Reviews of Chinese Shaolin Center

David and Sharon Soard are the most dedicated teachers of the Chinese martial arts Ive studied with in 50 years. I would highly recomend the Denver Shaolin Center to anyone interested in self defense and personal improvement in dicipline, physical fitness, and learning. Sincerly John Wilson

I was there for a year and it took that long to really see what goes on there. Without making this post extremely long here are some things to know:

(a) it is run with a cult like mentality. they talk bad about students to other students setting up divisions and getting students to pick on one another as subtly as possible. I noticed this is done for control reasons or to cover up that they (the people who own the place) are guilty of causing some kind of harm to the person they are talking bad about.

(b) it is your basic belt factory. however they don’t teach a solid foundation so as people go up in the ranks more sports related injuries occur. because their bodies are not truly conditioned to do all the twisting, turning, and jumping that they constantly demand of you. i can count 6 people that got medium to serious long term injuries due to their training while I was there.

(c) you can never use what they teach in a real fight as you will end of hurting yourself at the very least. this is due to them never spending time on the fundamentals such as good and solid stances nor conditioning the body like it needs to for taking hits.

(d) as i got to know the “masters” who own the place, and through observing of how they interacted with others, they seem to be a bit delusional and suffer from some level of psychopathic behavior. they love to gossip, trash other martial art schools, and push on you their political opinions as often as they can.

The worst is that one of the owners has at least three sexual assault cases against him. one of them came from a group of students they taught a few years ago. It is hard to see the problems at first, especially those who are new to the martial arts world and don’t know what signs too look for. It is your usual cultish place, where students who see through the bullshit leave. the others that don’t stay and think its great not understanding where all the injuries are coming from.