About Us
Our Unparalleled Standards and our commitment to your goals and standards Make Us YOUR Best Choice, and the reason we are so different from all other options.
What Makes Us Different
The owners of MAK have some extended backgrounds and experiences that impact our confidence when 
we tell you we will change your life or the lives of your family members. We are all College Graduates, with degrees in Physics, Psychology, Theology and Economics, and all three have post graduate education, degrees, and certifications. We have been awarded Eagles Scout from BSA and Gold Award from GSA. Not only are the founders active in teaching at MAK, but their own child is now a college graduate and a graduate school graduate and also one of the business owners. All three owners teach at church Sunday schools and have traveled around the world teaching elementary school and high school students how to achieve success in their lives. Our teaching teams have similar backgrounds and bring skills, talents, and knowledge that exceeds much of the ability that the owners have brought to their students. The MAK teaching teams are beyond exceptional and dedicated to the students and their growth as if they were themselves owners of the school.
We don't ask you to trust us because we are martial arts instructors. We ask you to trust us because we have a proven track record of helping others achieve their goals and have lived these very methods in our own lives and the lives of our families. We want to help you reach your goals and we have been doing it for over a quarter century.
The Experience, History, Passion, and Mission of the Owners
Barbi McCoy - Co-owner
In 2016, on 10th of November, two of McCoy’s Action Karate (M.A.K) matriarchs were the victims of a carjacking in Thompson, CT. Their training allowed them to successfully defend against a dedicated aggressor armed with a knife in a situation that they should not have statistically survived. An yet, the physical impossibility that was overcome is the lessor of the evils experienced by those who have been attacked with deadly force.
Since opening their doors in 1994, M.A.K has gone through many transformations, and thankfully the facilities core has remained the same, its mission of reaching the community through martial arts. Changing the world one student at a time, was and is the purpose each instructor steps on the floor. We were not merely training warriors, a simple activity in which athletes learned how to fight. It was more than just karate. M.A.K was enhancing athlete's lives to be world changers, through the tools of their training.
An incident such as the one Anne and Barbara McCoy experienced in 2016 shows the fortitude of M.A.K’s core and character. They choose and each day choose to live not like victims but survivors, the world changers they have been training to be. This trauma shook M.A.K on an emotional level; it, however, gave way for a more impactful outreach to the community in which M.A.K is located. We have often been taught that we learn martial arts to physically protect our bodies without fully engaging the importance of protecting our minds and spirits as well, though mind-body-spirit is always discussed. Tapping into knowing your worth and living a life that values protecting all three aspects of our humanness (mind-body-spirit) is where M.A.K finds itself. The life skills taught in each program became not only a foundation to live our best lives, but a hedge of protection in all we do, in how we train on the mat and in the world.
The incident of 2016 was life-changing and a perspective change for Anne & Barbara McCoy. Most importantly, it has added depth, validation, and purpose to M.A.K in all aspects. The outreach of M.A.K not only feeds the minds, bodies and spirits of families engaged in the programs offered within its walls, but also the impact of possibilities we can find within the surrounding communities in ordinary and often overlooked places. M.A.K has always been rooted in giving back, bringing hope, sharing light and now we live and train out its importance with a contagious and undeniable passion.
It is in these moments we see that we indeed are stronger together and the significance of our influence and fortitude.
#maklife
-Barbara McCoy
Anne - Co-owner,
and Paul McCoy
In the closing months of 1986, Paul McCoy, a bicycle racer at the time, flipped over on his bicycle at 35 miles per hour, and due to the toe clips holding his feet to the frame, landed on his head, then left shoulder, shattering his left shoulder. The emergency room determined that he had multiple fractures on the left scapula and perhaps a separated shoulder but did not notice or inquire about a possible head injury. Later, Paul found himself accelerating his car into oncoming traffic, having concluded that his life was not worth living. At about 100 feet, it occurred to him that he was not only ending his own life but perhaps the lives of those in the on-coming car as well and skidded to the other side of the road to recover his senses.
The realization that he had tried to kill himself caused him to seek medical attention, and his physician rationally determined that he was depressed and prescribed Xanax just because. After a few months, he was sent to a counselor who, upon shaking his hand, had already determined he was not depressed but had sustained a brain injury, and sent him to a neuropsycharist at Yale. As it turned out, the physician, whom his councilor had trained under, as the world-leading researcher in what was then a little-known injury known as Traumatic Brain Injury. After a few dozen tests, and two weeks of examination, it was determined, in the words of the physician, that Paul would be at least two of the following, if not all of them, within a year, following a statistical determination of the outcome of the TBI and its associated diagnoses:
1) Dead by suicide.
2) Divorced due to the difficulty of dealing with the non-recoverable injury of TBI.
3) In jail, as a result of the behavioral outcomes of TBI and its associated conditions do to the severity of Paul’s condition.
4) In a mental institution for the rest of his life.
The doctor was wrong on the outcome, but not wrong on the injury’s permanence.
Long story short, the councilor Paul continues to rely on, Anne’s and Paul’s faith, and the previously unrevealed ability to teach martial arts and provide a path to success for others, combined with their daughter’s life, has allowed Anne and Paul to contribute to society without triggering the adverse outcomes predicted. We created MAK, the unique martial arts organization on the planet, with the sole purpose of fulfilling our mission of changing the world, one student at a time. Our vision statement, the foundation of our mission, is described below:
MAK sees a time where people of all ages are empowered to unleash their creativity, their humanity, and their empathy by giving them the power of increased safety, ever following the motto that the Privilege of Power is Service. We see MAK’s Black Belts as influential people of power, morally, physically, intellectually, and experientially, who are less afraid to pursue their dreams, giving them the strength to help others achieve their dreams. We see a better world by sharing power with our students, to the highest level within our grasp. We see #MAKLife as a vision of empowered love through strength.
Paul has continued to combat the disability part of his life by continuing education. When Barbara received her Master of Science, she, Anne, and the councilor convinced him to re-apply for graduate school where he is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership, following the attainment of a Masters in Business Administration – Organizational Leadership, with the projected goal of changing the ground upon which the martial arts industry is standing, by adding moral leadership, business practices, and community social responsibility to the front end of small businesses rather than the sales end.
-Anne and Paul McCoy
