: Seminole, Florida's Jim Graden is internationally recognized as a
martial arts fitness pioneer. Jim developed Cardio Karate, the NAPMA
Fitness Kickboxing Certification, The Ultimate Bodyshaping Course
(UBC), and UBC for Kids. He's also the president of the Project
ActionFoundation. He can be contacted through NAPMA.com.
When promoting your fitness-kickboxing program, don’t make the mistake of promoting what students won’t want, instead of what they do. The more you promote the activity of kickboxing, instead of the results, the fewer students you will attract. If you ask 100 adults, “Would you like to do martial arts or fitness kickboxing, or lose [...]
The reason so many martial arts schools have trouble teaching effective fitness kickboxing is because conventional martial arts and fitness kickboxing are two completely different animals. Teaching conventional martial arts has very little to do with teaching martial arts fitness. The elements of a good fitness kickboxing class are not the same as a conventional [...]
After launching Cardio Karate during 1996, I realized that it attracted students with completely different needs. They didn’t come to class to learn martial arts, but to lose weight and become healthier. If those students continued to eat junk food, however, then they wouldn’t have received the results they wanted, regardless of how good the [...]
It’s time to talk about fitness, more specifically, martial arts fitness; teaching, marketing and making it work for you. No, fitness kickboxing is not dead. In fact, many schools currently have thriving adult fitness programs. The big difference is there are many people that will teach you how to make an after-school program work, but [...]
I don’t need to tell you that there’s a downturn in the martial arts industry. Even the most optimistic martial arts business leaders admit that times are tough. One solution is to add new programming, but many school owners counter that idea with the argument that it will distract from their core business or that [...]
Staying focused on fitness for a long period of time is difficult. The fact is most people stop working out consistently because they are easily distracted or bored. Most people are drawn to fitness because they want to look better. Unfortunately, that kind of motivation is usually short-lived. It lasts long enough to convince people [...]
Recently, I’ve been thinking about the difference between the relationships I’ve established with my current students and how I previously interacted with my traditional martial arts students. The biggest difference, of course, is that my current students are adults. In a short period of time, I realized that for me to be successful teaching fitness [...]
The secret about fitness that no diet guru or so-called “weight-loss expert” wants you to know is that there is no one answer to fitness. You must understand this important factor when developing your martial arts fitness course because it’s the key to a successful fitness program for your students. Many of you are probably [...]
Why I Love Martial Arts Fitness
I’ve recently been reflecting on the impact my programming has had on people and the difference between what I hear my students say today as opposed to when I taught only a traditional martial arts program. In the past, the compliments were mostly about how a child improved in school or how much more confident [...]
Protect your Assets with the Right Business Entity, Part 1
As I wrote in my August/September column, the best way to keep what you have is not to have anything in your name. To implement that strategy, you must choose the right business entity (or entities) to limit exposure of your assets to (successful) lawsuits and separate your asset ownership. This month, I’ll explain Sole [...]
When I served my three tours of military duty in Southeast Asia, we used multiple layers of defensive methods, or multiple redundancy defenses, to protect an installation. For example, my job as a dog handler was to be the first level of defense, encountering the enemy outside the perimeter of the installation. We were also [...]
