Phoenix Martial Arts

Nick Cotellese didn't find martial arts as an adult looking for a new hobby — he grew up in it. He was the quiet kid, the one who wasn't sure how to speak up in a room, who dreaded public speaking, who didn't have the confidence he watched other kids walk around with. Martial arts is what gave it to him. Forty years later, it's still the entire reason he's on the mats. "We exist because people don't walk in broken," Nick says about Phoenix. "They walk in unfinished. Our job is to help them leave stronger than they arrived."

The lineage started at home. His mother stepped on the mats alongside him when he was young — and she earned her black belt before he did. She later met a man who worked in the martial-arts training industry, and together they moved to Nashville and opened their own studio, where Nick earned his own black belt and learned the business from the inside. A couple of years ago he brought that whole lineage to Murfreesboro and opened Phoenix Martial Arts. Merida runs the front of the house alongside him — the first voice most families hear, and the reason parents say things like "she's so friendly and truly adores the kids." Together they've built one of the most loyal student communities in Rutherford County, and the results showed up fast: Best Martial Arts Studio in Rutherford County in 2024 and 2025, and Best Martial Arts/Boxing Studio in all of Middle Tennessee in both years — four back-to-back community votes at two levels.

What happens inside the studio lives up to the awards. A wall in orange lists the tenets students recite: "I will observe the tenets of Taekwondo. I will respect instructors and seniors. I will never misuse Taekwondo. I will be a champion of freedom and justice. I will build a more peaceful world." Parents talk about shy daughters who came out of their shyness, 3-year-olds who grew into 7-year-old tournament competitors at the Roman Classic, and kids who "on busy days are the ones making sure we still go because they don't want to miss class." Nick and his students have traveled to Rome, Georgia to compete, been featured in Nashville Voyager Magazine, and rallied the studio to raise $3,260.50 for Greenhouse Ministries through a schoolwide Kick-A-Thon — because for Nick, the character work only counts if it shows up past the studio walls. If you're looking for flashy belts or babysitting with kicks, he'll tell you Phoenix probably isn't a fit. If you want your kid to walk into a room differently than they walked in, it might be exactly the place.