My Black Belt Journey

It is said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I've taken that single step multiple times in my life. Each time, the journey made me a little smarter, a little stronger, and a little more humble in the person that I know myself to be. My journey in the martial arts is no different... as a matter of fact, it has played a huge role in my journey through life.

The following is a brief writing of that journey...



I've loved the martial arts for as long as I can remember. I first began formal training with a kid's

Karate class when I was 7 years old. That only lasted a few months, due to an unrelated hospitalization and surgery, but planted the seed that would continue to grow over the rest of my childhood and teenage years. In 1998, at the age of 19, my wife urged me to scratch the itch for more formal training which had developed over the years. At the time, we were living in Muncie, Indiana and I was attending college for computer programming. After reviewing the local schools, I met with Shihan Ron White. I knew right away that his nearly 30 years of karate, boxing, and full-contact fighting and his outward expression of his Christian faith were the key factors that I was interested in from an instructor. There was no hesitation on my part to sign up for semi-private lessons with Shihan White in his Christian Bushido Karate Academy. I trained with Shihan White through receiving my 6th Kyu blue belt.

Shortly thereafter my wife, Brianna, and I moved back to our hometown area in Evansville, Indiana where I continued my training with Senseis Vic and Lori Stanley at East-West Karate where I would advance to 3rd Kyu purple belt (preparing for my 2nd Kyu exam) when personal finances resulted in a need to pause my training. During my time at East-West, I also studied bo staff and escrima forms in addition to North American Shotokan Karate. In 2000 and 2001, I competed in the East-West Pan-Am Open Tournament where I was awarded a 1st and 2nd place, respectively, in the men's forms division and finished 2nd both years in the men's heavy-weight (175 lb or higher) sparring division.  I was also invited back in 2002 to sit on the Youth Kata judges panel though I chose to not compete that year.

After my time training in what would be considered the sport version of Karate, I was ready for a change.  I was maturing in my study of the arts and went searching for a school with more traditional teaching which focused on developing martial artists that were more focused on self defense and real-world fighting applications rather than point fighting and sport. I found Sensei Norman Beck. I learned of a few of his students that were friends of mine from high school.  I studied with Sensei Beck through achieving my 1st Dan black belt in August of 2004.

Shortly after achieving my black belt from Sensei Beck, my life changed in huge ways. My wife and I were raising our first of two wonderful children and I had graduated college and taken a position in my career field. It was a time in my life that I needed to take a step back from my martial arts training and focus on my career and my family.

It took me longer than expected to return to my training... over 10 years... but I did return, as I had always intended to do. Unbeknownst to me, Sensei Beck had taken a short break from teaching but had recently started up a new class, Zen Bu Kai Martial Arts Dojo, and had contacted me about returning to help build up the new class and his new system of training to the individual student. The system that he calls Kosei-Ryu Bu-jutsu. The class had been in session for about a year when I was finally able to arrange my personal schedule enough to fit the training back into my regular schedule. This was January of 2016. In February, I was able to get my son, Logan, involved in the class.

Since then Logan has achieved his orange belt rank and Sensei Beck has officially distinguished me as an assistant instructor and selected me as the first student to learn and help develop 7 new karate kata made up of all classical Okinawan Karate techniques drawing on total body motion and power generation concepts that he has developed over his martial arts career.

Now my son and I look forward to advancing our training with Sensei Beck. We hope to be able to become fluent in multiple martial arts systems while being able to share our knowledge and skill with other students of the Zen Bu Kai Martial Arts Dojo and continue the traditions of the Karate Masters of Okinawa as we work to bring their methods of seeking the truth into the Kosei-Ryu Bu-jutsu training method.