A former colleague of mine is from New Zealand. She has a very thick accent (if you’re talking to her in the U.S.), and she’s got a lot of pride in her home.

One day at work, she was watching a video of the All Blacks rugby team do their haka before the game. I’d never seen this before and had no idea what it was.

The Haka is a traditional dance form of the Maori tribe in New Zealand. It is apparently a long-standing tradition of the All Blacks (New Zealand) rugby team to do a Haka toward the opposing team prior to every match. Several teams have picked up on this and have started to do their own.

As you can tell from the video, it serves as quite a psych up for the teams, and it certainly gets the crowd into it, as well.

I started working on my own version of the haka until it was made clear to me that were I to do my haka in front of any native New Zealand men worth their salt, I would be crushed like a bug.

The haka is not something to be taken lightly.