Kids Kung Fu

Our Kids Martial Arts class encourages patience, self-discipline, personal responsibility, empowerment, fitness and of course, self-defense skill. We teach your children in a supportive and fun environment.

You will love to watch them grow and transform as they move up in rank through our system. There is nothing magical about getting a black belt; the magic is who your child becomes on the way to that goal. As an Austin Martial Arts Class, we have been helping kids and adults since 1991.

Adult Kung Fu Classes

The Austin Kung Fu Adult Program works by transforming a person’s fitness, energy, flexibility and health measures like blood pressure. Chinese martial arts are a great form of exercise even for older adults. When you combine this new physical feeling with the positive mental state that comes from achieving and exceeding what you thought possible, you will find unbelievable confidence and personal power.

We teach an effective form of self-defense that is 1500 years old. Kung Fu was made famous in the US by Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li , but our style has been in the US since 1964.  You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start, to become great.

A Family That’s Been Growing In Austin For 30 Years…

“I have found a truly wonderful and supportive community of people. I’ve made new friends that are also teachers and training partners. It’s good exercise and I always feel better at the end of class than I did at the beginning. Joining the Austin Shaolin-Do family is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for myself.”

-Paul Kirby, Tai Chi Student

Passionate About Transformation

Master Joe and Master Sheryl Schaefer have been training and teaching martial arts together for 30 years. They opened their first Shaolin-Do school in 1987 and have had a school and students ever since. They have used their own training to transform and fuel their own personal growth.  Both attended undergraduate training in Biology after being newly married, working full-time to pay their tuition and running a growing martial art school in Bloomington, Indiana.  In 1991 they moved to Austin, Texas and started graduate school at UT. Master Sheryl studied insect physiology and Master Joe studied neurophysiology. Their martial art club became an off-campus school and moved to it’s first full-time location in 1995. Master Joe got his Doctorate in 1997 and Master Sheryl got her Masters degree in 1998. After much careful thought they both decided that they could have a greater positive impact on the world within their growing community of students and families than they could in science.

In 1999 they took a huge leap and opened a much larger facility in North Austin and now operated schools in North and South Austin, as well as San Marcos and San Antonio. Over the next 4 years, together they would open an additional 5 schools in other parts of the country. Master Sheryl would help grow the presence of women in the adult programs until the school eventually had  women all the way to highest ranked students. In 2011, Master Joseph was promoted to 7^th degree black belt by Grandmaster Sin, and in 2017 Master Sheryl  was promoted to 6^th degree black belt.  This placed Master Joseph and Master Sheryl as the highest ranked Shaolin-Do teachers in the entire Southwestern United States, and Master Sheryl as one of the highest ranked female practitioners in the entire system.

They continue to train students from white belt all the way to 6^th degree black belt and are involved in directly teaching more than 10 classes per week each. They continue to develop the programs and incorporate principles of personal development and transformation into the martial art training. Both love what they do, and their community, and are passionate about helping their students achieve their goals and experience the empowerment that comes with the training. That is the reason why the North Austin Shaolin-Do is the largest one of its kind in the world.

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