SENSEI ERIK GEVORGYAN

As Erik progressed from a young karate student into an elite competitor, he established himself among Armenia’s leading athletes. Between 2012 and 2016, he became a multiple-time WKF Armenian National Champion and the first-seeded athlete of the Armenian National Team.

Wearing the Armenian flag on the international stage, Erik competed at WKF European Championships, World Championships, Premier League events, World University Championships, European University Championships, World Cups, and major international tournaments across Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. 

His international career produced championship titles and medals across numerous countries and eventually included a historic European medal for Armenian karate. 

Sensei Erik’s approach to coaching was shaped long before he became an instructor himself. Raised under the demanding standards, strict discipline, and guidance of his father and Sensei, Shihan Vardan Gevorgyan, he learned from an early age that martial arts requires far more than physical ability. It demands consistency, accountability, respect, sacrifice, and mental strength.

Those principles shaped Erik both as an athlete and as a person. Today, he carries the same standards into his own teaching while developing a training methodology that reflects his own experience and philosophy.

Sensei Erik’s teaching method combines movements, exercises, and training concepts from various sports and martial arts disciplines and adapts them specifically toward the demands of sport karate. Rather than limiting his athletes to conventional karate exercises, he encourages them to develop coordination, movement, rhythm, reaction, creativity, athleticism, and body awareness from a much broader range of training.

At the center of his philosophy is an idea he regularly shares with his students:

“You have to train like an artist and perform like an artist.”

For Sensei Erik, karate is not simply a collection of techniques. Every movement requires precision, timing, expression, control, and individuality. Training builds the tools; competition is where the athlete learns to express them.

The standards and discipline that shaped him are now passed on to the next generation—not simply to create successful competitors, but to develop disciplined, confident, creative, and mentally strong individuals.

Today, Sensei Erik’s focus has expanded from pursuing his own competitive achievements to developing the next generation of champions.

Since 2022, athletes under his coaching have achieved approximately 120 medals across national and international competitions. Among those results are 8 USA National Champions, 3 USA National Team members, and a Pan American Championships bronze medalist representing Team USA.

For Sensei Erik, these accomplishments represent much more than medals. 

They are the result of the same demanding standards, discipline, consistency, and attention to detail that shaped his own development from childhood.

Together with his father and lifelong Sensei, Shihan Vardan Gevorgyan, he continues that tradition through Gevorgyan Martial Arts Academy—while bringing his own competitive experience and training philosophy to a new generation.

His goal is not simply to produce champions, but to develop athletes who are disciplined, confident, creative, mentally strong, and capable of performing under pressure—qualities designed to remain with them long after competition.

From national champions to Team USA athletes and international medalists, the next chapter of the Gevorgyan legacy is already being written.