My  first encounter with the martial arts was in 1986 when a Judo club opened in my town in Romania. After a few months of training in judo, I noticed that the advanced students, the brown and black belts , would stay after the class to practice some more with closed doors, and they would practice something that wasn't judo.Those years, under the communist regime, any other martial arts except judo, were illegal in Romania. Curiosity drove me to sneak into the bathrooms after the usual judo class and wait for them to start training in what I lately learned was Karate Shotokan. After about one hour they finished training and when everybody was about to leave, I faced one of the black belts and asked him to teach me Karate; he accepted. We continued training in karate shotokan for about two years .
 In 1988 in the city of Sibiu ,  I joined one of the two local Karate Kyokushin Dojos. This step represented a big change for me, and I was faced with a dilemma : Kyokushin Karate was different from Shotokan Karate in the way that the kumite (sparring) was practiced , full contact. I never had to fight full contact before, only point non-contact. After the first Kyokushin class, I knew that this is what I wanted to learn . A karate style that is closer to reality and requires intense training and conditioning. After I finished school, I returned to my home town and that was when I opened my first Dojo, at age of 21 and also started to compete in full contact karate tournaments. During the next ten years I achieved what I dreamed when I started martial arts, to became a black belt and a national champion.
  In 2001 I moved to USA Denver CO - where I began training in Kickboxing and Muay Thai at 3D Martial Arts Academy under Sensei Clarence Tacht and Enshin Karate with Kancho Ninomiya. After four years of living in the US, I decided that the time for opening the first Kyokushin Karate Dojo in Denver had come. This is how Contact Kicks was borned, and in the summer of 2005 I opened the first and only Kyokushin Karate Dojo in the Rocky Mountains at that time.
In 2008 I moved back to Romania where together with my wife Mici, founded Pantera Gym Dojo in Targu Mures, Transylvania .
   In 2010 a new chapter opens in our lives ! After two years in Romania we decided to move to Canada . The time to re-start Contact Kicks has come.