Kick Start Martial Arts Opens in Former Eyedrum Spot

You've heard the old adage "peace through strength?"

Renard Beaty seeks to turn that on its head, and looks to develop strength through peace.

Beaty is owner of Kick Start Martial Arts, the studio he founded in 2007.

He relocated recently in the former Eyedrum space at 290 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive SE.

A third-degree black belt, Beaty teaches self-defense, of course.

But the larger lesson he seeks to impart on students, particularly the teens and younger charges, is that by focusing and mastering the different moves, they are learning how to develop self-control and discipline.

And learning thast true strength comes from restraint.

Case in point: Beaty recounted how while at Joe's coffee shop in East Atlanta Village recently, he was confronted by a man who felt he was speaking too loud on his mobile phone.

Beaty said the man kept approaching him, Beaty told his students, even as he kept backing away to diffuse it from escalating further.

"At some point, I started thinking, it's not me it's him," Beaty said. "I said 'I must be reminding you of someone who did something bad to you or wronged.' "

At that moment, he handed the man one of his business cards to and offered offered him the opportunity come to the studio and work off some of that aggrssive energy.

The man took the card and now waves hello whenever they come across each other in the coffee shop.

"I didn't have to fight him, I talked to him," Beaty said.

He tells the story to a visitor as well as students to convey the message, that martial arts, at its highest level, is about the art of control and being calm.

"The more you do this, the more you understand that it s not about fighting, Beaty said.

Indeed, he draws on his corpoate manament bacground in corpoate America and as a facilitator to drive that message home with his students.

The greater lesson is by learning to control their reactions to situations it helps them develop not only a healthy body, but one that's in sync with one's spirit.

Through that greater, controlled focus, he said, they can better achieve and succeed in school or the corpoate sector.