.
Takeaways:
- This podcast episode features an interview with Omar Dibb, a distinguished second degree black belt.
- Omar emphasizes the significance of perseverance and integrity within the martial arts community.
- The hosts encourage listeners to foster a supportive environment by congratulating fellow athletes.
- The discussion highlights the diverse aspects of martial arts training and competition.
- Omar expresses his excitement for upcoming tournaments and his aspirations for future achievements.
- The episode underscores the importance of applying martial arts principles beyond physical training, enhancing life skills.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Did you see the athlete of theweek this week?
We've got him for an interview.
Let's get started.
Sir.
I will live with perseverancein the spirit of Taekwondo, courtesy
for fellow students, integritywithin myself and to become a black
belt leader.
(00:20):
Welcome to the ATA Nation podcast.
Students, instructors,parents, family members, members
of AT Nation, thank you fortuning in to the ATA Nation podcast.
This is episode 142.
(00:41):
We are continuing our series,partnering with the junior brand
Ambassadors.
Hey, did you listen to lastepisode with all the amazing junior
brand ambassadors?
It was so much fun to havethem all on the interview.
If you haven't checked thatout, make sure you subscribe to the
podcast or of course check itout on YouTube.
You can see it there.
Now we're continuing this series.
(01:04):
We are really excited to behighlighting these awesome athletes
across the country.
Make sure that you are tuningin, checking these out and then if
you know these athletes oryou've seen these athletes at tournaments,
say hi, say congratulations,encourage them.
You know, one of the thingswe're talking about at our school
is belief.
Yes I can.
And part of helping each otherbuild a Yes I can attitude is encouraging
(01:25):
each other.
So we want to make sure thatwe are doing that.
This is our second episodethis week.
Because we have our juniorBaron ambassadors earlier.
And now we have an interviewwith this week's athletes of the
week.
Special guest interview.
(01:48):
At Nation.
We are back with anotherawesome athlete of the week.
This is Mr.
Omar Dibb.
How are you, sir?
I'm doing great, sir.
How about you?
I am fantastic.
So first, before we ask yousome questions about your training
and so on and so forth, wheredo you take martial arts?
Who's your instructor?
I do my martial arts andWinners for Life.
(02:11):
And my instructor is Mr.
Madriga and senior Master Cabrera.
Excellent.
Very cool.
Now with your training.
Actually, what belt are you?
I didn't ask that.
I am a second degree blackbelt, sir.
Very cool.
Awesome.
What got you started inmartial arts?
You know, was there somethingthat made you excited about it or
(02:31):
parents throw you into it?
What was it?
Yeah, it was kind of like amixture of all of those.
Like when I was like seven, Iwas like trying a lot of different
sports like basketball,swimming, soccer, all of that.
And then one day, like my momwas like picking me up from school
and then someone wasadvertising for or giving out flyers
for Winners for Life Taekwondo.
So then my mom took one andasked me, do you want to join it?
(02:52):
Do you want to try it out?
I was like, yes, sure.
And then once I did my firstclass, I instantly fell in love with
it.
It was, like, really good.
I enjoyed it.
Awesome.
Very cool.
Now, as an athlete of theweek, that means, you know, you're
out there training, doing lotsof things, competing.
What kind of competition isyour thing that you like?
I love this in competition.
(03:13):
Yeah.
Like.
Like what event?
I like.
Yeah, yeah.
What's your top event?
Like, my top event is probablyone of the creative or extreme events.
Like, more specifically,extreme weapons.
Extreme weapons.
What's your.
What's your weapon of choice?
What do you enjoy competing with?
My favorite weapon is double nunchucks.
Double chucks.
Okay, very cool.
And you said extreme.
The extreme version.
(03:34):
You like to get to throw themup and catch them and stuff.
Throw them and then flips and everything.
Nice.
Excellent.
Now, before getting started inmartial arts, were you like a gymnastics
person?
Did you do flips and stuff?
Or is that something thatyou've got into joining?
I got into it, like, at firstI didn't even realize I'd be doing,
like, you know, such crazy things.
And then now it's like, it'sreally cool to do.
(03:54):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I know for me, I wasjust at a school program talking
to kids, and the firstquestion they always ask me is, oh,
you're a black belt.
Can you do a backflip?
And I'm like, yeah, no, butyou could probably tell them, like,
yeah, I can do all kinds offlips and stuff.
So you're cooler than me that way.
Well, so, hey, if you, like.
We promote all events.
We think all athletes, youknow, we like to train in all the
(04:17):
different.
Aspects of martial arts.
But usually athletes have athing that they love, you know, they
gravitate towards.
And then one or two thingsthat they might be like, hey, if
I didn't have to compete inthis one.
Or if I didn't, if I had.
To pick one I couldn't do,which would be the first event that
you would kind of maybe dropoff, probably.
It would be sparring.
Interesting.
Okay, very cool.
(04:38):
It's just been.
For me, I think it's reallyneat to see all these different athletes.
And I like to ask what theylove to do.
And then one thing they might not.
Because so often we see theseathletes, they're doing all eight
events.
You know, we're training hard,but it's good to see that everybody's
human and they have somethings that they like a little bit
(04:58):
more and some things that theydon't, you know, and you're like,
okay, you know, I can be likethat guy, you know, stuff like that.
So I love it.
Very cool.
Are you heading out to in acouple of weeks?
We've got spring nationals.
You heading to Fort Worth, Texas?
Yes, I am.
Excellent.
Excited.
Do you.
What kind of goals do you havefor your.
(05:20):
Maybe for your training right now?
Some short term goals, maybesome long term goals.
What are you looking at trying to.
Achieve for your training?
Like, for short term, I like,focus on, like, you know, tournaments
upcoming, like spring nationals.
Just like focus on like allthe things I compete in.
Try to like, clean it up,improve, you know, it's all like
a learning experience.
So that's what I'd say.
(05:40):
But for long term, probablyget more, you know, titles if I can
keep working for the worldtitles and maybe even like Pan Am
or European champ.
Yeah.
Have you been to any of those events?
The Pan Am or the.
The European Championships?
No, I haven't.
Those are on the list.
Things you want to go to sometimes.
Yeah, me too.
I'm.
Same way.
I've got him on my list.
Like, I.
(06:00):
I want to go to that.
That'd be fun.
Yes.
Okay, cool.
Now, as one of our athletes ofthe week, what is.
What does it mean to you to gobeyond the belt?
What it means to me to gobeyond the belt is that, like, you
apply the things that ATAteaches outside of the physical aspect.
Like, it's about like life skills.
(06:22):
So, like, you can apply themanywhere you go, like at home, at
Taekwondo, at your school,like, wherever you go, you apply
the skills, which just makesyou a better person and you'll keep
them for the rest of your life.
So that's what is reallyspecial about it in ata.
I love that.
Super cool.
You said you, when youstarted, you were doing lots of different
sports.
Do you find doing martialarts, Is there something just different
(06:43):
about martial arts than other activities?
Yes, I think it's differentbecause, like, not only the life
skills, it just like kind oflike how they do like competition
stuff.
It's like more like, you know, diverse.
There's a lot of things to doand then different goals you can
achieve.
And so that's probably whatmakes it.
That's true.
Yeah, for sure.
I love.
I agree with you.
(07:03):
There's so many aspects.
I mean, sparring is totallydifferent than weapons, which is,
you know, then traditionalweapons is totally different than
creative and extreme weapons.
There's just so much varietythat you get to do.
So.
Yeah.
Very cool.
Well, Omar, I reallyappreciate your time today.
We in ATA nation are justloving seeing these Inspiring stories
(07:23):
of young athletes, adultathletes all across the country,
all across the globe that areworking hard and not just applying
the skills like you said tomartial arts, but going beyond the
belt and applying thoseoutside of martial arts.
So we really appreciate yourtime today.
Thank you so much for being an inspiration.
Yes.
Yes, sir.
Thank you so much for having me.
(07:43):
I appreciate it.
We love it.
Thank you, sir.
Yes.
You're welcome, sir.
Thank you.
We want to thank Omar for agreat interview.
Super cool to talk to these athletes.
We've been saying that we'vegot these coming out every week for
quite a few weeks now.
Some of the episodes will be paired.
(08:05):
With another interview withsomebody else, some different people
across ATA Nation.
If you have somebody you thinkwe need to interview, let us know
now with that.
Lots of upcoming events in ATA Nation.
Make sure you're checking outatamartialarts.com districts is going
to be here before you know it.
So make sure you are checkingout those district championship locations.
(08:29):
Make sure you're getting yourhotel rooms.
None of the registrations orany of that will be available until
much later in May.
Remember, the process forthis, if you are new to this, is
that all of the regionaltournaments have to get done and
there's some all the way up tothe first weekend in May and then
(08:52):
all of those get tabulated andthen there's a short amount of time
that online you have to doublecheck to make sure your points are
correct and put any revisions in.
Not the regular 30 days.
They'll that'll all go online.
We'll mention it here.
You'll get emails about it.
I'm sure if you're getting theATAs emails and then they will open
(09:13):
up districts registrations andit will be a short amount of time.
So make sure you're ready.
If you haven't already and youare planning on probably being able
to compete at districts, youneed to go over to ATA Easy Signup
to create an account.
If you don't have an accounton ATA Easy signup, go ahead and
do that because that'll saveyou time.
(09:35):
Talk to your school ownerabout that.
Maybe they've set up anaccount for you.
Some have, some haven't.
A lot of you already haveyours because you've done it for
Worlds and Nationals.
But for a lot, for somepeople, District championships is
the first time they are usingthat system.
Now across the country,everyone's going to be using that
system soon.
So we'll probably bring youmore updates on that as we get a
(09:58):
little closer to implementingthe at easy signup for every regional
event.
It's going to be a big thingand just moving towards some cool
new systems, some cool newthings to help our tournaments continue
to be the best in the nation,in the world.
For tournaments, for, formartial arts tournaments.
We're, we're, we've got it down.
(10:20):
So lots of cool things going on.
I'm excited to see a bunch ofyou guys in Fort Worth.
Until next time, make sure youare out there going beyond the bell.
(10:47):
Hey, so here's the deal.
Those you guys listen tosecret part, because we've been adding
these onto YouTube, we've beensplitting our viewer base, which
is not bad.
We're reaching more people.
But I would love to see makesure you're hitting the subscribe
button on YouTube and makesure you're hitting the subscribe
button on your favoritepodcast player.
(11:09):
We want to make sure peopleare getting this and share it with
a friend.
Right.
Share on social media now thatwe've got the YouTube links in there.
So just let everybody knowabout these awesome athletes and
then all the things that wehave in the archives of the 18 Nation
podcast and all the different things.
So make sure you get outthere, share it with us.
(11:30):
We'd really appreciate.
Did you see the athlete of theweek this week?
We've got him for an interview.
Let's get started.
Sir.
I will live with perseverancein the spirit of Taekwondo, courtesy
for fellow students, integritywithin myself and to become a black
belt leader.
(00:20):
Welcome to the ATA Nation podcast.
Students, instructors,parents, family members, members
of AT Nation, thank you fortuning in to the ATA Nation podcast.
This is episode 142.
(00:41):
We are continuing our series,partnering with the junior brand
Ambassadors.
Hey, did you listen to lastepisode with all the amazing junior
brand ambassadors?
It was so much fun to havethem all on the interview.
If you haven't checked thatout, make sure you subscribe to the
podcast or of course check itout on YouTube.
You can see it there.
Now we're continuing this series.
(01:04):
We are really excited to behighlighting these awesome athletes
across the country.
Make sure that you are tuningin, checking these out and then if
you know these athletes oryou've seen these athletes at tournaments,
say hi, say congratulations,encourage them.
You know, one of the thingswe're talking about at our school
is belief.
Yes I can.
And part of helping each otherbuild a Yes I can attitude is encouraging
(01:25):
each other.
So we want to make sure thatwe are doing that.
This is our second episodethis week.
Because we have our juniorBaron ambassadors earlier.
And now we have an interviewwith this week's athletes of the
week.
Special guest interview.
(01:48):
At Nation.
We are back with anotherawesome athlete of the week.
This is Mr.
Omar Dibb.
How are you, sir?
I'm doing great, sir.
How about you?
I am fantastic.
So first, before we ask yousome questions about your training
and so on and so forth, wheredo you take martial arts?
Who's your instructor?
I do my martial arts andWinners for Life.
(02:11):
And my instructor is Mr.
Madriga and senior Master Cabrera.
Excellent.
Very cool.
Now with your training.
Actually, what belt are you?
I didn't ask that.
I am a second degree blackbelt, sir.
Very cool.
Awesome.
What got you started inmartial arts?
You know, was there somethingthat made you excited about it or
(02:31):
parents throw you into it?
What was it?
Yeah, it was kind of like amixture of all of those.
Like when I was like seven, Iwas like trying a lot of different
sports like basketball,swimming, soccer, all of that.
And then one day, like my momwas like picking me up from school
and then someone wasadvertising for or giving out flyers
for Winners for Life Taekwondo.
So then my mom took one andasked me, do you want to join it?
(02:52):
Do you want to try it out?
I was like, yes, sure.
And then once I did my firstclass, I instantly fell in love with
it.
It was, like, really good.
I enjoyed it.
Awesome.
Very cool.
Now, as an athlete of theweek, that means, you know, you're
out there training, doing lotsof things, competing.
What kind of competition isyour thing that you like?
I love this in competition.
(03:13):
Yeah.
Like.
Like what event?
I like.
Yeah, yeah.
What's your top event?
Like, my top event is probablyone of the creative or extreme events.
Like, more specifically,extreme weapons.
Extreme weapons.
What's your.
What's your weapon of choice?
What do you enjoy competing with?
My favorite weapon is double nunchucks.
Double chucks.
Okay, very cool.
And you said extreme.
The extreme version.
(03:34):
You like to get to throw themup and catch them and stuff.
Throw them and then flips and everything.
Nice.
Excellent.
Now, before getting started inmartial arts, were you like a gymnastics
person?
Did you do flips and stuff?
Or is that something thatyou've got into joining?
I got into it, like, at firstI didn't even realize I'd be doing,
like, you know, such crazy things.
And then now it's like, it'sreally cool to do.
(03:54):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I know for me, I wasjust at a school program talking
to kids, and the firstquestion they always ask me is, oh,
you're a black belt.
Can you do a backflip?
And I'm like, yeah, no, butyou could probably tell them, like,
yeah, I can do all kinds offlips and stuff.
So you're cooler than me that way.
Well, so, hey, if you, like.
We promote all events.
We think all athletes, youknow, we like to train in all the
(04:17):
different.
Aspects of martial arts.
But usually athletes have athing that they love, you know, they
gravitate towards.
And then one or two thingsthat they might be like, hey, if
I didn't have to compete inthis one.
Or if I didn't, if I had.
To pick one I couldn't do,which would be the first event that
you would kind of maybe dropoff, probably.
It would be sparring.
Interesting.
Okay, very cool.
(04:38):
It's just been.
For me, I think it's reallyneat to see all these different athletes.
And I like to ask what theylove to do.
And then one thing they might not.
Because so often we see theseathletes, they're doing all eight
events.
You know, we're training hard,but it's good to see that everybody's
human and they have somethings that they like a little bit
(04:58):
more and some things that theydon't, you know, and you're like,
okay, you know, I can be likethat guy, you know, stuff like that.
So I love it.
Very cool.
Are you heading out to in acouple of weeks?
We've got spring nationals.
You heading to Fort Worth, Texas?
Yes, I am.
Excellent.
Excited.
Do you.
What kind of goals do you havefor your.
(05:20):
Maybe for your training right now?
Some short term goals, maybesome long term goals.
What are you looking at trying to.
Achieve for your training?
Like, for short term, I like,focus on, like, you know, tournaments
upcoming, like spring nationals.
Just like focus on like allthe things I compete in.
Try to like, clean it up,improve, you know, it's all like
a learning experience.
So that's what I'd say.
(05:40):
But for long term, probablyget more, you know, titles if I can
keep working for the worldtitles and maybe even like Pan Am
or European champ.
Yeah.
Have you been to any of those events?
The Pan Am or the.
The European Championships?
No, I haven't.
Those are on the list.
Things you want to go to sometimes.
Yeah, me too.
I'm.
Same way.
I've got him on my list.
Like, I.
(06:00):
I want to go to that.
That'd be fun.
Yes.
Okay, cool.
Now, as one of our athletes ofthe week, what is.
What does it mean to you to gobeyond the belt?
What it means to me to gobeyond the belt is that, like, you
apply the things that ATAteaches outside of the physical aspect.
Like, it's about like life skills.
(06:22):
So, like, you can apply themanywhere you go, like at home, at
Taekwondo, at your school,like, wherever you go, you apply
the skills, which just makesyou a better person and you'll keep
them for the rest of your life.
So that's what is reallyspecial about it in ata.
I love that.
Super cool.
You said you, when youstarted, you were doing lots of different
sports.
Do you find doing martialarts, Is there something just different
(06:43):
about martial arts than other activities?
Yes, I think it's differentbecause, like, not only the life
skills, it just like kind oflike how they do like competition
stuff.
It's like more like, you know, diverse.
There's a lot of things to doand then different goals you can
achieve.
And so that's probably whatmakes it.
That's true.
Yeah, for sure.
I love.
I agree with you.
(07:03):
There's so many aspects.
I mean, sparring is totallydifferent than weapons, which is,
you know, then traditionalweapons is totally different than
creative and extreme weapons.
There's just so much varietythat you get to do.
So.
Yeah.
Very cool.
Well, Omar, I reallyappreciate your time today.
We in ATA nation are justloving seeing these Inspiring stories
(07:23):
of young athletes, adultathletes all across the country,
all across the globe that areworking hard and not just applying
the skills like you said tomartial arts, but going beyond the
belt and applying thoseoutside of martial arts.
So we really appreciate yourtime today.
Thank you so much for being an inspiration.
Yes.
Yes, sir.
Thank you so much for having me.
(07:43):
I appreciate it.
We love it.
Thank you, sir.
Yes.
You're welcome, sir.
Thank you.
We want to thank Omar for agreat interview.
Super cool to talk to these athletes.
We've been saying that we'vegot these coming out every week for
quite a few weeks now.
Some of the episodes will be paired.
(08:05):
With another interview withsomebody else, some different people
across ATA Nation.
If you have somebody you thinkwe need to interview, let us know
now with that.
Lots of upcoming events in ATA Nation.
Make sure you're checking outatamartialarts.com districts is going
to be here before you know it.
So make sure you are checkingout those district championship locations.
(08:29):
Make sure you're getting yourhotel rooms.
None of the registrations orany of that will be available until
much later in May.
Remember, the process forthis, if you are new to this, is
that all of the regionaltournaments have to get done and
there's some all the way up tothe first weekend in May and then
(08:52):
all of those get tabulated andthen there's a short amount of time
that online you have to doublecheck to make sure your points are
correct and put any revisions in.
Not the regular 30 days.
They'll that'll all go online.
We'll mention it here.
You'll get emails about it.
I'm sure if you're getting theATAs emails and then they will open
(09:13):
up districts registrations andit will be a short amount of time.
So make sure you're ready.
If you haven't already and youare planning on probably being able
to compete at districts, youneed to go over to ATA Easy Signup
to create an account.
If you don't have an accounton ATA Easy signup, go ahead and
do that because that'll saveyou time.
(09:35):
Talk to your school ownerabout that.
Maybe they've set up anaccount for you.
Some have, some haven't.
A lot of you already haveyours because you've done it for
Worlds and Nationals.
But for a lot, for somepeople, District championships is
the first time they are usingthat system.
Now across the country,everyone's going to be using that
system soon.
So we'll probably bring youmore updates on that as we get a
(09:58):
little closer to implementingthe at easy signup for every regional
event.
It's going to be a big thingand just moving towards some cool
new systems, some cool newthings to help our tournaments continue
to be the best in the nation,in the world.
For tournaments, for, formartial arts tournaments.
We're, we're, we've got it down.
(10:20):
So lots of cool things going on.
I'm excited to see a bunch ofyou guys in Fort Worth.
Until next time, make sure youare out there going beyond the bell.
(10:47):
Hey, so here's the deal.
Those you guys listen tosecret part, because we've been adding
these onto YouTube, we've beensplitting our viewer base, which
is not bad.
We're reaching more people.
But I would love to see makesure you're hitting the subscribe
button on YouTube and makesure you're hitting the subscribe
button on your favoritepodcast player.
(11:09):
We want to make sure peopleare getting this and share it with
a friend.
Right.
Share on social media now thatwe've got the YouTube links in there.
So just let everybody knowabout these awesome athletes and
then all the things that wehave in the archives of the 18 Nation
podcast and all the different things.
So make sure you get outthere, share it with us.
(11:30):
We'd really appreciate.
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