Stanford, CA - For Coach Cisco Barron '04, who first learned to throw a teep long before he ever filled out a college application, the sport is less about aggression than about balance: between the brain and the body, instinct and discipline, ambition and humility. 

"My focus when I design a session is to teach people why the movements work or why we do or don't do something," Barron said. "The best way to practice and learn a martial art is to understand when to use which thing and why you would use it in that scenario."

Distance and timing are the things that make the biggest difference, as well as having a good base and balance. Cisco's three pillars are stamina, strength and speed—principles he began to understand early on, even before formal training.

When he was eight, a neighbor built a boxing ring in the dirt yard between their homes. Not a metaphorical ring, but a real one—complete with two heavy bag stands, a double-end bag, and a speed bag. A makeshift arena in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood, where fights weren't just watched but practiced.

"It was the kind of place where your mom wants you to know how to protect yourself," he says of his hometown, Inglewood, CA. "And how to protect your older sisters."

By the time he got to Stanford in the early 2000s, he had already been training in boxing for nine years and Muay Thai for four. He'd also trained his younger brothers, taught friends in the neighborhood,

That's how it started—for the kid who would later become one of Stanford University's Muay Thai instructors. 

Truth is a word Cisco returns to often. His heroes didn't wear capes—they wrote manifestos. He was born in the 1980s, but it was Bruce Lee—star of 1970s martial arts films—who ruled the imaginations of many kids in his neighborhood. Lee was everywhere in the cultural ether, particularly in LA's urban enclaves. But for him, Lee was more than an action hero. 

"Bruce Lee wasn't just a fighter, he was a philosopher," he says, eyes lighting up. "People forget he studied philosophy at the University of Washington. His writings on Daoism and self-expression—drawn from Eastern philosophy—resonated deeply with Cisco who would go on to study political theory, race, and philosophy at Stanford.

He sees martial arts as choreography. "I loved dancing in high school. Muay Thai, to me, is an uncooperative dance." There's irony in the fact that Bruce Lee, his original inspiration, once won chacha competitions. But this makes sense if you understand the philosophy beneath the fists.

At his local Boys and Girls Club, he helped found a boxing program. He added Muay Thai to his arsenal around 14, training under Dexter, a Thai national and Marine. "I already had hands from boxing," he says. "But Muay Thai—that was the first time I really started kicking.

At Stanford, he was a FLI student—first-gen, low-income. "I worked, like, a thousand jobs," he jokes. Law library, art library, childcare at the Arboretum preschool, RA duty at FroSoCo.

But martial arts—and Muay Thai in particular was the constant.

Teaching Stanford kids, in that way, isn't just physical training—it's intellectual sparring. 

"Stanford kids ask questions. They want to know why a certain move works," he said.

In Muay Thai, you don't get belts. No one hands you validation. "The proof is in the pudding," he says. "You either move—or you get punched."

That rawness, that absence of accolades, appeals to his core. Muay Thai fighters don't pursue perfection for applause. They pursue it because they have to.

"I think of the rear round kick—the way you shift your weight, turn your shin into a bat—that's the move that exemplifies Muay Thai. If you're gonna spend a lifetime figuring out a single movement, that would be a good one."

His training began in a backyard ring. Continued in a run-down library. Grew in the shadow of Bruce Lee's words. Was honed in movement and dance and dirt. Now, it shows up in the lives of his students, his wife, his two younger brothers, the ones he taught when they were six and eight. His mother, who once wanted to box but couldn't because she was a woman in Mexico, sees her son carry forward the form.

"She wears the Muay Thai hoodie with pride," he says of his wife, LaCona. "She deserves it. She sees what it does to me. She knows when I've missed practice. I'm more irritable. When I train, I'm young again."

His impact isn't measured in accolades, but in the quiet transformation of those he's trained. The evidence is everywhere—in how he moves, how he teaches, how he thinks. And in the life he built, from the mat up.