Sensei says, go go go!
At the Art of Martial Arts Dojo on Industrial Drive, 20 kids in a modified game of Red Light, Green Light and Simon Says take off across the mat; they dodge and weave a gauntlet of “sharks” in a crabwalk race across the dojo.
“Stop!” says Sensei Stacy Huffman. Four students stop, and the rest barrel through. “Ah, ah, ah, Sensei didn’t say.”
The four students who are out sit by the wall. Huffman systematically narrows the remaining kids down to award the coveted ninja headband to the student with the best listening skills. After a few games, the kids sit down for a slice of pizza at the dojo’s annual Kids for Free pizza party.
For the kids, the party may be fun and games, but Huffman’s program gives them much more than entertainment. Teaching discipline and respect, Huffman has followed a path through his lifelong study of martial arts that has led to the creation of one of the top 10 dojos in the nation and a community program that impacts the lives of at-risk Jefferson City youth. Under the Children’s Community Martial Arts Foundation, the Kids for Free program at the Art of Martial Arts Dojo offers free martial arts instruction to children between the ages of 6 and 12.
A Jefferson City native and second-generation martial artist, Huffman started kicking about the same time he started walking. By age 12, he had earned a brown belt in Kei Shin Kan Karate and began pursuing another style, Go Shin Kan.
“I wanted to separate myself from my father and find my own path,” Huffman says.
He spent his teenage years competing around the country and studying with the likes of Steven Segal, Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, Dan Inosanto (a student of Bruce Lee) and Chuck Norris.
“Steve asked the class if anyone knew how to fall,” Huffman says. “I’ve been trained on how to fall to the ground properly. I was 18. I was invincible. So I raise my hand, and Steven tells me to hit him. The next thing I knew I was on my back and on the other side of the room. I laid there for three to four seconds stunned before I was able to get up.”
After enlisting in the Marine Corps and getting stationed in Okinawa, Japan, Huffman trained with masters of the art and competed in the Tokyo Open karate tournament in Japan. “It was a great honor,” he says. “I had to find a sensei who would sponsor me. You can’t just walk up and hand them your money; someone has to vouch for you.”
Finding training in Japan as an American isn’t easy, but Huffman had an in. “I knew a guy that knew a guy, and he said he would look at me. I gave a short demonstration of my skills by throwing his students around the dojo like rag dolls,” Huffman says. “Sensei Tomiyatsu walked up to me and, in his broken English, told me to hit him. ‘One technique,’ he said.
“The man had to be 70 years old and surrounded by all of his senior black-belt students. There is a fine line of respect when throwing a strike at your teacher. You don’t want to hurt a 70-year-old man, but you don’t want to insult him by throwing a watered-down technique.”
After a couple of dodged punches, Sensei Tomiyatsu taunted Huffman to come in, faster. Again, Huffman engaged with a series of punches, strikes and kicks, all of which the master evaded with ease. It was then the Japanese master made his move with blinding speed.
“He punched me so hard in the chest that I was knocked to the ground with a bent sternum,” Huffman says. “I’ve never been hit so hard in my life. After one of the students came up behind me and helped me pop my sternum back into place, the master walked up to me and said, ‘One technique.’
“I got the message.”
It was then Huffman began to learn to do more with less, “trimming the fat” off his techniques and becoming more effective while burning less energy.
Huffman went on to fight in the Tokyo Open.
Upon discharge from the military in 1992, Huffman and his wife opened their first karate dojo in Holt Summit. Starting off with five students, Sensei Huffman started training others in the ways of Go Shin Kan. Shortly thereafter about eight kids from a nearby trailer park began to show up and watch them train. They were told that they could watch so long as they were not disruptive. After a couple of weeks, four of the kids kept coming back — always prompt, always quiet and always attentive.
“I could tell they wanted to train but afraid to ask,” Huffman says. “So one day I told them if they helped me clean the dojo on Sundays, I would work with them.” And so the Kids for Free program began.
Starting off with four, then eight, then 20 kids, the Kids for Free program was a fast success. Focusing on the fundamentals, the kids learn honor, discipline, listening skills and occasionally self-hygiene. They get a great workout and maybe throw a kick like a Ninja Turtle.
“My goal is to give every kid a chance to learn martial arts who is willing to work hard and who is willing to walk the long path and not take the short path,” Huffman says.
Now approaching the program’s 20th year, Huffman can boast international success. With students placing in regional and national tournaments and even sweeping divisions in competition, the Art of Martial Arts Dojo was voted one of the top 10 dojos in the nation by the North American Sport Karate Association. “You have to earn your rank here; we don’t sell belts,” Huffman says.
Tournament success, however, is not the sensei’s focus.
“For me, a dojo is family, it’s community,” he says. “I feel like we have saved kids with our program. I had a little boy who at the age of 10 had been arrested three times. I took him in, worked with him, and he now serves as a soldier and is currently deployed in Afghanistan.”
You can see the pride in Huffman’s smile. Now training the children of past Kids for Free students, Huffman and his wife have started a rich tradition in Jefferson City, a tradition based on hard work, honor, a slice of pizza and, oh yeah, karate.
