Guro Mark Edward Cody began training in the martial arts in the year nineteen eighty-two. As a child, he developed an interest in what was to become a life-long obsession with "The Way of the Warrior". This path led him to the martial arts as one of the focal points of his life.

Guro Mark began his training in the traditional art of Wado Ryu Karate/ Jujutsu. It was in the Wado Ryu Dojo that he met future FCS Grand Master Ray Dionaldo.

It was when Master Buji Mateen began teaching Pekiti-Tersia Kali one night per week at the Karate Dojo that Guro Mark was first exposed to some of the crucial elements of the warrior arts, which his Wado training lacked. Kali offered a continuity of movement and Flow devoid of rigidity. The Karate that was being taught seemed to lack this flow. In Karate, weapons were only taught to higher-level students, if at all.

It was explained that in Kali, one begins by learning weapons and then translates the skills learned from weapons to the empty hand, this being the highest level of the art. This training method reflects the tribal nature of the art. For defensive purposes a person would usually first be instructed in the use of the best weapons available. Empty hand combat would be a last resort. The order of training reflected this concept.

Guro Mark's path led him in pursuit of the Traditional Japanese Martial Arts as his focus and in the Filipino Arts as a side interest. He continued to study Kali along with Wado Ryu on a daily basis from his first exposure to it in 1982. For many years, he did not fully appreciate how profoundly his limited exposure to Kali had affected his art as a whole. Over time, it became increasingly obvious to him that he did not move or think in the same manner as other Karate practitioners. Moreover, he did not want to move or think as they did. There was too much rigidity, too little use of circular motion. Everything was too linear, too unbending. There was no room for personal interpretation. It made no difference that he was a 6 foot, five inch tall, 230-pound occidental. He was expected to move exactly like a five foot tall, 120-pound Japanese man, or it was wrong. It was the failure of Japanese stylists to understand the necessity of adaptability that finally led Cody to disassociate himself from the political organizations of martial arts that he had been a member of for most of his life.

After several years of living in Tennessee, Guro Ray returned to Central Florida and began teaching in Guro Mark's Dojo. Cody was amazed by the degree to which Kali had evolved. The Kali they had studied together as young men was not the Kali Guro Ray now taught. Cody soon found that the core concepts of Guro Ray's art were the missing piece that he had been striving to find in the martial puzzle. He found that when he incorporated what Guro Ray was teaching into what he was doing, all of his techniques worked better. Moreover, he came to understand that conceptual martial arts are easier to learn and easier to teach than technical martial arts.

He soon discovered that his body was performing techniques that his mind did not consciously know. Upon analysis, he found that while Guro Ray was showing more techniques than the mind could retain within the span of one class, he was only using a small number of basic concepts upon which the plethora of techniques were based.

Once Cody understood the conceptual nature of the martial arts, he soon discovered that within a matter of months he could bring a student to a level that would take years to attain, using his former teaching methods.

For over one and a half decades, Cody operated a dojo full-time, offering classes 6 days per week, 5 hours per day. He attained the rank of sixth degree black belt in Wado in 1998. In the same year he was made a FCS  guro by Grand Master Dionaldo.

In addition to operating the martial arts studio, Cody was the tactical firearms instructor and gunsmith at his family's gun store/indoor shooting range.

In time, Cody came to think of FCS  as much more than a system. He came to think of it more in the same terms by which Bruce Lee spoke of his Jeet Kune Do, as a philosophy of combat, of movement, and of Life.

Cody completed the first book on FCS in 2004. Filipino Combat Systems: An Introduction to an Ancient Art For Modern Times is his attempt to document the origins and core concepts of the system.

Guro Mark's first book, Bushido A Modern Adaptation of the Ancient Code of the Samurai addresses his personal philosophy of life, a blend of Judeo-Christian ethics and oriental warrior philosophy.

Guro Mark resides in Winter Haven Florida. He teaches private classes in various martial disciplines including a highly modified version of Wado Ryu, FCS, Kenjutsu, firearms and tactical baton. He is currently working on his next book on the martial arts. He plans to collaborate with Guro Ray on a series of books on FCS.