THE SAN DIEGO FILIPINO MARTIAL ARTS SCHOOL

Welcome to our San Diego Filipino Martial Arts (FMA) school, offering Arnis / Escrima / Kali training for self-defense. One of the world’s most lethal Martial Arts, our FMA classes provide the perfect way to learn real world self-defense, offering edged and blunt weapons, empty hand and Military / LEO applications.

In fact, Filipino Martial Arts are widely respected and chosen as a primary art by militaries worldwide due to its ability to deal with bladed threats, as well as self-defense uses of knives or blunt weapons. These applications are the primary reason we offer FMA training in San Diego, particularly as a large percentage of our students are comprised of active duty military.

As the name states, Filipino Martial Arts are arts, not sports, although FMA offers many techniques and fundamental concepts that may benefit Combat Sports. But at its root, it is a self-defense system.  As such, we concentrate on self-defense training when teaching Kali (Arnis and Esrima mean roughly the same thing in FMA) at our San Diego school.

All levels are welcome, and all will learn valuable skills. Beginners will benefit from the fundamental drills that serve as the core of our FMA classes, while everyone will obtain a better understanding of balance, movement and real world self-defense. Knowledge of self-defense is critical in today’s world and could easily mean the difference between life and death.

As students advance, they will move to more specific training and will see a different aspect of FMA than taught at other San Diego Filipino Martial Arts schools. The goal of these classes will be constant testing of practical application, with techniques taught in the most effective way possible as applied to actual self-defense.

Our goal is to teach real world techniques that can be used to keep our students safe, whether in the streets or in the field. Our entire purpose of our San Diego FMA training program is to enable people of different ages, abilities and experience to become safer in this world.

Willie Laureano is the head instructor of our Filipino Martial Arts program. Originally from the Philippines, Guro (Filipino for Teacher) Willie has a vast amount of experience in FMA, first starting his training in 1980 with the world famous Dan Inosanto. Today, Guro Willie is regarded as one of the top FMA instructors on the planet, particularly for Special Operations training.

Charles Martinez is our day to day FMA instructor and has a large amount of experience in FMA. Guro Charles has been training with Willie Laureano since 2003 and like Guro Willie, has significant expertise in teaching FMA to Special Operations Forces.