Inside the Welcoming World of Warrior Soul Combat

I confess to feeling some trepidation when I first went to check out Warrior Soul Combat. Although I’ve done various martial arts–inspired workouts, I like to think I have the soul of a poet, not a warrior. Co-owner Will Schweizer had assured me on the phone that his school focuses on mindfulness and enables students to become the best versions of themselves through martial arts. But when I arrived for my first class on a sweltering July evening, I was confronted by a large image of a cobra on the wall. Warriors, deadly snakes … I’m just trying to maintain muscle mass and cardiovascular fitness. Was I in the right place?

Apparently, I was. Schweizer greeted me warmly and gave me a brief tour of the building, which was familiar to me as the former Montecito School of Ballet and which now houses Evolution Fitness. The large studio where I’d spent hours in dance rehearsals has been transformed into Warrior Soul Combat, equipped with racks holding gloves and pads, heavy bags hanging from the transom, and thick tatami mats on the floor.

For this barefoot workout, I stepped into a shallow tub of disinfectant, then dried my feet before stepping onto the mat to join the group, trying to ignore the fact I was the oldest person in the room by far. We began by expelling all our breath, then taking five deep breaths, the whole class inhaling and exhaling together. For the warmup, we traversed the length of the mats in small groups, sometimes moving backwards, punching and kicking the air in movements and combinations demonstrated by Schweizer’s business partner, Albert Carrasco. Some of the warmup moves included jumps, which I generally avoid; Carrasco told me I could skip them, but I did them anyway. The tatami mats absorbed the impact, and landing on one foot was good balance work.

With heart rates elevated from the warmup, we were broken into two groups. I was placed in the larger group of relative novices to concentrate on fundamentals. Paired with me was another first-timer, Hayley, a longtime soccer player who joked she was having a mid-life crisis when I asked what had brought her in. 

Schweizer had told me that every trial member gets one-on-one attention from a coach for the whole class. While an apprentice coach named Ben led the more advanced novices, Carrasco worked with Hayley and me. He outfitted us with loaner gloves and helped us with our stance (feet set wide, front foot pointed forward). He practiced with each of us and then had us practice jabs, crosses, and hooks with each other. Eventually we incorporated kicks, trying to time them just right to land on the swinging heavy bag.

Then Carrasco and Schweizer strapped on pads and had Hayley and me barrage them with a series of combinations that steadily added moves: jab, hook, roundhouse kick, front kick, cross. My brain got a workout along with the rest of me.

As a sort of cooldown, everyone did some shadowboxing in front of the mirrored wall, which felt silly at first but which I came to appreciate as an opportunity to practice at my own pace everything I’d just learned.

From other workouts, I was familiar with crosses, hooks, and roundhouse kicks, even if my form needed fine-tuning. But seventy percent of people who come into Warrior Soul are true beginners, said Schweizer: “They’ve never thrown a jab.” Ben, the apprentice coach, started about two and a half years ago with no knowledge of the sport, Schweizer told me, and now competes. 

That transformation exemplifies the owners’ firm conviction that Warrior Soul is a school — “a place of learning,” as Schweizer described it. Schweizer, who started studying martial arts in high school, met Carrasco through weightlifting. Although Carrasco is a former Marine infantryman and UCSB triathlete, he initially rebuffed Schweizer’s attempts to get him interested in martial arts, concerned about getting injured if he took up kickboxing. But Carrasco eventually came around, and when Schweizer got laid off from his sales job in 2023, serial entrepreneur Carrasco persuaded him it was the right moment to open their own martial arts school that would teach Japanese- and Dutch-style kickboxing. That cobra on the wall? It’s based on original art by Carrasco.

In subsequent classes, I rotated among different partners in the fundamentals group. Jackson, a former baseball player and aspiring commercial diver, was patient and encouraging. Alex, a music student from Texas, was slow and methodical, and found music in the Warrior Soul workout — in the patterns of combinations, the rhythm of gloves on pads. Gaya — like me, a woman of a certain age, and unlike me, a veteran martial arts practitioner — coached me on technique, emphasizing safety, and gave me tips on how to be a good partner as we took turns absorbing each other’s punches and kicks with our gloves and pads. We all counted off after Carrasco gave instructions for the next combination; on three, each of us would hit our gloves together with a satisfying thud.

And Carrasco still came around to coach on form, reminding me to follow through on the cross, use the correct stance to derive power from my legs. I had asked him at the beginning of my second class what I could do to avoid the soreness I felt in my wrist after the first class. His advice: don’t hit quite so hard, make sure to strike mainly with the knuckles of my index and middle fingers, and keep my wrist straight. It helped.

Each class ends with another series of five deep breaths, all coaches and students individually telling each other “good job,” and more stretching. The stretching session provides an opportunity not just to improve flexibility but also for Carrasco and Schweizer to praise everyone’s work, recognize individuals for their progress, share personal reflections, and for lighthearted banter, like laughing about Jackson’s impossible flexibility and commiserating with Adrian about his cramping toes. 

One night, I stayed after class, got cleaned up in the shower room, and hung out for a while. A student named Natasha had baked banana bread — one loaf with Nutella and the other with chocolate chips — which we all promptly devoured. Gaya told me about her expat life in Portugal, and we exchanged insights on staying fit in middle age. Others stayed and got cleaned up, too — their next stop for the evening: Night Lizard for line dancing.

“People join looking for community,” Schweizer had told me. Warrior Soul is “a safe space for people to be who they want to be and work on themselves.”

Classes for adults, teens, and kids, and open lab hours available. Members have access to a sauna, cold plunge, and red-light therapy at the Restore Lounge, located in the same building (book through Evolution Fitness at a discounted rate). Visit warriorsoulcombat.com.