South Lake Karate Academy

Chad Love has spent more than three decades on the mat, and for the last twenty five of those years he has been teaching karate rather than just practicing it. South Lake Karate Academy, his school on Citrus Tower Boulevard near downtown Clermont, is built around that experience and around a simple pitch: traditional karate taught with patience, for students as young as four and as old as anyone willing to show up.

The academy organizes its classes by age group, with separate tracks for young kids, teens, and adults, each paced to match what students at that stage can reasonably absorb. For the four to twelve set, that means shorter class blocks with a heavy emphasis on listening skills, basic stances, and the kind of structure that translates just as well to a classroom as it does to a dojo. Teens and adults move into longer sessions that build toward sparring, forms work, and eventually belt testing.

Love describes the school’s mission in terms that go beyond kicks and punches. Discipline, respect, focus, and confidence show up as often in conversation with parents as any technical vocabulary does, and the academy leans into karate as a framework for building those habits rather than as a shortcut to a black belt. That approach has made the school a draw not just for Clermont families but for students coming in from Minneola and Groveland as well, a reach that says something about word of mouth in a part of Lake County where good instructors are not exactly rare.

Because the school operates out of a small suite rather than a big box facility, class sizes stay manageable, and Love is typically the instructor in the room rather than a rotating cast of employees. That consistency matters for a martial art that depends on repetition and correction, and it means a student’s progress is being tracked by the same person from white belt through black belt testing.

South Lake Karate Academy fits into Clermont’s broader identity as a town that takes physical training seriously, even if the discipline here is closer to traditional karate than to triathlon splits. For parents looking for a martial arts option with a single, experienced instructor at the helm rather than a franchise model, and for adults looking to pick up karate for the first time later in life, the academy offers a straightforward, no frills approach built on one person’s long relationship with the art.