Dragon & Tiger Martial Arts

One step closer. I was finally able to stop by to pick up my blue belt, and added purple to the rack. Looking forward to being back to in-person training both for DTMA and CMA in May!

This. Is. Why. We. Train.

When your best friend/instructor comes into town and you put in 2 hours of training, these are required pics. Thanks to Alexander Perez for bringing Ultimate Kenpo Warriors to Central FL for the night!

These are belts that I’ve earned the right to display. I’ve earned the right to WEAR higher ranks. That said, I don’t know it all, nor do I claim to. What I do know is that my knowledge and my art are evolving together, and it’s awesome to be sharing the experience with my training partners and instructors at Ultimate Kenpo Warriors and Championship Martial Arts - Tuskawilla and my own students.

It’s t-shirt day!!! Many thanks to of .ca for making this happen. The shirts look great and I can’t wait to wear them out - both in and out of the studio!

This view is fantastic for my “regular job.” Unfortunately, however, its location also caused the lack of classes during the last 2 weeks of 2020 - here in the woods, I’m not risking a bad training experience for students, given the risk of a poor video connection. Can’t wait to get back to offering and taking both virtual and in-person classes (both training and teaching) in the new year!

This post is precisely why - with tremendous respect for my instructors at Ultimate Kenpo Warriors and Championship Martial Arts - Tuskawilla - I chose to open DTMA rather than a franchise of either existing school. My experience comes from both and CMA’s training, with various research, seminars, and others’ instruction thrown in the mix. I don’t profess to have more knowledge than my own instructors - but my Kenpo is just that - my own, developed over more than 12 years of practice, teaching, and being taught. I welcome YOUR contribution to my art, anytime!

Nobody can be 100% “on” all the time. It’s simply not sustainable. The difference between a successful student and one who fails, or struggles to keep up, is in whether the student chooses to “show up” even when exhausted, stressed, and/or “burnt out.” Days with no energy to train create opportunities to read your notes or a book, watch videos (even those inadvertently showing what not to do), or mentally navigate and try to connect with your curriculum. There’s always an option. I’ve made my choice, or I wouldn’t have opened DTMA. Now it’s your turn to choose. Will you take steps toward success and mastery, or hold yourself back?

I won’t try to improve on our Senior Grandmaster’s words, and following SGM Parker’s guidance, our goal is not to provide a “traditional” martial arts experience. Students should not be expected to blindly follow traditions whose meaning and origins are unknown to any living practitioner. Rather, we aim to ensure students understand why and how they should be performing each motion, to question why other options or modifications may work (perhaps even work better), and to adapt our system to the individual student. This is also why we incorporate non-Kenpo material: Kenpo is a phenomenal art, but we’re open to improving, evolving, and perfecting it. We love and welcome meaningful, in-depth discussion of our art and instruction during class, on social media, and in our private Discord server.

“Earning” a stripe or belt rank bears different significance at different schools. Some hand out ranks like candy to keep students “engaged” (or to anyone who pays for it). But if your training isn’t engaging, or won’t enable your students, fairly quickly, to actually defend themselves, does that fabric or tape really mean anything? Just tonight, Being not only an instructor but also a perpetual student, I earned a belt stripe. I didn’t “earn” it because I paid for it or as a “participation trophy,” but as the result of enough hard work to become proficient in the required material, after being trained, challenged, and encouraged to think through it. If your instructors provide little more than a workout routine, with little explanation or adjustment (including for personal strengths and weaknesses), it may be time to move on. This is why I do not offer stripes, and don’t offer tests until each student is ready to learn and perform more complicated parts of our curriculum. It’s also why I’ll be forever grateful to my instructors at and for their excellent instruction, which has led me to this point in my own training, and made me the student and instructor that I am today and hope to become.

Please DM if you would be interested in a pre-recorded martial arts curriculum, to supplement or partially replace our existing classes. Private instruction and/or our regular classes would be required to achieve rank. This could be for anyone, but the intent is to help those who want instruction, but can’t make it to regular scheduled classes, or prefer to learn primarily on their own.