Bruce Lee famously said “I fear not the man who has practised 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practised one kick 10,000 times.”
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It’s hard to think how many kicks Goulburn local Amy Kolosque had to train before she won two gold medals at the Australian National WAKO Kickboxing Championships in Lidcombe, Sydney, last weekend.
What makes her feat more impressive is the fact that Kolosque has only been training for nine months, is a mother of two, and was taking part in her first competition.
The 36-year-old does not fit the profile of a national martial arts champion. She explained that it was actually her sister who convinced her to give kickboxing a go.
“I have an older sister [Tara James] that fights Muay Thai, and she’s currently ranked number two [in the Junior Welterweight division] in Australia I believe,” Kolosque said.
“She actually found the Mulwaree Muay Thai was going to be opening up in Goulburn and she recommended that I go and give it a try.”
Although she was nervous going into the gym for the first time, Kolosque said that she soon loved training and the atmosphere created by her instructors and fellow students.
“I was a little bit hesitant at first,” she said.
“But once I got in it and got that first lesson over and done with, I loved the gym, the trainers were amazing, everyone was really respectful and I’ve been going back ever since.”
The nine months at the gym has been time well spent for Kolosque, and trainer Tegan Taylor said that she was a rare student for a few reasons.
“She’s only been doing it for about nine months now, she’s got a lot of heart. She likes it, so she’s a really open learner, [and] she’s got a lot of potential,” Taylor said.
Taylor said she was “surprised” and “really proud” when Kolosque came away with two medals from the tournament, especially because she put on an unusually composed performance for a first-timer.
“You never know how somebody’s going to go when you put them into a competition like that,” Taylor said.
“For her to just pull everything out of the bag and just do everything that we worked on and everything that we trained towards, was really surprising actually.
“I don’t see a lot of people able to do that on their first fight, or even really experienced fighters, they can be unpredictable as well.”
The tournament result even surprised Kolosque, who said she went in with no expectations and hoped to develop experience.
“I wasn’t expecting to come home with any medals at all. I was just hoping to go and give it a chance and see how I went. That was what I was expecting when I went into it.”
Kolosque won a 4-person eliminator bout to win the Australian National WAKO Championship for Kick-Light in her division.
She then went on to win gold in the Light Contact kickboxing division finals.
You can watch Amy win her light contact competition below.