As first time students first look around our school, one of the first things they see is the school rail on the workout floor. It a little worn and it has a few chips on it. And why is that? Well, it’s because EVERY student over the past thirty years that has ever gotten on the mats for me has used those rails to learn their very first kicks. I installed those very rails in my first full time school in Charlotte, NC. I brought them up from a part time club I was teaching at in Mobile, AL when I moved there in 1988. I drove them sixteen hours to Highland Village when I opened my school here in Texas in 2001 and moved them again to our current location here in Flower Mound in 2010.

I have taught every instructor and black belt that has come to train with me how to do kicks on those rails. I know it seems silly or sentimental to be lugging that old thing around from state to state and from school to school for the last thirty years, but to me it is important that all of my current students know that they are on the same path as the people before them. People like Mr. Woodard, Mr. Cain and Ms. Anderson, and that they too learned their very first kicks on that rail.

That old rail is physical proof of the continuity of my program over so many years. No matter where I went, it went with me. it is said that training in the martial arts isn’t a sport but a lifestyle. It is a journey of self discovery led by other people further along the path than you, and that we should enjoy the journey itself and not worry about the destination. I totally agree with that. But every journey has a starting point. That old rail, for me, is the marker that lets every student know that the journey starts here!