Sifu Slim has been traveling overseas since 1978.  He has been a business traveler since working on the Paris Stock Exchange in 1983. He and his buddies used to run

through the streets of Paris and do push-ups and callisthenics under the outline of the Eiffel Tower and, in the summer time, jump right in the fountains at Trocadero to cool off. As a young man, Slim was also into resistance training with weights and machines but realized in his early 30s that it wasn’t the way to continue for his lifetime practice.

Slim worked part-time as a professional mascot for 4 years from age 28 – 32. This was a lot of fun and helped him get super fit, but it also resulted in some repetitive stress injuries from doing hip-hop dancing in a heavy, cumbersome outfit. He learned Myotherapy from a family of health and wellness practitioners who studied Bonnie Prudden’s “Pain Erasure.”

After that he spent 5 years visiting a highly-skilled Japanese-American RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury) Consultant who taught him healing through Shiatsu and Proper Biomechanics. Sifu Slim adds, “He even taught me how to walk.” During that time he spent time coaching high school amateur boxers. Then Slim started doing martial arts: Tae Kwon Do, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Jeet Kune Do. He also did Yoga, Tai Chi, and perfected his Maintenance Workout.

Starting with Jack LaLanne workouts at age 6, and PE and scholastic sports after that, and over two decades of Maintenance Workouts, Sifu Slim has done over 13,000 fitness workouts. He says that not to be boastful but to show how he has picked up on the passion which started with Jack LaLanne at an early age and has never stopped. One of his softball coaches once told his team’s base coaches to “send him” (tell him to go for the next base whenever there’s a long fly ball past the outfielder and the throw might come in close) “because he’s always in shape.”

Sifu Slim is not a “gym rat” or a person who lives for working out countless hours per week.

Bruce Lee (one of Slim’s idols) might have been the best mover of his mass in modern history; he was even once the Cha Cha Cha Champ of Hong Kong. If Bruce were alive today, he might tell you to take it easy. As many professional athletes and workaholics do, he went at things a bit hard. A life practice is there to keep you alive and well, not burn you out. Remaining a good amateur may keep you more well, with less injuries.

Being fit, promoting healing, and educating himself and others are Sifu Slim’s main passions. Slim is a well-rounded intellectual. Years ago someone told him he was a Renaissance Man. He looked that up and said, “Okay, let’s go with that.” He speaks three languages, reads and writes daily, dances salsa and old school hip hop, is involved in his community, and takes time out for vacations which are usually learning vacations with
courses and lots of reading.

“Being a Renaissancer,” he says, “is a heck of a lot of work.”

When he read Louis L’Amour’s autobiography, Sifu knew the work would never stop. Louis L’Amour was an athletic, hardworking, learned man who learned by talking, traveling, and turning pages of books. “He may be the most well-rounded Renaissance Man I have come across. And he worked his craft–reading, researching, writing, and talking–until the end of his life. Don’t just think ‘westerns,’ try his other books and sit back with his autobiography, Education of a Wandering Man.”

Sifu Slim believes in learning by doing. He lives in Santa Barbara, California where he enjoys outside workouts and end-of-day Jacuzzis. Even though he is closing in on 50, he still does recreational Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with guys in their 20s. “In 2008, my instructor asked me to teach the grappling art.”

“None of this gets any easier,”
he attests. “But feeling good on a natural high never gets old.”