Youth Sports Are Growing and Coaches Are Leaving. Is Your Martial Arts School Winning Its Share?

The Aspen Institute’s Project Play published its annual look at youth sports participation on October 27. Two findings matter to martial arts school owners: the activities growing fastest are the ones that rebuilt how beginners get started, and the number of adults willing to coach children is falling for the third year in a row.

The numbers

Overall, youth team-sport participation reached a 12-year high in 2025, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association data Aspen analysed. The report does not mention martial arts.

The participation story: how beginners get in

Tennis and golf were not obvious growth sports for young children. Aspen’s reporting credits accessible entry formats, a sense of community, and changes in how a beginner first experiences the sport. Both have spent years building versions of their game designed for a first-timer rather than for a future competitor.

That is the useful lesson, and it is not a claim that martial arts participation rose or fell. The competition for a school is every activity bidding for the same parent’s afternoons and budget, and those activities are getting better at the first lesson. A school should ask how its own first experience compares: how quickly a nervous child is welcomed by name, whether class times fit a working parent’s week, whether a beginner sees progress within weeks, and whether a family can belong without ever entering a tournament.

One figure cuts the other way. Participation among children in the lowest-income households fell 7% in a single year while higher-income brackets grew, and the income gap widened to its largest in the data. Aspen’s sources attribute it to cost. A school that prices for families who are already paying for travel sports should know that the market below them is shrinking.

The coaching story: the workforce is ageing and walking away

The count of active coaches for children 14 and under fell for a third straight year, from 8.4 million in 2022 to 6.9 million in 2025, while the number of former coaches rose to 12.3 million. Forty-three percent of the coaches who remain are 55 or older. Annual training in first aid, concussion management, injury prevention and motivation all declined by double digits between 2020 and 2025, even though 94% of coaches have been trained at some point.

“We need to do more to get people interested in being coaches, and then also retain them once they’re there,” said SFIA’s Karn. Aspen’s Minjares was blunter: “Too many coaches still have not completed the foundational training needed to keep kids safe and coach them well.”

Youth sports leans heavily on volunteer and part-time coaches, so the figures do not transfer directly to paid martial arts instructors. But the pressures named in the report are the ones school owners describe: training, expectations, recognition and keeping good people. They echo NASM’s finding, reported last week, that 59% of gym employees rate their employer’s support for continuing education as poor or nonexistent.

What to do about it

• Audit your first class. Have someone who has never trained book a trial and report back on every step, from the website to the drive home.
• Grow instructors from your own students. A leadership or instructor-trainee program that starts early gives committed students a role and gives you a bench. Schools that wait to hire finished instructors are fishing in a shrinking pond.
• Pay for training time. Put a scheduled, paid, recurring training hour on the calendar for assistants and instructors, including first aid and safeguarding.
• Make the career path visible. Write down what an assistant needs to do to become an instructor, and an instructor to become a program director, with what each step pays.
• Recognise your staff publicly. Recognition was one of the retention factors the report named, and it costs nothing.