Robert Bentley has a fifth degree black belt. He confessed that a cartoon from his childhood got him interested in martial arts. He said that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles got him started when he was just five years old. She begged his mother to allow him to learn martial arts. His mom didn’t want to put him in it because she thought that it was all about fighting.
Now look at him now. He has mastered the martial arts and owns the Legacy Martial Arts. He is not someone to mess with but when he was young, a lot of his peers picked on him. After three to four years of asking his mother to let him learn martial arts, she finally agreed.
His mother wanted him to learn something and not just the fighting aspect of the martial arts. His mother when to various schools in the area until she found one that taught its students respect, discipline and focus. She didn’t want it to be just fighting. Bentley said that the first thing he learned was respect.
That’s why Bentley wants to pass the same qualities on to his students. It doesn’t matter whether he is teaching someone Jiu-Jitsu, Mixed Martial Arts, Taekwondo, or just trying to stay in shape, he wants his students to learn valuable lessons that will be beneficial for various areas of their lives.
The actual goal of martial arts is attitude, respect, and discipline. But in order to teach life lessons, he doesn’t make it obvious. The children get their life lessons while doing teaching martial arts.
Bentley is currently working for his sixth degree black belt. He said he will get it in the next couple of years but at present, he is doing what he loves the most and that is to teach martial arts to kids.
Photo by Martial arts academy [CC-BY-SA-2.0], undefined
