Zen Do Kai Freestyle Martial Arts is a phenomenon created by Bob Jones on 1st June 1970 when he opened his first martial arts club in Elizabeth St., Melbourne. Zen Do Kai’s translation is “The Best of Everything in Progression” and this personifies what the art offers.
Originally intended to cater for those who worked in the security industry, the demand and popularity grew beyond expectation. It has evolved from adding the principles and techniques of many martial arts disciplines together with the strong Bob Jones fighting tradition to form a modern, effective and comprehensive self defence system.
With the famous Bruce Lee movies flooding the cinemas more and more, people sought to participate in the martial arts phenomena…providing specialist security services and personal body guarding to all almost every major international Rock and Roll artists who toured Australia, tempered this popularity.
Zen Do Kai Freestyle Martial Arts has never had a closed attitude, nor is it a closed system. We are an open system, and as such we have to be open to influences and ideas from all around the world. We must always be guided by a thirst for knowledge, understanding and meaning to the things we do and those things that have been handed down to us from previous generations.
Using modern self defence principles with traditional values, we seek to continuously improve the Zen Do Kai Freestyle Martial Arts system, improve ourselves and to be aware of creating the opportunities for the individuals within our organisation to achieve their personal best. We are proud, not only of our system, but of the many thousands of students that have developed from it. Train in Zen Do Kai and we are sure you will find the experience fulfilling, exciting and most of all… enjoyable.
In the words of “Soke” Bob Jones or as he is often affectionately called “The Chief”:
“In the teachings of my discipline as a fighting system, I endeavour to be a total purist. As a purist I translate Zen Do Kai to be adaptable to its current environment, which happens to be right now in that, to be a constant winner you have to be able to adapt to change.”
