Smith’s Martial Arts

On Barry Street in Oxford, Alabama, Smith’s Martial Arts runs its classes out of a training space built around a simple idea: martial arts should build character first and physical skill second. The Oxford location, opened in 2015, is the second school run by Paula and Chad Smith, following the original Heflin Taekwondo studio the couple opened in 2010 after Paula returned to the sport she had trained in since age thirteen.

Paula Smith earned her instructor certification before she finished high school, then stepped away from martial arts to pursue a career in marketing and public relations. She came back to the discipline in 2009, and within a year she and Chad had opened their first school. The Oxford studio followed a few years later, giving Calhoun County families a second location for the same style of instruction.

The school teaches Taekwondo and Karate across a set of age-based programs, starting with a Preschool Martial Arts class built around foundational skills like focus, listening, coordination, and motor development through drills involving punching, kicking, hopping, and balance work. From there, students move into Kids Martial Arts, generally for ages seven to twelve, which layers in the belt-ranking system as a structured way to set and reach goals.

The kids’ curriculum leans as heavily on behavior and mindset as it does on technique. Instructors work on building focus through exercises that start short and gradually extend, and on building confidence by giving students small, attainable wins that compound over time. Bully-defense training combines verbal de-escalation strategies with physical self-defense basics, an area the school treats as core curriculum rather than an occasional add-on lesson.

Beyond the kids’ programs, Smith’s Martial Arts offers Teen and Adult Martial Arts classes, along with a Cardio Kickboxing and Fitness track for students more interested in conditioning than belt progression. That range means a family can enroll a preschooler, a teenager, and a parent in the same building on the same evening, each working at a level suited to their age and goals, which is part of what the school promotes as its “extended family” feel among the parents whose children have trained there for years.

Parent reviews of the Oxford location consistently point to the same handful of themes: instructors who know each child by name, a curriculum that reaches beyond kicks and punches into respect and self-control, and visible changes in a child’s confidence and behavior after a few months of regular classes. One parent described the instructors as teaching kids “kindness, respect, compassion for others, and how to make friends” alongside the traditional forms and techniques of Taekwondo.

The school’s belt system gives students a visible ladder to climb, and the Smiths point to outside research suggesting a strong share of eventual black belts go on to graduate college, framing the discipline built in the studio as a habit that carries into other parts of a student’s life. New students can try a class before committing, a low-pressure way for a family to see whether the format fits before signing up for a full session.

Located at 1931 Barry Street in Oxford, the studio operates as a sibling location to the original Heflin school, giving it the resources and experience of an established program while staying rooted in its own Oxford community. For families in Calhoun County looking for a martial arts program that treats discipline and character as the actual product, with the punches and kicks as the vehicle for teaching it, Smith’s Martial Arts has built a decade-plus track record doing exactly that.

Prospective students can reach the studio by phone or through its website to ask about current class times, since the school adjusts its schedule seasonally around the school calendar in Calhoun County. The building itself is set up with mats and training space suited to groups of varying sizes, so a preschool class in the late afternoon can be followed by a teen or adult class in the evening without disrupting the flow of the day. For a small city like Oxford, having a martial arts school with more than a decade of continuous operation and a second campus to draw resources from gives local families a level of stability not every studio in the region can offer.