Martial Arts for a living. Good or Bad for the arts?

[thetruth]

When one decides to teach the martial arts for a living(by this I mean owning a school not travelling doing seminars) where is the line drawn as far as watering down the art to attract enough students and keeping the art pure?

I have spoken to a couple of instructors who own their own schools but do not make a living out of the arts and they said they would never change as they can choose exactly how they run their school now and can pick and choose who trains and how they train people. One even said that the arts were never meant to be made a living out of and that he believed that it would be impossible to teach an art properly when you require it as a living as not enough people are willing to submit to the rigours the art requires to excel.

All of the fulltime centres I have seen are generally not up to scratch as far as I'm concerned and have bastardised their art inorder to keep attracting suckers passing by who will pay because they don't know any better.

What are your thoughts???

Cheers
Sam:asian:

 

[Hand Sword]

In my opininion and judging from my overall experience, I would say that it is Bad for the arts. Money ruins the integrity of everything, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[pstarr]

It can be very, very difficult which is why so many full-time instructors have opted to "water down" their arts and make them more palatable to the public at large.

But it can be done.

 

[Cirdan]

Bad, Bad, Bad. The way of the salesman and the way of the martial arts teacher do not mix. :jaws:

 

[Drac]

Haven't met too many school owners that make a living off of teaching..The amount of students required to draw a paycheck plus take care of all the other incidentals that come with running your own dojo, dojang etc...etc... would be staggering..You'll be so busy selling your school that some aspect will suffer, probably the teaching..My 2 cents..

 

[mrhnau]

Haven't met too many school owners that make a living off of teaching..The amount of students required to draw a paycheck plus take care of all the other incidentals that come with running your own dojo, dojang etc...etc... would be staggering..You'll be so busy selling your school that some aspect will suffer, probably the teaching..My 2 cents..

Props to those who can do that as well as not dilute their art. I don't know many of them, but they have my respect

 

[Drac]

Props to those who can do that as well as not dilute their art. I don't know many of them, but they have my respect

Amen...

 

[King]

Unfortunately I've had a few run-ins with senseis who "waterdown" and "bastardize" their art to keep the students happy or to attract a target group. I respect that the love for the art is what drove them to want to teach. However the students suffer when the instructor decides to run it like a business and concentrate on generating income.

After working with 4 different sensei who opted for the martial arts as a business - it's pretty unbelievable to meet somebody like my current teacher. After my Ajhan pays for all his bills he sends the rest of the monthly funds back to Thailand to support sister schools or donates it to charity. He would always get recognition/awards from various communities for his continued support. Our school is not run down because everybody helps around with donations or do fundrasing when things get tight. Compared to the other people I've worked with before this guy is like a saint. I feel that this is a good example to use against bad schools.

 

[searcher]

I don't think it is bad, if it is done properly. You are most likely not going to make it running just the school. In my case I am a fitness instructor on top of being a martial arts instructor. Where you will run inot a problem is when you want to get rich form teaching. Then you are going to start watering it down and it will only get worse from there. If you don't have any aspiration on getting rich I think you can make it work.

 

[terryl965]

Everybody knows I'm a school owner nothing water down and that is why we have such a high turnover rate, We sign people up but they do not want a hard workout so after two weeks they quit, but for the record I have had great success in running my school for me. I do not take money for the school I own and operate a couple of other bussinesses and rely on that. I have also found that this next coming year I project to make profits only about twenty thousand but that is not bad for a school running a hard program full time.

Integrity should not be compemize for any business let alone a Martial Art school

 

[mrhnau]

Everybody knows I'm a school owner nothing water down and that is why we have such a high turnover rate, We sign people up but they do not want a hard workout so after two weeks they quit, but for the record I have had great success in running my school for me. I do not take money for the school I own and operate a couple of other bussinesses and rely on that. I have also found that this next coming year I project to make profits only about twenty thousand but that is not bad for a school running a hard program full time.

From experience, how many dedicated students does it take to break even? I'm sure its highly dependant on alot of things (structure, paid teachers, insurance, etc), but I'm curious...

 

[terryl965]

From experience, how many dedicated students does it take to break even? I'm sure its highly dependant on alot of things (structure, paid teachers, insurance, etc), but I'm curious...

For me it is about 30.5 students at 65.00 a month, this will pay all rent electric water and ins. we currently have 65 full time and 17 part time students so like I said next year with these same numbers the school will make about twenty thousand or so in profits.
I hope that helps you

 

[terryl965]

One thing I forgot to metion is out of my 65 12 our on scolarships so we recieve no money with them, me and my wife act like thy recieve a scholarship to continue training they are dedicated but the family have been having had time, one of my excutive acts like the company is paying for them to be here. That way these familys do not feel like they are getting a hand out and they a appreciate it as well. They fill out paperwork just like for a real scholarship must maintain there grades and be productive in the community by voluterring somewhere, it has all worked well for us.

 

[MJS]

When one decides to teach the martial arts for a living(by this I mean owning a school not travelling doing seminars) where is the line drawn as far as watering down the art to attract enough students and keeping the art pure?

I have spoken to a couple of instructors who own their own schools but do not make a living out of the arts and they said they would never change as they can choose exactly how they run their school now and can pick and choose who trains and how they train people. One even said that the arts were never meant to be made a living out of and that he believed that it would be impossible to teach an art properly when you require it as a living as not enough people are willing to submit to the rigours the art requires to excel.

All of the fulltime centres I have seen are generally not up to scratch as far as I'm concerned and have bastardised their art inorder to keep attracting suckers passing by who will pay because they don't know any better.

What are your thoughts???

Cheers
Sam:asian:

I don't own a school, so I'm simply going off of what Ive seen. IMO, there are few 100% traditional schools around anymore. I'm not saying they don't exist, but they're not easy to find. Why? Because it seems that many times, people don't want to put in the work and time it takes to training as hard as possible. Many times people are more interested in how fast they can progress, if they can keep up with their friend, who started at the same time, and those that are simply in it for something to do on the side, after school or work. So, if we look at that, who do you feel is going to stand a better chance of getting students?

Some things are probably going to have to be watered down, but I'd try to not water it down so much that you're totally taking away from everything that the art stands for.

Most of the school owners I know, have a FT job and operate in the evening.

Mike

 

[zDom]

I used to have my doubts, but I have a friend who IS making a living teaching martial arts without "watering down" his taekwondo.

Here are some components that I believe are making this possible to work:

- Adding salesmanship and marketing to skill set (as opposed to substituting salesmanship and marketing for martial arts skill) in instructors.

Marketing and sales is an important part of ANY business: how well would Red Lobster be doing if they simply "opened their doors" and waited for seafood lovers to show up?

- Improving the quality in the service of providing martial art instruction by looking for ways in improving the instruction process. You don't need to lower standards, but you can, for example, tweak the way you offer critiques. It isn't telling them they are doing something wrong, that is bad for retention, for example, but HOW you tell them they need to improve their technique.

- Raising prices. Which is more effective: working on signing up and addressing the needs of one student at $150 per month or three students at $50 per month?

- Selling long-term obligations by offering discounts, getting money up front in many cases. I used be be opposed to "contracts" but I have had my mind changed. Contracts can do two things: they can give the instructor the assurance that the time he spends on a student won't be wasted as he/she has reason to believe the student will be around for a full year.

Being obligated, the student may be more inclined to "stick it out" for the term of the contract so their money isn't wasted. Having stayed with the program, they are more likely to actually see the benefits they hoped to see, as most of the benefits of martial arts take a significant time investment to manifest themselves.

If done right, a professional martial artist can be the BEST of instructors. As that is their job, they can/should be more focused on martial arts and their students and have more time to train and hone their own techniques.

- Having talented, well-trained instructors. In a restaurant, you can be doing everything else right, but if the cook sucks, the food sucks. You can have a graphics design company, but if the graphic artists lack talent, your quality will lack some.

The ability for the instructor to "model" the movements is essential to the student grasping what it is they are supposed to be doing.

 

[whitedragon_48]

I've talked about the "McDojos" before. That term was alien to me until I came to live in Florida from Puerto Rico in 2002. Why? Because almost no one in PR lives off of his school. It was very rare. There where good instructors and not-so-good ones, but they all trained hard and drilled us hard. Dojos, as a general rule, where very poor. What little the instructor charged (I remember fees of $5-$10 a month back in the 80s, I charged $20 a month on my 1st dojo in 1998) went to buying equipment just to be destroyed by our hard work. I did not even see a mat on the floor until 1996. Some of us had gloves and that was about it for sparring. The instructors most had dayjobs. They came in from a hard day at work and taught us religiously. Lot of good memories from back then. Nowadays the McDojo has found its way to the island. Training has gone down considerably in quality and intensity in order to cater to the students and keep revenues.

I own a very small dojo. I've thought about making it into a bigger, more commercial one. But, I know that I will have to "waterdown" the art and that's not something I'm willing to do. I love my little dojo. We train hard. If anybody doesn't like it, they know where the door is. I tell them: "You come here to learn. If you want to look pretty, there's a dance studio down the street." I have a day job and I'm not quitting. What little income I get from the dojo goes to buying equipment that gets torn up rather quickly. MAs is something I love to do and teach. If you are going to do it do it right.

 

[TraditionalTKD]

I don't believe you can teach full time as a profession and remain true to the Art, Think about it. as a full time teacher, your primary goal is to get bodies in the door and hope they stay. To do that, you must find continually find ways to palatize your art to the masses and make large groups of people want to join, because you cannot survive if small groups of dedicated clients or students remain. A business cannot survive if it has a small but dedicated client base. You need to reach as many people as possible.
To do that, you will have to continually come up with gimicks to pique peoples' interest, read bastardization. I've seen it too many times to count. That plus the fact there simply is not enough of a market in America to make a full time living at it. It is not an ingrained part of our culture the way it is in Korea or Japan. Martial arts teachers are not accepted on the same level over here.
I think you are better off teaching as a side hobby, which all of our Instructors do, but keeping the integrity intact. Even our Korean-born Grandmaster never taught as a living. He always had businesses he ran. He taught TKD out of love for the Art, but used business to make money.

 

[Xue Sheng]

When one decides to teach the martial arts for a living(by this I mean owning a school not travelling doing seminars) where is the line drawn as far as watering down the art to attract enough students and keeping the art pure?

I have spoken to a couple of instructors who own their own schools but do not make a living out of the arts and they said they would never change as they can choose exactly how they run their school now and can pick and choose who trains and how they train people. One even said that the arts were never meant to be made a living out of and that he believed that it would be impossible to teach an art properly when you require it as a living as not enough people are willing to submit to the rigours the art requires to excel.

All of the fulltime centres I have seen are generally not up to scratch as far as I'm concerned and have bastardised their art inorder to keep attracting suckers passing by who will pay because they don't know any better.

What are your thoughts???

Cheers
Sam:asian:

I use to teach and I can say I had students walk out because I told them Tai Chi was a martial art. Also I have had 2 Sifus decide that they want more students. The first one (A Chinese trained Wushu guy) changed from requiring strict adherence to forms to letting people do pretty much what they want as long as it was close. He now has an incredible number of students, (no original students left), but in my opinion all they are doing is dancing and collecting forms. My second Sifu was VERY traditionally trained in Hong Kong and he recently decided he wanted more students and he also changed his teaching style from true strict adherence to Yang Style Tai Chi to Tai Chi light, he too has more students but he lost all of his long time senior students in the process.

In the US at best it is very hard; I do not think it is impossible, but damn close to it.

 

[PeaceWarrior]

Our Sifu encourages us to take private lessons, and he does traditional Chinese therapudic treatments to supplement the student fees. He actually lives in the school, working almost 7 days a week, calling clients, taking phone calls (which believe it or not takes up a huge amount of time), working on clients, doing errands, plus teaching three different arts (Wing Chun, Aikido, Chi Kung(private lessons only)). He tries very hard to keep students around, but loyalty is hard to find nowadays. He has lost several of his higher level students who then vandalized the school and tried to ruin his reputation. In my opinion he has kept the art as non "diluted" as possible. He hopes one day to sell linaments (dit da jao, and others) on the internet to get enough income so he can focus on teaching, which would be awesome. All of this, and he is probably in his late sixties, maybe seventy (he wont tell anybody how old he is).

I would say its very hard to run a school and generate enough income to take care of the utilities, rent and the other neccessary things without gaining a lot of students, which in turn makes it even more difficult to keep things straight. Luckily I have a Sifu who has made Martial Arts his entire life and does everything he can to make sure our technique is correct.

Peace

 

[Brandon Fisher]

Breaking even for me is 50 students at $80 a month.