Eclipse Martial Arts

Very kind and compassionate group of martial artists. Besides local students, they have students from Europe, Africa, and South America. Instructor very knowledgeable with Karate, Nihon Jiujitsu, and Aikido.

I've been a traveling martial arts student for years all over the country and Eclipse martial arts dojo will not only become your local gym but your family. Sensei Paul has decades of experience in Karate and the internal arts and they really focus on quality of individual students rather than quantity. Very compassionate and relaxed environment with strong comradery and humor.

I'm sure it is a great DoJo, but I don't study the Martial Arts.

Run from Paul Riendl and Eclipse Martial Arts. I ignored so many red flags, but my biggest tip off should have been when Paul began incorporating real firearms into his role-playing seminars. Eclipse’s procedure of letting everyone verify an empty chamber before the role-play begins is an unsatisfactory check on all the possible ways this practice could go wrong. To make matters even worse, Paul was present when he and I had attended a third-party seminar that had tried the same role-play with a real firearm. Paul had actually witnessed how I spoke up about how uncomfortable I was in that situation. This episode did nothing to deter him from inviting me to his own seminar, which, wouldn’t you know it, included role-playing with a real firearm. No talk before hand. Paul simply and blatantly ignored my concerns. By deciding to overlook this and shelve the discussion until after the larger international Seirenkai seminar, I was rewarded by Paul defending the verbal abuse I received from one of the co-heads of the Seirenkai Organization, Dan Cohen. The way Dan Cohen would whisper corrections at me through his teeth was so seething and vitriolic, I actually had a visceral response where my blood boiled and I had to step off the mat to recover. When I made it clear to Paul that I was uncomfortable with one-on-one interactions with Dan Cohen, Paul made it clear that I would be forced to not only interact with Dan, but I would be required to test for a black belt. The requirement to test for a black belt is particularly laughable to me, as I had witnessed how Seirenkai would restrict their black belts from training with other schools. Paul himself had had issues with setting reasonable expectations between Dan Cohen and the black belts in Eclipse (like when the Eclipse black belts were forced to give impromptu lessons during the seminar). And I would be EXPECTED to make such a commitment? It’s funny how a school can advertise itself as a personable, close-knit group inviting you along their martial-arts “journey,”  and then immediately turn around and demand literal fealty from you. All with flowery allusions to so-called “Eastern traditions” that lack any verifiable precedence. I was caught in the crossfire of the debate between Dan’s external style and Paul’s internal style, and any emotional response I had about the hate being funneled my way was simply an embarrassment to Paul that I should be ashamed of. I refused to join the standing ovations for Dan Cohen’s self-aggrandizing speeches, and Paul expected me to apologize to this man who had been verbally abusing me. Paul’s one-on-one interactions with me have been less than stellar, too. Our years-long history has been riddled with his prejudice against Millennials and people who, like me, come from a homeschooled background. And all of this was AFTER I had stuck with him when his original martial arts organization kicked him out. Believe me when I say that few people have dehumanized me more than Paul Riendl. Neither Paul nor any one at Eclipse/Sereinkai has ever once acknowledged they did anything wrong. And Paul lacks the honor to respect my request for him to take down pictures he has posted of me on the Eclipse Facebook page.