LANGLAIS-SENSEI is owner and head instructor of Valor & Virtue Martial Arts Academy LLC. A certified instructor, Sensei holds a sixth-degree black belt and has over twenty-five years' experience in martial arts, his background including extensive training in Shotokan karate, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), Japanese and Okinawan weapons (kobudo), jujutsu, aikido, judo and self-defense. Sensei has competed on the regional and national levels, winning championships in both individual and team events. Sensei is an avid competitor, entering no-gi jujutsu tournaments and CrossFit competitions throughout the year. In conjunction with his fifteen-years of martial arts teaching experience, Sensei applies over a decade of language acquisition education, training, and teaching experience to his program.
Sensei holds a master's degree in Japanese linguistics, has taught English in Japan, and has taught college-level Japanese language courses in the United States since 2009. He currently is the athletic director and PE instructor at a local K-8 charter school here in Tucson. Just as the goal of his language program is to develop competent language users who are able to survive in environments of conversational adversity, Sensei's martial arts program has as its goal the development of competent martial arts users who are able to survive in environments of physical adversity.
The aim of Sensei's martial arts program is the development of what he calls 'Survival Competence': the related knowledge, skills, abilities, and attributes that enable an individual (or group) to act effectively in situations where one's survival is at stake. Survival competence indicates that an individual will be able to act effectively in a wide variety of situations to guarantee self-preservation. Therefore, it is not enough to simply be able to execute martial arts techniques—the student must be able to connect techniques to their contexts of use. The student's competence to use martial arts techniques effectively is intimately linked to their knowledge of social conditions, such as the environment they are in and the people around them.
This is why the primary student learning objective of each class is to develop Survival Competence incrementally through learning, first by gaining knowledge, then gradually by developing skills, abilities, and attributes through practice. It is Sensei's belief that by becoming empowered with the knowledge and skills to protect oneself, the individual is also empowered to act to protect others, and, through strength in numbers, this is what creates a healthy and safe community.
It is Sensei's mission to educate and empower individuals with the knowledge, skills, attributes, and abilities necessary for self-preservation and success in the world today.