About Us

• Charles Orchard has been involved in Fort Collins Martial Arts for over 32 years, with most of those years as an instructor and dojo owner. His experience is vast and far reaching. Besides traditional Jujitsu, he is an expert in traditional Karate, weapons systems and modern combatives. With continuous study of his own systems combined with research and study of other common styles of martial arts, his knowledge of martial arts, fighting systems, and training methodologies is unmatched. Besides his dojo teaching experience, he brings 25 years of risk assessment, health and safety and corporate training experience to the table. During his early years in his teens and twenties he was a top competitive athlete on the state and inter-mountain regional level. Because of his athletic career and fitness hobbies he developed a keen understanding of athletic training principles and methodology. With this huge library of information he is able to serve, teach, guide instruct and train his students to achieve what they thought was impossible. Jill Orchard, Charles’ better half has almost 25 years in the martial arts with specific training in traditional karate and jujitsu. She is a very experienced instructor of young children. Her experience comes from not only her dojo career but from her professional life and church service. With Jill’s vast amount of experience with young children, there is no one more qualified and capable of teaching this awesome age group. Jill is a dedicated wife and mother who also loves to help children, women and young girls find their power, and strength. One of her passions is teaching young girls to be assertive and prepare for the harsh realities of the adult world. Charles and Jill are motivated to help improve the life’s of all those come to them, whether it is in the traditional classes or through their self-defense programs. Empowering individuals to overcome violence and problems in their life’s is truly their passion. Now that you have read the bio, let me elaborate on my martial arts history some. I was very fortunate to be able to learn martial arts as a teen in the very early 1980’s. The system that my brother helped get me involved with was very unique. Not only did we have traditional karate, not the sport kind, but we also had traditional jujitsu and traditional weapons systems (kenjitsu, Iajitsu, sai, tonfa, bo etc). These were all under one roof so to speak. This is quite unique and very rare. One of the very interesting things about my training is that we were doing newaza, or ground fighting or brazilian jujitsu before anyone had even heard about it. This type of fighting was common in competitive judo, but not for self defense. We had incorporated it as part of our regular training, with the philosophy of you don’t want to fight on the ground but if you should find yourself there, do what is needed and get up.