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Submitted by: Peyton Quinn
In this the third installment of this article I want to first point out some of the reasons that the business model of traditional martial arts schools today is in conflict with their capacity to teach self-defense. Indeed, some have told me repeatedly that teaching self-defense is simply incompatible with running a martial arts school.
More than forty years ago Bruce Lee spoke of the classical mess in regard to the martial arts schools of his day. He was largely referring to schools in Asia, but also classical schools in the US as well. He said the training method is largely designed to retain the student and their monthly fee. This situation does not seem to have changed either
In todays world the martial arts industry has primarily become one that teaches children classical arts. There are very few adults in most martial arts schools. It is children that have always been the bread and butter of the industry. So let us examine the business model itself of a martial arts school today.
First, there are few businesses one can start with as little initial investment as a martial arts school. At least few that have anything like the potential monetary return of a martial arts school. One can rent a space, put an ad in the yellow pages, do some demonstrations at the shopping malls etc, and begin to enroll students in their school.
In a year a person who has the business, communications and marketing skills could in many demographic areas, sign up 100 students (children) whos parents pay from $65 to $125 a month for their kids lessons each month. Let assume an average monthly tuition of about $100 a month for easy figuring here.
If a school owner has 100 students at $100 a month then he is grossing $10,000 a month or $120,000 a year.
The fact is 100 students is a modest sized school too. A large school has closer to 350 students or more. Now what are the real expenses in running the school? The Yellow pages ad, the rent on the space and insurance are the only significant expenses. In fact, the trend now is for MA school owners to get a mortgage and thus come to own their buildings. The equity they develop in their building being a big part of their retirement package.
Also, as a part of the traditional way of classical instruction allows many classes to be taught by unpaid senior students. I will note however that today this practice of unpaid instructors is becoming more challenging for school owners to maintain however.
The martial arts industry thus has more than a few Martial Arts School millionaires and a handful of multi-millionaires. One of the largest companies in the martial arts industry actually offers a six week course in marketing and business operations for a martial arts school (even if the person has no previous martial arts training at all) and they will then sell them a franchise so they can open their martial arts school under their name. If the franchise purchaser has no martial arts training they provide a six-week course in martial arts for them.
Today the martial arts industry is almost totally sales and profit directed and is focused nearly entirely on children. We have Karate Birthday parties and Little Ninjas programs and more, as core promotional activities in the industry. And e have eight year old black belts too.
Now please do not misunderstand me here, I think MARTIAL ARTS SCHOOLS SERVE CHILDREN VERY WELL. Indeed, they can teach self-discipline outside the home (where it may be lacking too) and martial arts often teaches children respectful behavior.
I believe that most often children actually do get these important benefits and character building assets in martial arts schools, given that the instructor does the job correctly.
And most often I have seen that instructors do a pretty good job there. They handle children very well and so most often those kids achieve the very worthwhile goals of their martial training.
These goals for the children are also very collateral with the business interests of the school too. And there is most certainly not a thing wrong with making a good profit from ones work either.
But I think you can see how self-defense training, and especially for adults, just does not fit well with this martial arts school business model. The fact on the ground here is that about 90% or more of the students are young children and that alone makes teaching self-defense out of place at present in the martial arts school business model.
Let me relate an experience that illustrates this that I had less than one year ago at a convention where I addressed 125 of the top income producers in the martial arts school industry. I talked to them regarding their teaching a short-term self-defense program for adults.
In my presentation I showed that there was a demand by adults for true and comprehensive self-defense training. My own RMCAT program in Colorado provided undeniable proof of this demand.
If it the demand were not there then why would adults spend the money to come from every city in the US and Canada and from so many foreign countries to attend my self-defense training weekends at my Colorado facility?
Only a few of these school owners doubted that there was in fact a demand for adult self-defense training. Yet very, very few of these 125 top school owners felt that they could or should or wanted to teach any self-defense program in their schools. You might well ask why that was?
They expressed it too me in a few different ways but what it ultimately came down to was this, I am not in that business, why should I try to enter an unfamiliar industry when I am doing very well in the one I am currently in, teachings martial arts to children?
Well good people, I am in the business of teaching comprehensive and true self-defense training to adults and I have been for twenty years plus now. I have no monthly paying students and I can accept no children in my classes. My business model is thus not at all the same as a martial arts school.
It maybe that I just remain naive or it may be because I want to believe it (we must always try to see the deeper truth in ourselves) I still think that martial arts schools could teach self-defense classes and do so profitably too.
But I will admit that I am becoming less amused than I was in the past at seeing Self-Defense plastered all over the windows of every martial arts school that one finds on every other street corner. They do not teach self-defense and in my view so they should not advertise themselves as doing so. Some schools are some exceptions of course.
On the other hand, I have been pleasantly surprised recently at the number of martial arts school owners that agree with me on this point.
However, it also true that some school owners will still content that they do teach self-defense. I even hear people claiming that Tae Kwon Do for example is an indigenous Korean art, a thousand years old and proven on the battlefield.
But common sense alone should be enough to immediately see the absurdity of these claims and for any unarmed martial art not just TKD. First of course, TKD is an unarmed art and no people at any time or place in all of human history ever fought with their bare hands and feet.
Man is the tool user, we have the opposing thumb and mankind has always used weapons to fight with since before recorded history. We can even examine the weapons and tools of the extinct humanoid Neanderthal Man which are well over one hundred thousand years old.
And as for the proven on the battlefield assertion, this is absurd on its very face since no battle in history was ever fought without weapons. We do not have to create or propagate false histories for any martial art to truly respect or enjoy their true value and benefits.
So martial arts are just that arts they have self-defense value for sure especially when taught with that objective and by a knowledgeable and experienced instructor. But I feel obligated to point out that most martial arts instructors have never been in a real fight in the entire adult lives.
Hence, in teaching self-defense most martial arts instructors are teaching something they have no real experience in.
Further still, instruction that is confined to techniques is never really true self-defense training. Real self-defense training in my view must teach the ways of the human predator, how to avoid conflict with them, and above all prepare the person for the adrenal stress reaction of an actual self-defense situation.
Now lets consider how todays modern soldier is trained and prepared for combat. While some training methods have not changed since before biblical times in the military, in the last few decades something else really has.
That something I speak of is simulators. A guy in an Abrams tank in the desert of Iraq never destroyed a Soviet T-74 tank and neither had his instructors at tank school either.
But those instructors were provided extensive knowledge of the enemys tank and their tactics and then the tank commander and crew trained in simulators, which were very authentic to the actual battlefield. So the first time they ranged, targeted and fired on the enemy tank was not really the first time they had done it. They had done it all on authentic simulators many times before.
Do you see that self-defense training must use this same training model of an authentic simulation? So what are the features we need to simulate for a real world self-defense encounter?
The most important is the adrenal stress reaction as this is really the only thing you can absolutely count on happening in an actual threat situation. The adrenal reaction causes even good martial arts people to sometimes forget everything they ever learned. They dont really forget of course, its just that they have no access to their techniques under the adrenal rush as they never really practiced them under that adrenal rush.
As a bouncer I cant even give a realistic number to every fight I saw or short-circuited
so it never happened. Real attacks are seldom out of anywhere. The human predators and bullies do not attack just anyone at random. They want to be sure first that they have safe victim to attack. Then they want to impair that persons ability to think clearly or defend themselves effectively by adrenalizing them and making them experience fear.
This is why they begin their attack with words such as a very belligerent What are you looking at! How the other person responds to this determines if they will attack at all. This then is the easiest and best time to win the fight too, because the only fight you can win completely is the one you avoid in the first place.
So the self-defense training simulation must include this critical verbal phase of the fight and teach and train the person to handle it correctly.
Bruce lee also said The best preparation for the event is the event itself. I know this to be absolutely true, but we cant go out and get in brawls as a training method can we?
Thus the authentic simulation of the aggressor and the physical skills learned and hard wired into the student through the adrenal stress driven fight scenario with the totally armored assailant (where they can strike with full power and without any real restraint) this is the best self-defense training method currently existent and this is why I refined it and use it today at RMCAT.
About the Author: www
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peytonquinn.com
Author: Freedom From Fear: Taking Back Control, Of Your Life and Dissolving Depression (ISBN-10: 0975999605, ISBN-13: 978-0975999608, The Science & Art of love & Romance: A Strategy for Success a Program For Healing ISBN 978-1442177482.Black Belt Hall of Fame
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