The Story

Sifu Marcus Lovemore is an optimum performance expert who has been teaching his entire life. He has a unique ability to recognizes people's potential and helps them recognize it, express it, and achieve it.

Sifu Marcus has assisted people with everything from mediating negotiations to healing from leukemia… from improving relationships to business consulting… and from rehabbing injuries to dying in peace.

To put it bluntly, he teaches people how to be free, to know what is possible, apply what they learn, and be self-reliant.

Because of his unique life experience he had to develop an unconventional perception of life and view people and actions as integrated systems. He has the natural ability to absorb information, translate it simply so you can apply it to your everyday life for greater success and happiness.

In November 2006, Sifu Marcus officially founded Mastery Training Systems.

Sifu Marcus Lovemore began his meditative practice at the age of 7, started learning about Martial Arts at 9 years old, and began seriously training at 19 in 1990.

Early on he understood his role as a teacher and devoured science and technology to find safe ways to maximize Human-Performance. One of the most efficient and effective ways he discovered was nutrition... another was the power of awareness and perception.

Since then, he’s trained everyone from couch potatoes and business professionals to weekend warriors and professional athletes with spectacular results that transcended their physical, mental, and emotional goals.

In 1998, he was diagnosed with Endstage Renal Failure, a “terminal” and “incurable” kidney condition according to Western Medicine that would destroy his athletic lifestyle and would probably end his life in a few painful years after enduring daily dialysis.

Fortunately, Sifu Marcus used this opportunity to learn about western medicine as well as alternative options. He performed medical miracles when he saved himself from many near death experiences using unconventional methods. While in the hospital, he helped several others with chronic illnesses thrive.

The best result from his kidney challenge was his ability to not suffer—in spite of pain. He found a systematic way to be happy—no matter what—so that now he can share that with others.

Sifu’s expert knowledge in nutrition, energy, and cognitive management has helped hundreds of people excel far beyond their cognitive, emotional, physical, and health challenges.

Here’s what he had to say about how he developed these skills.

Throughout my life I’ve seen things more in “wholes” rather than “separate parts” which actually caused some serious problems when I was younger. It all started when I was a boy with my awareness that I was a little different than some other kids, and I had a nervous breakdown when I was Seven. When I came to the conclusion of what actually was going on in the world, of all the suffering.

As a Seven year old, I became aware there was a Nuclear Crisis, there was Global Warming, there was pollution, and people were suffering everywhere. It was kind of a Siddhartha kind of process (when Buddha was a boy). When Siddhartha left his castle for the first time and saw the suffering of the people, he cried. Well, I did more than cry. It crushed me. So for about a day or so, all I did was cry. I would not let anyone touch me. I hid under a table. Up until that point, I was a very mellow, very cool kid. And all of a sudden I just broke down. I couldn’t face anything.

Basically, intellectually I started understanding what was going on in the world, but emotionally, I wasn’t mature enough to handle it. So it overwhelmed me. A seven-year-old isn’t supposed to understand the economic crisis that’s going on in the country. He supposed to be playing with his friends and his action figures. But the problem was, I started to put together what was actually going on and it was very painful. It was like too much information for my little brain. So that’s when it started because I needed to find a way to manage it.

Luckily, I lived right next to the Boddhi Tree Book Store (in Los Angeles), and I wandered into that place thinking I would find books on Magic because I heard there were Magic books in there, and I wanted to be a Wizard like every other child. Not only to change the world, but to become invisible, to fly, and stuff like that. So I went in there looking for Magic books, and I saw all these pictures of all these Guru’s and crazy people. I found the Magic books. They all talked about Meditation, and how you had to go into these altered states.

And at that time, it was primarily a used bookstore. It wasn’t as big as it is today. It looked like a house on Melrose, very small. So I went in there and asked about Meditation and they sent me to the Meditation section and there were all these book on Zen Buddhism, Buddhism, Meditation, Taoism, so I sat down and started reading them. Every day after school I would spend time perusing through the books. And then finally, I started trying some of the Meditations. My Mom remembers this. She would come home and try to get in my room, and she couldn’t open the door because I’d use the back of the door to prop my back up. There I was sitting in a Half Lotus. She’d come in and I’d say, “Ssshhhhhh! I’m trying to Meditate!” So I’m sitting there and she says, “What the hell is my kid doing?”

Meditation is really what helped me start putting the pieces together of what I was going through. I could actually see a small little piece of the puzzle, and I started seeing it as a whole, through the Meditation. I started getting the emotional and spiritual side of some of the intellectual stuff I was seeing, and I was starting to see that that’s where the truth actually was. I started moving into the meditation zone, and it started calming me, chilling me out and letting me see things as wholes rather than individual parts that I had to put together. Rather than seeing things as separate, I started seeing things as the same thing through the Meditation.
And that’s really when the sub-conscious teaching journey happened.

I probably started teaching before that, but that’s really when I remember things kicking into high pace where I started becoming much more aware of my surroundings, much more aware of what actually was going on and the connection between the internal state and the external state, and that there is something going on in INDIVIDUALS. That there is a connection going on there and once you become aware of that connection you start to be able to interpret it, manipulate it, and do things with it.

So the awareness allows you to interpret it and manipulate it?

Uh-huh. At least that’s what I thought of at that point.

At age seven?

Yeah. At age seven to about age fourteen or fifteen. That’s what I was doing: Interpretation and Manipulation. After that, I got into the stage of more Perception and Unification, which is more where I am at now. So rather than seeing it as something I can use, I see it as something part of myself that is a part of me that is always in conjunction with me – a slightly different concept.

So, the teacher is not something separate from you?

Well, nothing is separate from me. It starts coming to the concept of when I was younger, I still had a slight view of separation. I saw everything as the same thing basically. Once I got over my teens, I stopped trying to control stuff. The separation started to stop. Rather than seeing my hand as something I could use to get something, I started seeing my hand as part of me and that it does what I need it to do when I need it to be done, and that no command process is necessary to make my hand move…. If I want something, my hand will get it, and if I don’t want something, it won’t get it. But I don’t have to command my hand to go get it. Well, I came to the conclusion that everything is like that. There is no command structure. It’s about Unification or the awareness of Unity.

So after age fifteen, you started perceiving everything as the same and stopped trying to control?

Yes. I stopped trying to manipulate it. Trying to manipulate the Universe to come out in my way. When I was younger, it was a certain arrogance of youth.

Right then you came to the realization that, “I don’t have to manipulate anything, we are one?"

Actually, even to the point that I CAN NOT manipulate anything. Manipulations is actually impossible, it is an illusion that I’m making up. What really is happening is a Unification. The more things go my way, the more unified I am. The less things I perceive going my way, the less unified I am. And it’s the perception of that Unification that is important, not necessarily how I deal with it.

So if you perceive things going your way, it will happen?

It’s not about me controlling it, it’s about the perception of the Unification. o when things are going my way, I truly perceive the unification, and if they’re not, I’m being ignorant to the Unification. And it starts to break down into those systems. So it ceases to be control over not control. It becomes awareness or not awareness.

So this was all going on, and I bump into Martial Arts when I was about eighteen. Well, my Mom tried to put me in Martial Arts when I was about nine years old, and it didn’t take. Karate class was too much like the Army. I just didn’t like it - it was not for me. A lot about orders …doing push-ups when you didn’t have to…. really didn’t seem to have a point to me.

So when I was eighteen, I started to get back into Martial Arts. I got a feel for it again and started reading books and doing research. Like I researched everything else. Mostly Meditation up until that point, I dabbled in just about every kind of Meditation that I could find: Taoist, Buddhist, Zen, Indian Medications like sweat lodge stuff, Kabalistic, wicca, transcendental meditation, several kind of chanting ones, Hari Krishna stuff, I tried just about everything you could imagine. Never tried any Mayan ones, haven’t come across any of those.

Everything I could find I went trough it. I tried everything: sitting in Lotus, standing on my head, I was into Yoga too. I tried silence, mantras, breathing through one nostril, the Dragon Breath, the Serpent Breath. I tried every kind of Physical methodology you can think of. I was doing all kinds of crazy stuff up into my twenties, I experimented with everything.

When I hit Martial Arts, I was doing research with the meditative aspects because I couldn’t find a Martial Art that I liked. Most of them were very dictatorial and very dogmatic. And I just was not into that… again the Unification process… Not about controlling your environment, but Unifying with it. It seemed very silly that all of these different styles were trying to explain the same thing but always said they were different.

What I learned from my studies of all these different cultures was that they were all talking about the same thing all the time… ”Do unto others as you would do unto yourself…. Be Loving… Harmonize…. Be in the Flow” Everyone is talking about the same thing… ”Be One with God….You Are That..”. Everyone’s saying the same thing. So when I got to the Martial Arts, and they tried to pretend they were different, it just didn’t attract me. I was like, “What are you talking about?” The Karate says it’s better than Jiu-jitsu, Jiu-jitsu say it’s better that Thai Chi, Thai Chi says it’ s the #1 Martial Art compared to Kung Fu, and so on. It just didn’t ring true to me.

Until I bumped into Larry Hartsell’s book Jeet Kune Do: Entering to Trapping to Grappling. The moves really didn’t impress me, it was the explanation of Jeet Kune Do that really got me. The sayings around the Jeet Kune Do logo in Chinese are “Your Only Limitation is No Limitation and Having No Style Is Style”. Those are the major sayings of Jeet Kune Do, and I said, “Oh my God! That’s it! That’s what I’ve been looking for.” It’s the Martial Arts Bruce Lee developed because all the other Martial Arts were what he called “dry-land swimming.” Useless. They are doctrines trying to organize that, which cannot be organized. There’s an infinite amount of movement that goes on in the human body that they try to organize in a systematic, stagnant way. But fighting is a reflection of life and life is never stagnant. So your fighting style cannot be stagnant. It has to be fluid and fluctuating all the time.

Bruce Lee believed human beings come in one form: one head, two arms, and two legs. So trying to pretend that you’re teaching them a movement style that’s different from any other movement style is ludicrous. We all generate power the same way. We all move the same way. Our structure is a certain organized relationship. So you can’t pretend that Kung Fu is any different than Karate when you’re doing the exact same thing. The core movements are all the same. How you express yourself can be different but the core movements are all the same. It’s almost like a language with different accents. Everybody understands the language, but the accents may be different. It’s still the same language. So he said, basically, it’s all the same stuff and trying to pretend it’s different things is just your own ego trying to make you think you look special. So it fit perfectly into where I was. So I started studying Jeet Kune Do. Eventually I found all the books on Jeet Kune Do and one of them was my teacher’s book. Chris Kent’s The Jun Fan / Jeet Kune Do Textbook.

At the time, Jeet Kune Do schools weren’t advertised anywhere. I couldn’t find anybody. I looked in the yellow pages and asked around. All the Jeet Kune Do schools were in LA, but I couldn’t find them. One day when my Mom lived in Venice and was having a yard sale, she demanded I help her. So I did, reluctantly. At one point she asked, “Can you watch the yard sale for a little while?” So I’m standing there on a Saturday afternoon and I hear all this “clacking” noise. Like “CLACK! CLACK! CLACK!” She come back, and I followed the sound to a building. The only way in was through a side door with a big Yin Yang symbol. I thought maybe there was some kind of Martial Art there. I went in down a hallway. It’s really kind of hidden and the first thing I saw was a big picture of Bruce Lee, then people stick fighting, and I saw pictures of Chris Kent. I was reading his book, and it was his school.

I joined and started taking lessons at age 19 in 1990. I trained with him six or seven years. At first when I did not have money, I'd come early to clean up the studio and all the sweaty pads. I traded tuition for work and paid with my commitment. The first few years were extremely intense. I was training many hours a day anywhere from 5 to 10 hours all together. I took all of Chris' classes that he’d let me, there were some advance ones I had to wait to get in so I'd watch. I’d take his all day Saturday class, which was 9:00am until 3:00pm. For a 3 year period and while I was single, I'd rollerskate there from West Hollywood, train all day, rollerskate back, then ride my bike to the Valley where I would wrestle my friend Eric (6'4" and 420 lbs) who was a Sumo Wrestler, and played Dungeons and Dragons until I passed out.

I was training six days a week. I also trained on my own and stretched. I read all the books to understand as much as I could and absorb Martial Arts information as possible from any and all angles. The good thing about Chris' place was it included just about every discipline, and because he's famous, a lot of other big guys or champs would come through like Kickboxers, Judo guys, Savate, he’s big into Savate, which is French kickboxing. Muay Thai guys. They would hang out for a week, and I would train with them. I also trained privately with a lot of nationally ranked guys with specialties like grappling. Anybody who would come into the school, I would train with them. I never passed up training with anyone. And during the first two years, I was also taking Aikido lessons, and I had a brown belt. The only reason I did not get my black belt is because the exam was in Japanese.

So pretty early on in Martial Arts, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to teach. If I was going to do something, this was how I could show people on a very practical level, that everything is a same thing. That fluidity is the way to go. Finally, a practical application of the spiritual concepts that intrigued me when I was young. So people could actually see a manifestation in the real world that actually works. I thought this was a direct avenue to those concepts. Once you could understand them physically, then you could understand them in an intellectual and spiritual way. I thought Americans didn’t have the aptitude to understand the spiritual stuff because we don’t have the language for it, right? When you talk about peace and tranquility, and they have no idea what the hell you’re talking about because we’ve been over stimulated all our life.

So through Martial Arts, tranquility and awareness are necessary because if they do not find that place, they’d get hit. There was consequence to lack of peace. Unfortunately, in real life there is very little consequence, which people are aware of, until something dramatic or tragic happens.

That’s why I liked the Martial Arts, especially Jeet Kune Do. It had no limitation. Jeet Kune Do talks about the concept of dissecting what the body movement is in order to understand the core movement. Every Martial Art is the same Martial Art. So you could go to a Kung Fu class, look at it, take what’s useful and discard what’s useless. And that’s why I enjoyed it so much, so you could get to the core of what things were. And it also talked about flow and being of no mind and all these other things. No limitation and no binding rules. The only rule was—do what works. That’s what I believe most of the other spiritual practices are about. It’s not about following the rules, it’s about doing what works for you; but through the rules, you find what works for you and that’s what Jeet Kune Do is about.

So I decided to learn Jeet Kune Do to know it well, but my true agenda was to learn how to teach it. I had to learn to be a good Martial Artist, but also trying to figure out, how to learn so I could give the information away. I found that there were a lot of Martial Artists that were many good martial artists, but couldn’t teach themselves out of a box, you know what I mean? They were great, but they can’t teach anyone how to do it.

So I started to learn in a way so that I could teach it. Because teaching and learning are two different beasts. So it started to make me perceive things in a different way so that I could absorb them in a way, so then I could pass them on. And it’s a different intention when you’re learning something to teach it. You have to really understand what you’re doing. You can’t just be able to do it intuitively. You have to have a 360-degree understanding of what you’re doing and how it relates to everything else you’re doing. Which was something I liked anyway.

It’s how I started learning Jeet Kune Do. Then it became, “How can I teach someone to be the best Jeet Kune Do artist?” I had to start learning how to adjust their body, their mind, and every thing about them. Not just making them a physical specimen with technique. What if they want to be faster and stronger? Then I had to teach them how to eat properly, and I had to teach them how to move properly. Well, if they don’t want to be injured? Then I had to figure out how do this stuff and not injure people because if I’m going to teach them, I can’t if they’re injured. I had to be able to perceive things better myself because if they can’t see a punch coming, it doesn’t matter what kind of technique they have, they’re going to get hit anyway! So I had to be able to adjust their perceptive skills. If I wanted to make them a truly integrated Martial artists, they have to be able to truly express themselves in the moment, because that’s what being fluid really is, true expression in the moment. If I can train them to do that, then I’ll succeed. That is how I started to design my teaching modality when I was 20.

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