About Us
OUR SCHOOL
Vovinam Hoa lu is a family owned and operated facility. Our three main goals for each student are physical fitness, character development ( self-esteem, self-confidence, self-control, and self-discipline) and self-defense. We want to assist each student to find the balance between their mental, physical, and emotional health.
Our student age ranges from elementary school students whose parents want an after school program to young adults who want to de-stress from overwhelming work or college with metal and physical exercise.
We use a holistic approach in our curriculum. A part of learning martial arts, we have the nine principles that are learned as a practitioner that can be easily put to use in everyday life. These nine principles can be grouped into three domains: commitment to Vovinam Viet Vo Dao, commitment to humankind, and commitment to oneself. We also promote higher education where we celebrate and recognize students as well as instructors that have graduated from college and graduate programs.
When you join us, you join a family. As such, everyone has roles and responsibilities to each other, to the instructors, and to strangers as we carry the name of our facility wherever we go.
VOVINAM HISTORY
Vovinam Việt Võ Đạo was founded as Vovinam by Nguyễn Lộc (1912 – 1960) in 1938, with the intent of providing practitioners with an efficient method of self-defense after a short period of study. Nguyễn believed martial arts would contribute to freeing Vietnam, which had been ruled by France since 1859, from outside domination. Vovinam, which Nguyễn synthesized from Chinese styles of kung fu, his own knowledge of traditional Vietnamese martial arts, and elements of Japanese and Korean systems, was thus created partially as a response to the French occupation, meant to promote a sense of national identity for the Vietnamese people. Vovinam thus has anticolonial origins.
After being invited to demonstrate Vovinam publicly in Hanoi with his disciples in 1940, Nguyễn was invited to teach the art at Hanoi's Ecole Normale, and Vovinam gained in popularity. During the following years, political unrest increased throughout Vietnam; due to the system's nationalist political orientation, the art came under suppression. By 1954, Nguyễn had emigrated to South Vietnam, where he was able to continue to teach and establish Vovinam schools.[4] After his death in 1960, Grandmaster Le Sang continued the development and international promotion of Vovinam until his own death on September 27, 2010. The first Vovinam school outside of Vietnam was established in Houston, Texas, by Vietnamese emigrants in 1976, after the Fall of Saigon. By 2000, Vovinam schools had been established in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Morocco, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. Vovinam now exists as Vovinam Việt Võ Đạo, without the political overtones it originally carried.
