How Tiffiny Hall realized martial arts can change a woman’s perspective How Tiffiny Hall realized martial arts can change a woman’s perspective
Tiffiny Hall
21 Jan 2019
Tiffiny Hall has been at the crest of a wave of women whose lives have been made over by martial arts training.
A 6th Dan black belt in Taekwondo, the mother of one got a head start by being born into a martial arts family.
“My dad was an Olympic coach for Australia for Taekwondo, and my mum was one of the first females to earn her black belt in Australia,” she says. “They run martial arts schools in Melbourne, and I grew up doing martial arts, kicking as soon as I could walk. It's been my greatest passion in life doing Taekwondo.”
Tiff was 16 when her dad coached Lauren Burns to Olympic gold in the sport in 2000, and it was a life-changing moment for the young martial artist. “I remember watching and thinking, ‘I want to inspire women to be strong and feel empowered', just like she had inspired me.”
Even though martial arts training can certainly get you ripped, Tiff explains that the sense of empowerment goes beyond mere fitness.
“Taekwondo helped me to process emotions, to deal with stress, to deal with failure, to deal with negativity, and channel that in a positive way,” she says. “So it was never about fighting, it was about finding an inner balance and an inner acceptance and peace, and it's something that I carried with me ever since.”
If you haven’t tried fighting training since a so-called “Sensei” gave your class an all-girls' self-defense lesson in high school, don’t panic.
“I'm so excited to give others the gift of confidence. I think that through your training you can become more confident because you learn ways of being stronger,” Tiffiny says. “Ways of being stronger that you never knew you had inside of you. Whether that's just one more rep or one more round, you learn to push through. And that builds resilience which leaks into every other part of your life.”
