If you live in Fort Lauderdale, the Dojo is a short run south — just past the Fort Lauderdale airport.
Bushido Ryu Dojo is at 35 SW 1st Ave in Dania Beach, directly across from Dania Beach City Hall and the Dania Library about a mile south of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Fort Lauderdale is the second largest source of students at the Dojo. We have students who drive down from Victoria Park, Rio Vista, Edgewood, Croissant Park, Coral Ridge, Tarpon River, Lauderdale Harbors, and the surrounding neighborhoods.
Bushido Ryu Dojo teaches adult-focused martial arts and is a practical self-defense Dojo. We teach the skills people actually come looking for: functional self-defense, personal transformation, a strong Dojo community, and the challenge and fun of learning real martial arts.
TEXT THE DOJO — Info • Videos • Free Intro Class
Call the Dojo and talk to Sensei.
The drive is the part nobody thinks about
On a map, every school in Broward looks close. Ten miles is ten miles. In practice, at 6:00 on a weeknight, ten miles north can take forty minutes.
That is the question that actually matters, because you are not making this drive once. You are making it three or four times a week, for years, if the training is any good. A route that is merely tolerable on a Saturday afternoon becomes the reason people quit by March.
From most of Fort Lauderdale, coming to Dania Beach means heading south in the evening — the opposite direction from the bulk of the traffic. It is a short run down US-1 or I-95, and you are here. At night times most students are coming out for the 7:30 p.m. class so you’re already past most of rush hour by then.
How to find us, since Dania Beach has no downtown
Fort Lauderdale has Las Olas. Hollywood has Young Circle. Dania Beach has neither — there is no main strip and no town center, so there is no moment where you feel like you have arrived somewhere. You do not cross into Dania Beach so much as find yourself in it.
So forget the city line and use the landmarks locals actually use:
- Grampa’s Bakery & Restaurant on US-1 — big signage, been there almost 70 years. Everyone knows it.
- Jaxson’s Ice Cream, the old-fashioned parlor just south of us. The plaza is literally named after it. Oldest ice cream parlor in Florida. Since 1956.
- Dania Beach City Hall — we are directly across the street.
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport — we are about a mile south of it. If the planes are coming in low over I-95, you are close.
If you have flown out of FLL, you have already driven past the Dojo without knowing it.
Tap the map to open it
Krav Maga, and everything it does not cover
Krav Maga is a core part of what we teach, and it is what brings a lot of people through the door. It is direct, aggressive and built for real situations rather than competition.
It is also not the whole picture. The system here is Bushido Seishin: a functional blend built from Krav Maga, Okinawa-Te Karate, Small Circle Jiu Jitsu, Wing Chun Kung Fu and Kali / Filipino Martial Arts.
Different arts solve different problems. Striking. Close-range fighting. Grappling. Joint locks. Throws and takedowns. Weapons use and weapons defense. We bring the useful parts together so you do not need three or four different schools to become well-rounded.
The goal is simple: if something happens in real life, you know what to do.
Built for adults
This is not a children’s activity program. We are an adult-focused Dojo. Teenagers age 13+ are welcome on a case-by-case basis, but most students are adults in their 30s through 60s.
Some people arrive with years of experience. Some arrive with none. Both are normal here. Training is calibrated to where you are now — your fitness, your experience and your pace.
You do not need to be in great shape before you start. You train to become stronger, more capable and more confident.
Serious training that people actually enjoy
Real skill comes from consistent training. That training should also be something you want to come back to.
Classes are challenging, but controlled. Students train hard, help each other, laugh together and build real friendships. The Dojo Brotherhood matters here. So does the simple fact that martial arts are fun to learn.
You are building capability while becoming part of a strong group of people.
A schedule that survives the commute
There are 15 classes every week, day and night.
Monday through Thursday we have a noon class. Saturday is 10:00 am. Monday through Friday there is a 6:30 pm class and a longer 7:30–9:00 pm class.
The 7:30 class is the one that makes this work from Fort Lauderdale. You do not have to bolt from your desk and race a single narrow class window. Leave when the traffic has thinned, eat something, get here, train.
Train as often as you want. Build the schedule around your life, not the other way around.
Why not just go to the nearest school?
Because the nearest school is not necessarily the right school.
If all you want is exercise, there are gyms everywhere. If you want a sport, there are plenty of sport programs. If you want a kids’ karate school, South Florida has no shortage of them.
What is harder to find is one place teaching a complete self-defense system to adults, with no contracts — where the curriculum is built around what works rather than around a franchise syllabus, and where the person teaching you has been doing it in this same neighborhood since 1992.
Bushido Ryu is for adults who want real skills and a real training community.
Sensei Knapton has trained in the martial arts since 1978 and founded the Dojo in South Florida in 1992. The school has a long record of students successfully using their training when real self-defense situations happened.
That is what the training is built for.
Come see whether it is the right place for you
You do not need to decide anything from a website.
Come in. Meet Sensei. See the Dojo. Try the training.
Your first class is free. No contracts.
If you want information first, text the Dojo. We can send you the Dojo tour, demo videos, information about the training and the available Free Intro Class times.
TEXT THE DOJO — Info • Videos • Free Intro Class
