Meet Lawrence Rouse of Playa Vista Martial Arts in West Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lawrence Rouse.

Lawrence, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started studying Kung-Fu San Soo around 1972 at the age of 19 from first generation Masters Larry & Sharon Wikel. I studied from the rank of white belt through black belt and nine levels of black belt to Master. My career for most of my adult life was real estate investment brokerage and real estate investment and development. While I always enjoyed the business and excelled in it, my true passion was always teaching my martial arts, which I did throughout my life while I was working. Teaching was always part time from 1977 until 1999 when I opened my first school in Van Nuys, CA. This is where I began to teach as a full time business. When we moved down to the new community of Playa Vista next to Marina Del Rey in 2003 I started to envision a second school in that area. So in 2006 I opened up Playa Vista Martial Arts and it became a very successful martial arts school in that area and still is. Throughout my years as a martial arts school owner I have enjoyed a 2nd career teaching law enforcement, security personnel, general public and the special needs community.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I can’t say that I have had much in challenges.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Besides our general classes of Kung-Fu San Soo, we are the only school in Los Angeles to be certified by Verbal Defense and Influence to teach Verbal Judo. It is a program that teaches kids and adults how to deal with verbal abuse. Master Rouse has taught this program to the local schools in his area as well as to the faculty at UCLA and UCLA Medical School.

One of our other areas of instruction is with special needs kids and adults. Master Rouse has worked with hundreds of kids with Autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Down syndrome, Fragile X Chromosome Syndrome and Soto’s Syndrome. He is known throughout Los Angeles and outlying areas for this specialty. He has also trained four of his instructors to work in this area as well.

As a company there are a couple of areas we are most proud of. The first is that we support our local schools in their fundraising efforts. But the area I am most proud of is my student base in both our younger and older kid’s classes. Because of all our work we do with special needs children and having many of them in our general classes, our typical kids get to learn and understand the struggles that special needs kids have. Because of that most of them recognize kids with different issues in their schools and would be the first to step in and protect them in the event that they are bullied and /or physically abused at school.

What were you like growing up?
My parents raised me to learn to think for myself and not follow the crowd to be cool or a part of a group. The one saying my dad taught me and that I teach my students is “to be a leader, not a follower”. In fact, when my niece was in college at Drexel University in Philadelphia she wrote about the subject in one of her papers and received an A for it. I owe the fact that I have never tried a cigarette in my life to that saying from my dad and I am sure many of my students will be able to say the same thing.

As a child I always gravitated to individual sports as opposed to team sports. I was very active as a speed skater (ice), snow skiing, water skiing and gymnastics.

Contact Info:

• Address: 6516 Arizona Avenue
  Los Angeles, CA 90045
• Website: www.PlayaVistaMartialArts.com
• Phone: 310 728-6463
• Email: [email protected]
• Facebook: Playa Vista Martial Arts