Taekwondo (and other martial arts) schools (Seattle, Vancouver: 2015, to rent, house)

[jbowman]

Hi everyone,

When we move to the Seattle area in the summer of 2015, my daughter should hopefully have her black belt in Taekwondo. She was in fact thrilled when we delayed our move for a year cause it gives her a chance to get it by then.

One of the things we'd like to do is move near a good martial arts school so she can continue her study and we can get her sister started in it. As they get older (my brown belt is currently 6 years old) I'd like them to have the opportunity to try other styles as well. Either Hapkido or some other sort of grappling art. I'm a dad of 2 girls, I want them to be able to defend themselves when I'm not there

For the price range of house I believe we can afford, I think the Everett area is making most sense. Other things we are taking into consideration is good schools and we'd like to be on the North side of Seattle as my wife has family in Vancouver. My house price range is around $300k and I need a big enough house for 3 bedrooms and a home office. I'm keeping my job and will telecommute when I move, but want to stick near Seattle just in case I need to change jobs, rather have a realistic commute if I need to get a job in town. I'm an IT professional, I've looked and didn't see many opportunities further North towards Bellingham and such.

So back, to the TKD school. I found Taekwondo Way, which I believe is actually inside the Golds Gym in Mukilteo. Has great reviews online. Are there any other schools we should look at? Right now, due to Northern VA traffic, my wife can have up to a 45 minute commute getting my daughter to her TKD class in the evenings, we'd like to find a school and then move near by it so that isn't the case when we get out there. Finally, we'll be looking to rent for a year out there before buying, just to make sure we really are comfortable with the community we pick before planting roots.

Note: Please don't turn this into a discussion about belt factories or how someone so young could never get a black belt in other martial arts like Judo and such. My daughter started when she was 4, has earned all her belts and I expect her to be at bo-black for a while before being able to test for black. I understand in other martial arts there's no way she could get black at all at her age. Black belts mean different things for different arts. Really, just interested in hearing people's opinions on good martial arts schools in the area. Thanks.

[Polymorphist]

There are quite a few Taekwondo schools in the area, i'd check around a bit. I'm not really into martial arts so much as I am simple self-defense, so I mainly do krav maga and haven't really checked on anything else. One thing you might do, if you haven't already, is throw up a post on a martial arts forum asking for opinions on schools, I got quite a few when researching krav maga schools in the Seattle area.

[jbowman]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I'm hoping to get my girls interested in Krav Maga when they're older, maybe if I can rehab my knee by then I can join them. At their young age I prefer Tae Kwon Do because of it being a great well rounded program for kids.

[Haakon]

You can hardly throw a rock without hitting a TKD school it seems. Bailey's Traditional Taekwon Do College - Edmonds - Home has been around for a very long time and has high standards that haven't slipped over the years.

[jbowman]

Hi, thanks! Is there kids program pretty good? Seems like according to the class schedule it's 4:30-5:30 for all belts? At our current school they divide classes up by belt, ie: white-orange, green-blue, brown-boblack. We found that like on Saturdays they had to adjust their class because the size was too large and at one point my daughter spent 20 minutes just watching. They broke the Saturday schedule up differently for that reason.

The class sizes are large where my daughter goes, but I can't imagine Edmonds is any less populated than my area in Northern VA.