INSTRUCTORS

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Terry Burnsworth has had a life long passion, not only for martial arts, but also for teaching. 

Coming from a family that Is big into wrestling it’s not surprising that he was also drawn to the sport at an early age.  He continued wrestling into his mid teens until he shifted his grappling focus to submission wrestling.

His first experience with traditional martial arts was at a very young age when his family joined a local Goju-Ryu class. This was all it took to spark his interest in Martial Arts. He spent the next several years reading every piece of martial arts literature he could get his hands on and watching movies and videos trying to learn anything and everything he could about martial arts while looking for a place to satisfy his desire to train. 

In 1993, he finally found a school he could call home at The Society of the Arts Martial Arts and Survival Club in Wheeling, WV. In a surprise twist, the head instructor of the school, Leonard Rycerz Jr., had written some of the articles that Terry had saved and read multiple times. Imagine looking around and starting to recognize your instructors and training partners from your collection of magazines. 

During his high school years he took the opportunity to take classes in Sports medicine, physiology of exercise, body management, and anatomy. All of this supplemental knowledge was used to fuse his secondary passion of physical fitness with martial arts training.

After earning his black belt in 1999 and moving away to pursue an associates degree in Computer Aided Drafting and Design Technology, he trained one on one with his instructor for the next couple of years until returning home where he continued teaching until 2007 while gaining a more scientific understanding of martial arts due to his newfound understanding of applied physics.

During his years of training, he has competed in wrestling, point sparring, forms competition, dagger fighting, and submission wrestling.

He has also trained competitors for kick boxing, point fighting, forms, dagger fighting, submission wrestling, MMA, and tough man competition as well as standing in as an accomplished sparring partner for many of his classmates in all forms of competition. 

In addition to martial arts classes Terry is also coaching for Central Valley Youth Wrestling. 

Terry has always been very involved in the community and has volunteered to teach seminars for boys clubs, the Beaver County Women’s Center,  schools, and church groups. 

Terry is currently working on developing online resources for SOTA Fighting Systems including a formalized curriculum, study guides, video instruction, and a Black Belt Registry.