Toe 2 Toe Martial Arts is first and foremost a great place for all martial arts enthusiasts to train. While our specialization is in combatives (combat arts rather than sport arts) we welcome karate, kempo, judo, wrestling, TKD, boxing, and other martial arts practitioners and honor their rank (we are a community of practitioners bound by honor and a love of training). The system itself (Goshin Ji
tsu) was founded by Soke Matt Avant of South Carolina, who I have known and trained with personally for decades. His/our background includes various forms of karate (Isshin Ryu, Sh*to Ryu, Toraken Ryu, and so forth) as well as various forms of JiuJitsu (Japanese and Brazilian flavors). We have had extensive training in Judo, TKD, JKD, Wing Chun, Kali, traditional weapons, and so forth. Since the 1990's we have been systematizing our own preferences among all of the martial arts we have trained in. We have blended the powerful and efficient kicks and strikes of Karate/Kickboxing to cover the standing arts and the undeniably effective throws and incapacitating techniques of Judo/JiuJitsu into a manageable, teachable, and highly efficient combat art. So what does all of that mean in terms of tradition and technical aspects we no longer teach? Well we realized that if we had endless time (8 hours per day and 5 days per week) we would teach everything we know and our students would have more information than they would ever need for combat. As a result, we dropped everything that was not self-defense (combat) effective for the sake of available training time. The resulting system has no formal 1 man sets (kata/bunkai) or sport specific focus. Instead we have only combat drills common to Kickboxing and JiuJitsu. We also dropped many of the flashy and fun demonstration techniques (extravagant Ariel kicks and redundant variations of judo style throws). While we love all of these thing we simply had to find what really works and then focus on those things! Ultimately, we believe that our system is a living and growing art. It is not bound by traditions that link it to one master or one ancient art. We believe this enables assimilation of new techniques from cutting edge innovators in the martial arts community. Once again, we stay away form sport specific "game" techniques and many competitive aspects that are enjoyable but not combat focused. Our philosophy is simple: If it works in combat consistently and has passed our testing and evaluation measurements for effectiveness...then it is good. Please feel free to join us for a few free lessons. Call or email us any time for more information. [email protected]
(501)515-4788
