Who is Mr. de Jesus

Mr. de Jesus is a skilled technician in the martial art of Taekwondo. He trains and teaches at Sidekicks Martial Arts Academy with Grandmaster Orange his instructor.

He was recently proclaimed a third degree black belt. Here he is doing a flying sidekick at the recent testing at San Diego Sidekicks in December.

Some Saturday mornings you will see Mr. DeJesus teaching advanced technique workshops to the higher rank Sidekicks students.

What else do we know about Mr. DeJesus? Well, I recently had a chance to ask him some questions about his Taekwondo journey. Here is what he said.

In the spring of 1994 Mr. DeJesus started martial arts training at Sidekicks in Alta View. It was him and his three nephews who were 10, 9 and 7.

Four years later, in August 1998 Mr. DeJesus got his black belt. Mr. Johnson was his instructor back then. He just wanted to be his best and he didn’t have a lot of friends. So he came to Sidekicks and treated his classmates as his friends. Other kids had dates and friends and stuff, but his date was Sidekicks. “That’s kind of sad,” he tells me, reflecting back on it, “but I was interested in getting good.”

Mr. DeJesus shared with me that he was bullied a lot in second and third grade, as he was kind of chubby and short

He and his brother knew a friend who was already in martial arts. They had another friend who was part of a Philippine taekwondo team and participated in the southeast Asian Olympics, so they would watch him compete.

It was Mr. DeJesus’s sister, who introduced him to Sidekicks. His brother was an artist and had a big notebook where he drew the foot steps on how to do the taekwondo form moves. He was dedicated from the time he started taekwondo. And you will see his dedication has definitely paid off, each time he does his Sidekicks taekwondo forms.