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Meet Daniel Regan of Regan’s Martial Arts in Conejo Valley

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Daniel Regan.

Daniel, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started training martial arts as a kid with my father. My father was in a karate class and brought me down with him to train, I was about 5 years old. That lasted only a year or two then he was working more and didn’t go to class so I stopped as well. Later in junior high, I joined a Tae Kwon Do school, I was really into Bruce Lee and the Shaw Brothers’ movies and loved to train. I was doing other sports at that time which later caused me to again drop out of martial arts because sports schedule was so demanding.

I had gotten into some fights throughout life and some I lost, some I won, so I always went back to the arts to learn to defend myself better. Later when I was in my late teens, my father lost his job and home and my family moved out of NY for a few years. I was living on my own and got into some trouble and hung out a lot in bad places. I was out of school so there was no more daily sports grind and I was working and then afterwards we would go out a lot at night. I had worked in several places, one being cleaning carpets and I had an experience where a friend and myself were mugged and robbed in Bed Stuy NY, I had gotten a knife cut on my back in that altercation. This led me to do more research on Filipino Martial Arts, JKD, etc. I knew I needed more weapons awareness due to the environments I was in. There was a huge bar culture where I grew up in Long Island, NY. We would always go out at night and unfortunately many times there would be altercations, etc. After a while, I had gotten burned out from the scene and wanted to get back into some positive activity that would keep me out of trouble. I searched for martial arts schools and drove as far as Manhattan and the Hamptons. Then one day I saw this school around the block from where I was renting my apartment.

They taught Wing Chun, Kali, JKD, Muay Thai, Shooto, etc. I was like a kid in candy store and couldn’t believe these arts where near me. It was very rare back then to find a school teaching these arts in Long Island, it was around 1990. I joined the school, stopped going out and trained 4 nights a week in several arts from about 11 years at that school.

Training those arts and attending seminars with so many great Masters from all over the world, I had grown so much as a person, and had made so many good friends, it was a huge blessing in life.

Later I was doing a lot of MMA and had a bad neck injury. I had drop hand and couldn’t pick things up very well with my hand, I would just drop them. They wanted me to do surgery and I sought out many different treatments, none worked then I found an acupuncture method that helped along with therapy and I got use of my hand back and didn’t get the surgery. This experience later led me to go to school and earn my Masters Degree in Acupuncture/Oriental Medicine. I was a terrible student in High School, I lost a lot of friends at a young age to tragic deaths, some car accidents, few murdered, some suicide, etc. So I was dealing with a lot as a kid and was pretty rebellious. So for me to go to college and get my associates, then go on to my Masters was a big deal. Also, when I couldn’t do my usual training due to the injury, I sought out learning Internal Arts like Taiji and Xingyi, there was always a way to train, if you can’t do one method, you do another. Later, I had opened a school of my own in Islip Terrace, NY with a partner.

We were only open a few months and my partner got a job body guarding Stevie Wonder in LA, so he was never around. I was running a landscaping business during the day and then the school at night, I had gotten burned out so fast, working in the summer heat in NY then later wrestling and sparring at night, it was too much, so my partner and I agreed to close the school. Later I rented spaces at other people’s schools and taught classes in Long Island. I also taught some courses at my acupuncture college second campus in Flatbush, Brooklyn and I had some students in Queens, NY. Later, we moved to LA and the story continues…

Has it been a smooth road?
I moved to California in to be near my mother who was ill. We moved her to a sister of mine’s house in the San Fernando Valley from NY in 2008 and she begged me to bring my son here, he was 18 months old at the time and she was very close with him and my wife, so I shut down my business and moved here with nothing but a suitcase and a wife and kid. Having lost so many friends young, and having never gotten a chance with any of those tragedies to say goodbye, here I was with a sick mom who I knew wouldn’t be around to much longer, so I knew time was very limited so I gave up what I had in NY and rolled the dice and moved to California.

My mother passed away after about 9 months in Cali, it was an extremely tough situation because it was also the recession and work was very hard to find and I struggled extremely hard to survive financially and had to deal with her loss and having a wife and small child to support, etc. In about 2010, I started teaching some classes out here to a small group, I also landed a good acupuncture job at that time and through hustling, we survived through some really hard times. I also met many my idols and was able to train with more people myself. I have been fortunate enough to have become friends or get some training in with guys like Bas Rutten, Mark Dacascos, Richard Norton, Gokor Chivichyan, Rigan Machado and the list goes on. So many people I had huge respect for and looked up to, and now I have become friends with and many of them who also struggled prior to their success and their stories as well, and many others had also inspired me to keep pushing forward… The things that allowed me to make it through these struggles and other more recent ones has been my work hustle from being raised in NY and the mental training from the arts. I don’t know where I would be or who I would be if I didn’t have this hobby which turned into a lifestyle and major part of my life.

Even though I started training in the arts strictly for self-defense, Martial Arts has taught me much more than just fighting.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
My method that I am known for is Cross Training, and combining various arts, both traditional and more modern MMA. I see value in all arts … Many people either like or hate the older or newer methods, not me, I like it all. I have found teachers within so many arts that can apply their methods very well and the end of the day, I am a researcher and I love learning. I am most proud of the diverse amount of people I have met through the years through the arts. We all get older and we sometimes can’t do things we did in the past but the friendships made from bleeding and sweating together lasts a lifetime. Being a kid from middle class Long Island with 8 siblings, we never traveled much, but through the arts, I was so fortunate to have learned so much about the different cultures and background of so many people from all over the world. It’s truly a blessing and it is all because of training Martial Arts.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
It is very hard in Los Angeles for business, you have so many professional fighters and world champions here to compete with in business. What works for me is just being me.

I will get people who simply like me and my approach. I don’t try to be something I am not and I don’t try to copy anyone, I just do my thing and people that like it stick with me. I keep my group small and we train various arts so we always have something to offer. I have taught knife methods to MMA guys, taught some clinch work to cops and FBI, etc., I teach internal arts and meditation methods to stressed out professionals and celebrities, etc. My advice to anyone starting out is to not be a one trick pony, have more options to offer.

Treat people right and do the right thing. The best thing I have gained from this journey is the friendship of great people. Along the way there were many trials and fake people, selfish people, people with their own agenda, etc. But the good far outweigh the bad. Life is like fighting, you have to know when to resist the force, when to go around it, and when to redirect it. You have to be smarter as you get older.

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Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.

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