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Julio Anta is the owner of Anta’s Fitness and Self Defense one of South Florida’s most successful martial arts centers. His martial arts fitness center located in Doral a suburb of Miami, Florida has been changing lives since 1998. It is a family ran school. His wife Elena teaches fitness classes and their teenage son Jon-Paul who is a certified Contemporary JKD Apprentice instructor and Edge Weapon instructor. They offer group and private classes for kids 3 year olds to adults in Jeet Kune Do, Kung Fu, Muay Thai, Pilates, Piloxing, functional fitness and kettlebell training.

He is a retired Corrections Officer and who was certified as a FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) Instructor. Julio is an honorably discharged United States Marine Corps Reserves Sergeant.

When Julio was a child Bruce Lee influenced his life and he continues to influence it today. Anta who was born in 1957 started watching the Green Hornet TV series in 1966. He was a small, skinny and sick 9 year old child that admired Bruce Lee in the Green Hornet. He would play fight imagining that he was Kato throwing kicks at his brother, cousins and friends. Even before that he wanted to study martial arts yet he didn’t start training in martial arts (judo) until I was 13 years old in middle school.

While he was in high school Fist of Fury hit the silver screen. He was studying karate yet Bruce Lee influenced him to study kung fu and start bodybuilding. He found a kung fu school and enrolled. Yet, his instructor closed the school and move out of the state. This drove Anta to begin bodybuilding. He was a competitive bodybuilder in the 80’s. Later he studied karate and tae kwon do. In the early 90’s he began studying Hung Gar Kung Fu. In 1998 as a black sash he began teaching kung fu and fitness kickboxing. Years later he was honored with the rank of master by Grand Master William J. Chung. Julio believes that “Martial Arts and fitness are one,” that’s why he has dedicated his life to living and teaching martial arts and fitness.

Julio Anta has appeared in numerous local, national and international TV shows, newspapers and magazines. He has written articles for Tae Kwon Do Times, Journal of Asian Martial Arts, Fytness Fanatik, Dragon Boat Times, Martial Arts Professionals. Julio writes a monthly column on fitness and self defense for his community newspapers Doral Tribune and Ciudad Doral.

Anta believes that he is a student for life. He also lives by Bruce Lee’s motto “Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is essentially your own.” Having studied kung fu, Muay Thai and Haganah and mixing it in his classes he believed that his natural progression was to study JKD.