Freshman year of high school, Syd Gray learned something about standing her ground. A boy in her class began asking what she describes as “distasteful questions,” the kind meant to mock her for being Jewish in a community where Jewish families were few and far between.
Gray didn’t argue. She didn’t joke it away either.
“I looked him in the eye and told him he didn’t need to speak to me anymore if that was how he was going to talk to me,” she said.
Growing up Jewish in an area in St. Louis where few others were, Gray said, forced her to learn early how to stand her ground.
Years later, she would find a philosophy that echoed that same lesson — Tae Kwon Do.
Tradition and identity
Gray grew up in a Jewish family that belongs to United Hebrew Congregation, where she celebrated her bat mitzvah.
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“Being of Jewish heritage in a very Catholic, smaller community was different and not easy at times,” she said.
Still, she said she was fortunate to have friends who embraced those differences. Sports helped, too.
Most of her time as a young athlete went to softball.
Finding Tae Kwon Do
“I had always wanted to do a martial arts, but I didn’t have time with how involved in softball I was,” Gray said.
That changed after college.
“Once I aged out my senior year of college for softball, I decided to look into starting a martial arts.”
It didn’t take long for the discipline to take hold.
“I knew pretty quickly from starting that it would be something more,” Gray said. “I really got into it at the yellow belt level.”
Part of that connection came from the philosophy behind the training.
“Every class has more than just a workout and practicing our forms — just general life lessons about hardship, working hard, respect, friendship and creativity,” she said. “There are so many internal lessons that occur as well. Our code we go by is effort and perseverance.”
Martial arts, like many traditions, is built on passing knowledge from teacher to student — one generation at a time.
“In both Tae Kwon Do and the Jewish people we see very strong bonds to our past people to draw strength and knowledge from them to help the future,” Gray said.
Strength beyond muscle
Today Gray leads sparring classes at Lyndell Institute Tae Kwon Do in Weldon Spring, where she helps students build both physical and mental strength.
“My philosophy as a teacher is to help students understand that they can be more than what they think they can be,” she said. “That the only person that needs to believe in them to achieve greatness is themselves.”
Her classes push students mentally as well as physically.
“My sparring classes that I lead usually center around pushing limits mentally and physically to have the students prove to themselves that they can do hard things,” she said.
She encourages students not to fear mistakes.
“I also love discussing strength as the ability to put yourself out there and not shy away from making mistakes because we learn so much from mistakes, as such in life as well.”
The same philosophy carries into her work as a physical therapist at Peak Sports & Spine in Chesterfield.
“With my PT patients, obviously we have muscular strength,” Gray said. “But similarly, having the strength to look to bettering yourself. Physical therapy can be hard, uncomfortable and inconvenient.”
For both students and patients, she said, the lesson is similar.
“With both my therapy patients and the students at Tae Kwon Do, strength comes from being comfortable being uncomfortable.”
Gray said the lesson she tries to teach her students is the same one she learned growing up — that strength often begins with being willing to stand apart.
Gray and her husband, Dylan, live in Wildwood with their two dogs and four cats.
Recently, the physical therapy clinic she runs, Peak Sports & Spine, was recognized as one of the top three physical therapy clinics in Chesterfield by the rating company BusinessRate. She was also recently nominated as the medical honoree for the Walk to Cure Arthritis.
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