Leonel Izmendi
SBL South America Rep

Bio
My first steps in Martial arts were with Kung Fu when I was 15 years old, in the following years I trained kickboxing and boxing for several years.

In 2010 I started practicing BJJ, till this day I'm keeping up with its training.

In 2014 I become part of FCS Kali with Tuhon Ray Dionaldo, finished the student curriculum in 2018.

In 2016 I met Alvin Guinanao in Chile and fell in love with Silat Buka Lingkaran, and train non stop since then.

Nowadays I am a SBL Instructor and I have the honor to be the Representative of Silat Buka Lingkaran in South America. I train a group of students in Uruguay and organize the activities in South America.

It is a really challenging task to be in charge of the whole continent. I train face-to-face with private groups, also provide online classes with people from Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Brasil. In the past, I have traveledl to provide classes & seminars, with the pandemic situation this modality has been postponed.

In 2019, I established our school called GNGK, where we train SBL/FCS/BJJ and gather for social meetings. In 10 years, the GNGK Team have carried out lots of martial arts activities, like seminars in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Chile. In 2019, we invited Alvin Guinanao to Uruguay for a whole week training camp.

One of the  biggest achievements of the GNGK Team was bringing Silat Buka Lingkaran and Filipino Combat Systems to Uruguay.

Martial arts has always benefited my mind and body. Making improvements in my personality and improving my relationship with others; building confidence and the knowledge to teach myself and train others.

In particular, martial arts has healed my body. Following a really bad sciatic injury, I come back to train and with SBL my recovery was better and faster.

Nowadays I am the CEO of a Software Factory Company called Lexart Labs. I´m an IT Infrastructure Specialist and spend most of my time in Lexart labs. With my Partner, we love Martial Arts, when we made the Company one of our aims were to have a place to train inside the Company, and we made it possible in 2019. Now I live in Uruguay’s east coast, beautiful place Call Costa Azul so I visit Montevideo twice a week for work and training.

Once in Chile, after a heavy training day and a social night with the team, we were in the same apartment. We both never been in a earthquake before (in Chile is something common) and those days we were talking about that with some fear. We fell asleep and apparently there was a 7 point earthquake. Everything moved, it was a strong one. The thing was that nor Alvin or me felt the earth moving. When they told us we almost freak out thinking about that for a while.

First time Alvin visit Uruguay, we were in a private session, I was demolished by the training. At that moment, my car alarm starts so I move really fast (bad parking so they took my car). After all was clear, Alvin said  “You was tired but I never see you moved so quick before”. Alvin’s humor is legendary.
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