FACILITY / INSTRUCTORS BIOGRAPHIES

 

Amy

One of eight children, Amy and her family moved a total of 8 times throughout her childhood. Born in South Bend, Indiana, she then moved to Minnesota, North Carolina, Arizona, New Jersey, Illinois, and back to New Jersey.
From there, Amy went to study at Iowa State University (her parents’ alma mater), and finished earning her Bachelors in Art History at Arizona State University. After college and various career related travels Amy landed back in Arizona, where her parents are now retired. Within 2 months of returning to Arizona, Amy met the Sifu, and 2½ months later were married.

It was after Greg & Amy met in November of 1997, that Amy began her journey in the martial arts. She soon realized that working with Greg was going to be the most challenging and rewarding pursuits of her life. Parallel to her training in Kenpo, Amy started teaching some of the kickboxing classes that Greg had been teaching. It didn’t take long for Amy to take over the kickboxing program, teaching 5 classes a week. Approximately a year later, Amy began teaching in the children’s classes, which soon became her program as well.

Six years later, Amy now heads both the Women’s Kickboxing and the Children’s programs and holds a black belt in American Kenpo. She is very intense in her own physical training & application and extremely detail-oriented in her form, which helps her to inspire other adults, young women and children to really push themselves. On a daily basis, you will see her down at the Academy excitedly guiding the kids in the Freshman classes through basics & fundamentals and working with the Sophomore students to refine their technique and improve their application skills. During the adult Kenpo classes, she’s always on the mat, whether training herself or assisting the Sifu in teaching the different ranks. And whether she’s teaching or not, she is almost always working out in the Kickboxing classes. Watch out if she’s teaching, though… because if you’re there, she wants your 100%, and that is definitely what she gives!

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