Yokoso! Welcome!

Welcome!

Thats exactly what those wooden blocks you see in the banner photo at the top of the page read. Let me take this opportunity to welcome you to the website for our dojo (school), Classical Martial Arts.

I look at our dojo as a community and it is my hope that this new website will serve as an extension of our dojo and strengthen our community.

If you are a new student or interested in martial arts, it is our hope that Classical Martial Arts can provide you with enough information to feel comfortable taking the plunge and trying out something we truly believe you will enjoy and come to love!

Please browse the website and check out some of the photos in the collection! We will update our schedules and calendars as often as possible to keep everyone up to date. 

For our dojo members, I wanted to take the chance to share one special part of martial arts I see as our dojo grows from a new school to an established community.

Martial Arts are unique in many ways, but one way in particular if you ask me is the 'dojo' itself. Training in the martial arts can become a very individual pursuit sometimes. As we push our limits and strive to get just a little bit closer to that ever-fleeting idea of perfection, we can forget that there are many other people facing the same challenges and overcoming the same obstacles as we are.

That is where the dojo comes in. When we are in the dojo, we see our classmates, our friends, and our martial arts family. The dojo reminds us that there are other responsibilities and duties than strictly our own pursuit of perfection. Chances are, there will always be someone senior to you and someone junior to you in your dojo, in your martial arts community. The dojo reinforces the core virtues of respect, compassion, and gratitude: respect for your seniors and the guidance and examples they set forth; compassion for your juniors as you help them learn the same lessons that you had once learned; gratitude for the opportunity to train, to learn, and to serve others. The dojo brings all of this to the forefront and it is in the dojo, helping, training, serving and cooperating with our friends and classmates that we come closer to personal perfection than we could have ever came on our own!

Kanpai!

Sensei John Gaddis