How you introduce Fitness Kickboxing to your new students will have the single biggest impact on the success or failure of your program. You can have the best “butt-kicking” Fitness Kickboxing class in town, but if you don’t develop a systematic approach to introduce kickboxing to your new students, then you’ll always have a small, ...
Read More »Martial Arts Education
Create an Upturn at your School with a Proven Revenue Generator
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 ...
Read More »What is Kata For? It's More Than How to Hurt the Attacker – How Not to Hurt You
Part 5 of a Six-Part Series on Using Kata (or Form) For Martial Arts Development Some years ago, one of my instructors, Koyoshi Nishime Sensei (Cincinnati, Ohio), revealed to me a number of things about kata that I never understood. One of the most important concerned how the development of power was like a two-headed ...
Read More »What is Kata For? Fighting Is More Than Wildly Attacking
Part 4 of a Six-Part Series on Using Kata (or Form) For Martial Arts Development. Any instructor of my age grew up watching numerous dynamic and powerful boxers (read striking artists) from the 1950’s to the middle of the 1980’s. These men were in the heyday of their sport and, until self-serving and greedy promoters ...
Read More »Creating a Long-Term Vision, Part 2
Creating a long-term fitness program in your martial arts school is not as hard as you think. Most likely, you already have one in your conventional martial arts program. All you must do is sell it differently to the adult fitness market than you would to typical prospects looking for conventional martial arts. Fitness students ...
Read More »Taking MMA from the “Gym” to the “School”
As we move into a new year I believe that it’s an exciting one for our small but dedicated and eclectic industry. Ahead lie huge ...
Read More »Learn From Your Students
What I have learned during more than 30 years of teaching is the value of paying close attention to my students, with an eye toward learning from them. If you keep your eyes open, then you will invariably have that occasional situation that will cause you to pause and reflect on what you just experienced ...
Read More »The Need for Intensity…Somewhere…in Your Program, Part 2
Last month, I cited our need, as instructors, to help our students discover their weaknesses or failings that we can then help them eliminate. That makes what we do valuable-and worth whatever we charge for it. Allow me to relate an example, knowing that it might upset a few music fans, but I feel it ...
Read More »Promoting Safety in Martial Arts Fitness Classes
1) Make sure that everyone who enters your fitness classes is properly screened to ensure that they are physically capable of handling the class. 2) Students need to be brought slowly into the program with some type of introductory class, so the instructor can get to know students and evaluate their fitness level. This is ...
Read More »You'll Like the Results, when you Give your Students Exactly what they Need and Want
By Sang Koo Kang and Earl S. Bagan All of you who are reading this column most likely have been teaching martial arts for a number of years. Doubtless, you have also been studying martial arts and training for many years; most since you were young, and many for more than 20 years, or more. ...
Read More »