My passion had been martial arts since I was a kid. I caught the martial arts bug the same way most did, from seeing Kung Fu movies on TV. I became obsessed and I wanted to learn but growing up in a small, country town in South Texas there was not a lot of opportunity for quality martial arts training. I ordered every book, magazine and VHS tape I could get my hands on. I turned my parent’s garage and backyard into my own personal dojo and did what I could on my own until I started my official training when I was 10 years old. I had two older brothers who felt it was there job to make me tough. I am not sure if I was more concerned with getting good so I could make them proud or to fight them off but it was probably a bit of both. Either way I was looking for something that I could learn to fight quickly. I started my training in a Karate class at a local boys and girls club but at that time I failed to see the value in the stances, katas and discipline that was being taught. Instead my interest led me to a local garage group who trained Jeet Kune Do Concepts. The curriculum was pretty much like an MMA blend of Boxing and Muay Thai with a little bit of basic Filipino Kali added in. We also did Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu but it was done as a sperate stand-alone class. I continued training up into high school where I had transferred from a private middle school with only about 25 classmates. Moving into the much larger high school we were the new kids and obvious targets, especially in the athletic programs. I despised bullies and would not allow anyone to pick on me or my friends. This combined with the fact that I had a temper and short fuse made getting into fights were inevitable. My emotional state and temper improved a little through simply having the outlet to let it out with the martial arts training but at this stage in my training everything was purely physical. I had not discovered the philosophical side of the arts, I didn’t know about meditation, and discipline and character building were not really part of my training. Due to my reflections on this time, my team has worked extremely hard to instill mindset, meditation, and character development training into all of our youth programs today. The positive that came from this time period was after stories started to spread people started to approach me and ask about training. The group I was training with at that time had kind of dispersed and moved to Houston and local classes had dwindled down to one day per week so I saw the opportunity to have test dummies to work on. Previously I had taught a couple of my friends privately so they could better defend themselves and watch my back but never anything official. I started doing small group classes after school in my parents’ garage. At this point it was purely for selfish reasons as I wanted people to test things on but this became a major turning point. I discovered that I really enjoyed teaching. I enjoyed sharing what I loved and watching the positive effect it could have on people. My first taste of the real benefits of martial arts training didn’t even come from within but came from me seeing the transformation of others. Just as the Zen was starting to peak through and we were using the training for something purely positive the wild teenager in me had to shake things up. We decided we needed more bodies to train with and wanted to make a testing ground for our current students. In order to recruit more people, we built a makeshift ring in the pasture behind my parents’ house with pool sticks and rope tied around them. We used an empty Ozarka bottle and hit it with a 2x4 like a gong for the bell. I would hold pasture parties and we would use the car headlights to light up the ring for boxing and MMA style fights. This went on for far too long and started to get big and out of control, during my senior year we finally came to our senses and shut down the fight nights but my classes continued on. After high school I attended college for a short time but ended up applying the majority of my college funding towards training. I had been traveling the country since I started my training to attend seminars with other Jeet Kune Do Instructors but I was curious what else was out there. I knew martial arts had a lot more to offer and I wanted to find it. For the next few years I traveled all over the country training with over 50 masters of various arts and combatives systems. I wasn’t trying to master all these arts I just wanted have a wider understanding of what all the other arts and systems were about. During my travels there was one person stood out to me above all others. I first met Sifu Singh in 2005 and he was now a JKD instructor from the same linage that I was a part of. Even though he was teaching the art I had been studying most of my life I felt lost training with him. He was operating at different level than what I had ever seen physically but more so it was the way he lived and breathed everything into a way of life. Training with him made you feel like you were in a Kung Fu movie. I started doing the majority of my training with him and in 2008 after 12 years of training I was awarded my Full Instructorship in Jeet Kune Do and Kali along with an Edged Weapons and Law Enforcement Instructorship. That year Sifu Singh asked me to start assisting him with seminars around the country so I began to travel with him to New York, California, Las Vegas, Colorado, Chicago, Florida, and also taught in my home state of Texas.