I am often asked, what separates CoVa karate from other martial art schools?

It’s our principles that guide our training. First, we don’t focus on belt rank. Attaining a “Black belt” is not a goal that we instill in our students. You will never see a “black bet club” at Cova Karate. The goal is the ability to use the techniques to control your body against another. Students should expect from day one to be engaging with other students. The biggest detail is that we use Kata as a supplement for concepts and techniques. We don’t focus on making kata look “GOOD”. Kata has to have spirit, and students learn this spirit through the application of techniques in partner drills, hands on. Partner drills lead to sparring. Sparring must have Kata, and kata must reflect the sparring. This is one of our key concepts. Sparring must connect to kata, and thus kata to sparring.

The biggest difference is that we do not follow the esoteric ideas that are so prominent in traditional martial arts schools. I am not Asian, let alone Okinawan, no matter how hard I or others may try (pretend), regardless of the number of times they visit a foreign country, they can not teach the Okinawan or Japanese traditions. These traditions actually are counter-intuitive to the American way of life. The Asian society is based on collectivism, whereas American society is based on Individualism. As a result, CoVa Karate has adopted the American Cowboy code, as crazy as that sounds. This code serves the same purpose as Budo does for Okinawan martial arts.

Our core martial art, frame work is Okinawan Shorin-ryu (Kobyashie), but over the years we have worked with other instructors, absorbed different ideas, making what we teach a Shorin-ryu hybrid.

The third big difference is our focus on weapons. All of our students learn the Tonfa. We view weapons as tools to develop the hands and body flow. They teach timing, weight transfer, spatial awareness while developing strength and dexterity. We consider weapons training and open hand training two sides of the same coin. Neither are mutually exclusive from the other. This leads to the last fundamental difference: we do not teach Kobudo (Weapons) and Karate (Open hand Martial arts) as separate arts and therefore do not charge for rank or testing fees.

Try 2 free classes. The biggest push in the martial arts world is to offer a “FREE PRIVATE CLASS”. This is only to show you basic stances, punches and kicks while “selling you” into signing up. Do we want you as a student? Yes, but we will not put you through the sales process. Try our 2 free classes. We will fully embed you with our students, allowing you to ask questions. Then at the end of the 2 days, it’s your choice to continue. We don’t have long-term contracts!

To try us simply visit this page, or send us a PM and we’ll get you set up. https://kara-te.net/karate/