Bio-Sam Lok

is the main instructor for Neak Ta Pradal Serey. He was born in Cambodia and left during the Killing Fields and stayed at a refugee till he was sponsored to come to Canada. Coming to from another country, he was bullied at a young age and beaten constantly and eventually his father a former kick boxer taught him the khmer martial art Pradal Serey.  This gave him confidence to go to school and learn, than fearing of being beat up.

At 15 the word had spread and an elder Kru Veasna Choom who taught him an older form of Pradal Serey that mainly contains clinche grappling and body throws before the French colonized Cambodian and banned it in the kickboxing sport. At age 17 he started to teaching friends at a community centre when kickboxing was being banned in Ontario in the early 1990's. He learned from his teacher that muay thai is actually a khmer martial arts that was marketed by the muay thai associations to take credit for the booming martial art form while Cambodia was still struggling from the killing fields. This is where he started a movement called "Pradal Serey reclaim the name" to teach who ever would listen and train the orginal martial arts Pradal Serey.

Word spread of his teachings Pradal Serey and two friends of Kru Veasna Choom; Kru Chay Cheas, and Kru Nimith Nhean took him in and taught him privately an older version of Pradal Serey called Neak Ta Pradal Serey. They taught him traditional khmer fighting art with kicks, knees, elbows, clinche grappling and wrestling which to this day isn't used in tournements. Also an a form of spiritual summoning that calls forth a spirit to help a fighter gain powers and knowledge of art called "jahp kru" which means capturing a teacher. Not many have known of an art form used in martial arts that is almost considered to become a spiritual medium to allow a spirit to come in and control the person and some have considered this to be just Self Hypnosis to bring a person to become totally focused on a target. Some khmers have considered this to be a form of evil and shouldn't be used by regular people who can't control a spirit. Which is what Neak Ta is known for just like another similiar khmer martial arts Bokatoa, to summon spirits and control them which scared most people to practice it.

At 19 Sam Lok started to teach close friends and people who wanted to train in some of the art form and started to preach more about khmer culture and to preserve it as much as possible. After living on his own and moving from city to city he left the martial arts world to be stable. Eventually ending up in New York where he met an anthropologist and archaeologist Tristan Hayes who wanted to know more about the Neak culture where his family came from. In return he did research and an article on the muay thai debate and help proved that the khmers had indeed invented the martial arts. By researching on both cultures he proved that Thailand clearly was influenced greatly by the khmers who were the aboriginal to the land. Where as the Thai's known then as Siam (Siem in khmer orginal spelling syem) given the name by the khmers who pushed invading Mongol warriors to the plains where they met the Siam tribes who followed them back to south to Cambodia and eventually took in the Khmer customs and culture.

Now after 10 years of leaving the martial arts the community and fellow khmer martial artist are asking him to come back and teach what he has learned since two of his old masters passed away to help preserve an old martial arts from dying out. This is the new begining of the school of Sam Lok Neak Ta Pradal Serey.