Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:22 — 70.6MB)

Subscribe: RSS | More

Veronika (Verca) Partikova is a kung fu and self-development (online) coach, World Champion, professional MMA fighter, speaker, and academic researcher.

Driven by her passion for Kung Fu, she relocated alone to Hong Kong, where she lived for eight years. During that time, she earned a Ph.D. in Sports Psychology, taught coaching at a university, and shared her knowledge of kung fu with both locals and international students.

In 2022, she moved to Thailand to pursue MMA training and turned professional at the age of 36. Alongside her fighting career, she remains an active academic researcher, presenting at international conferences and publishing papers on the connection between psychology and martial arts.

She currently coaches kung fu online through her Kung Fu Scholars program, which blends traditional martial arts with modern training methods, including mobility, strength conditioning, and psychological tools. The program has attracted students from more than 15 countries across four continents.

Veronika (Verca) Partikova Vroom Vroom Veer Show Summary

This week’s guest is Vercha Partykova of Kung Fu Academic (kungfuacademic.com), joining the show jet-lagged after a trip from a summer visiting family in the Czech Republic back to her home base in Phuket, Thailand. Verca teaches Hung Ga Kung Fu and self-development skills online, holds a PhD in sports psychology from Hong Kong, fights professionally in MMA and Muay Thai, and publishes academic research on the psychology of martial arts. It’s a rare combination — as Jeff puts it, she’s got “the whole package,” Buckaroo Banzai style.

Verca grew up in what was then Czechoslovakia (now Czechia), starting martial arts as a kid with karate and judo during an era when access to kung fu training was scarce behind the Iron Curtain — students traded bootleg VHS tapes and magazines just to catch a glimpse of the art. She wasn’t drawn to fighting out of fear or trauma, the narrative often pinned on fighters; she loved it purely as a discipline, the way a “peaceful warrior” would.

The conversation traces her winding path: a half-year exchange in Hong Kong that left her hungry for deeper training, a grueling stretch teaching English in a windowless tutorial center to earn her way back, and two years living in what amounted to a bed with walls around it — cockroaches included. She eventually formalized her training under her Sifu, Wong Sifu, through a traditional “baai si” ceremony (a kneeling, tea-and-red-envelope oath that bonds student to teacher for life), completed her PhD, and taught sports coaching at a Hong Kong university before COVID pushed her to sell everything and relocate to Thailand within a month to pursue MMA full time.

She and Jeff dig into the difference between martial arts as “dance” (forms without real fighting experience) versus martial arts tested in live combat — and why she felt she needed real fight experience to responsibly coach others, even online. Roughly a third to half of her current students are ex-military, drawn to traditional styles after already having plenty of real-world combat experience.

Verca also breaks down her coaching framework, the “Warrior Scholar,” built on four pillars: practice (kung fu technique), body (health and longevity), mind (focus and emotional health), and direction (goals and daily habits). The back half of the episode turns personal, with Jeff and Verca comparing notes on sleep, meditation routines, and the “woo-woo” reputation of gratitude practices — Verca’s take is that they’re less about positivity and more about grounding yourself in process over outcome.

Topics Covered

• Growing up doing martial arts in a closed-off, post-communist Czechoslovakia
• The move to Hong Kong, a rough early apartment, and the “baai si” master-student ceremony
• Earning a PhD in sports psychology while training and teaching
• The shift from academia into marketing, then into full-time online kung fu coaching
• Relocating to Thailand for MMA training during COVID
• Her professional MMA (1-2) and Muay Thai (4-1) fight records
• Traditional martial arts vs. combat-tested fighting (“dancing” vs. the real thing)
• Coaching ex-military students in traditional styles
• The “Warrior Scholar” framework: practice, body, mind, direction
• Sleep habits, meditation, and grounding practices for anxiety

Connect with Verca

Autumn mini-cohort (foundation course): September 21 – October 4

Website: kungfuacademic.com

Search: Kung Fu Academic / Kung Fu Scholars

Facebook: Kung Fu Academic

Instagram: @VirtraKungFuAcademic

YouTube: Kung Fu Academic