Marketing and advertising over substance and tradition.

I started in Karate and martial arts training at a very young age and have been sticking it out till nearly my 40^th birthday now and I can tell you I thought I had seen it all! But the more I train the stranger the “newest thing” has been and I can tell you that the old world styles don’t really work with the newer ideas most of the times.

It seems like Martial arts clubs are particularly susceptible to trend jumping or the act of taking up a trend to turn a buck! Now I know from experience that there is NO pot of gold for running a Dojo. Its like I tell my students, if you want to teach…do it for passion and your days and months will be a success, do it for money and you are setting yourself up for failure! However, some instructors don’t see it that way and will go to great lengths to make a buck…even when they don’t have one to make.

Out of Pocket

Training in martial arts should have few expenses; monthly dues (at a reasonable rate),uniform costs at an acceptable mark up, safety gear and a insurance or org fee…that’s about it for normal training. Maybe add the low cost of an odd tournament and when you want to grade a testing fee at some clubs…but MAN have I seen some horrible pay rates at some schools.

I was told by one student of mine who used to do a particular style of Kung fu that they charged for each KIND of class you took. For instance you paid $35 for a regular class monthly, $50 for a year in the organization fees, $25 for weapons classes, $45 for Sparring classes, $35 for Pre grading classes, $80 for testing fees, $40 for pre testing seminars and if you passed you registered your ranking for the low low price of $75! If you were to test every six months and do all the classes one level advancement would cost you $640 for the six months or $1280 for the year to go up two levels…our organization would cost you $ 695 today for a full year and four grades up at the end of the year!

We normally charge $35-$50 a month for monthly dues to train up to four times a week on average. I have met a student a few months back that trained three times a week at a local kickboxing and BJJ school was $170! And he could only pick one of the two options (Kick boxing or BJJ) to do! The facility was very nice….But really!

Trends

Now I don’t blame the local clubs for following trends to get students in the door. It’s a hard habit to break and an old one. When I started out in Karate we had just gone through the Judo phase. Judo was one of the only martial arts that most western people knew of because the pink panther and James bond both did Judo…or so they thought….and it was actually common, I am told, For Karate schools to have “JUDO” on the door and not Karate. Now it sounds confusing but if they put “SUSHI” on the door it probably would mean about as much to most potential students as “KARATE” so why not put Japanese JUDO on the door and explain it later to the uneducated students. I actually know of a student (older gent) that took his first grading in Karate and asked the instructor why the certificate said “Karate” on it when he thought he was learning Judo! And that was after six months of training.

It was also common for Karate instructors to actually teach Judo on the side to off set income because most people did not know what Karate was, or for Karate instructors to teach out of Judo clubs because Judo was making money and Karate was kind of an Add on!

Thanks to many magazine ads about a skinny kid getting sand kicked in his face in the 70’s and a combination of Bruce lee, Chuck Norris and several other movies, Karate finally found its place in mainstream martial arts…At this point their was a Semi-clear distinction set up….Judo was the wrestling from Asia and Karate was the striking and kicking one…both wore PJ’s but we knew the difference. One small exception was the short time it took us to figure out that China had Bruce Lees style of Pajama fighting with bird calls and Japan wore the white ones and screamed at each other! But we knew the difference and everyone went back to be truthful about what they taught!

The truthful teaching was over when Tae Kwon Do hit the street. Now we had Judo, Kung Fu (the cool think Bruce Lee did) and Karate…oh, and Korean Karate! Piggybacking Karate’s success was Tae Kwon Do, billed as the same thing...but with Korean written in the front! No exceptions made…it was Karate…or was it. Many certificates went out saying Korean Karate and the marketing was Awesome! Guys kicking 10 feet in the air and ads saying “this could be you”, “Most deadly form of Karate” and basically instructors were taught how to market before they learned how to teach!

The Korean styles played nice at first and entered open tournaments, which before that were filled with different styles of Karate and kung fu. They marketed and started showing that you were a “MASTER” if you were a black belt not some weird Japanese name like “Sensei” that only meant “instructor”. I actually remember having a conversation with a “new age Tae Kwon Do” guy that even if I trained with my instructor till I was 70 I would only be a Sensei…but five years and I could be a “MASTER” in Tae Kwon Do!

Now every movie trend that came along brought in new students to the Dojo. First we saw the Bruce Lee films and every Bird Calling moron showed up at our door wanting to join or better yet…challenge the JKA style….Granted I was one of those morons that wanted to join because of Bruce Lee…but at least I did not come in my Kung fu Black PJs with slippers on and trying to move around like a cinema star while doing “Whoooooo, Ahhhhhh, Yaaaaaa, Whooo” while swinging my arms around and trying to pick a fight….

Next movie trend was Chuck Norris and man did that bring in the mutton chops! My instructor had a pair of his own for the longest time and damn if he did not look like a slightly smaller version of Mr. Norris! Actually the Chuck Norris movie craze did a lot of good for Karate and we did not have any freaks….a lot of really tough cowboy like guys that were kind of rugged and needed to realize that Chuck probably showered more than twice a week…but they were tough!

We then had to face the new bread of idiot that would come out of the locker room in all black with split toe shoes (Actually happened once) or would ask at the front desk if we could teach them to disappear or use Nunchuks and throw steel stars at a target…NO we are not Ninja! The Ninja boom brought in a lot of early 80’s rabble to the club. Now unlike the Bruce Lee days and Chuck Norris days, we now had a Tae Kwon Do boom on our hands and the instructors were smart business people if not a bit shifty and questionable instructors. We actually saw a local TKD guy open up a ninja factory…No, no you read that right…a Ninja Factory! They even did stunt shows and demos, The Shadow team or some such thing. Embarrassing!

After the Ninja craze calmed down a bit and laws caught up to most of these Jokers we had a trend or movie craze that was actually good for the Karate Dojo’s again…sort of. We had the Karate kid come out. Business picked up and the students actually wanted to learn Karate for once in the last few years. Now I joined during the Bruce Lee phase but I was not really paying much attention to other kids or students till about this time.

The Karat kid movie brought in a lot of kids and young adults to the club, they all wanted to learn to not be bullied and it was a great time for Karate. However, everyone looked at my instructor and saw the little Irish guy as more the bad guy in the movie than the Japanese nice guy….ergo, we lost a lot of students to Tae Kwon do due to reverse racism. Funny thing is that my instructor was probably more Miyagi than most of those Koreans…whom were more like the Cobra Kai guy in their marketing.

Next up was a combo of Ninja turtles, Steven Segal and Van Damme wanna bes after their movies came out. And I must admit I am a fan of Martial arts movies…even if they are REALLY bad! After Segal and Van Damme were done came Mortal Combat and that was about it for the Movie martial arts trends that effected us. I mean even the Krav Maga styles of the 90’s did little for us, and the Krav guys did not capitalize on it to grow. Even the Aikido community as small as it was jumped on the Segal craze to grow in our little city! The TKD guys as usual took on some “Hapkido” style stuff and called it Korean Aikido…figures….

The next big phase was kick boxing, we had Muay Thai places pop up just about every place you can imagine. In gyms, stand alone clubs, community clubs and the like…then people started getting hurt. We did not do full contact, we kept to our Semi contact and stayed the path… Some clubs however started doing “armor” or “Full contact protected” fighting. Essentially it was full contact “what ever style” you were doing. People go board of being hurt and the sport fell to its proper place with young adults who don’t think much about the way they will feel and walk when they reach 40.

The next trend makes me laugh so hard sometimes. Tae Box/Tae Bo/ Box Bo/ Tae Kwon Box or what ever you want to call it. Now when Billy Blanks came out with his idea it was new, it was fresh, it was a great marketing idea that he deserves to be congratulated on…when 3 and 5 years later we have old Tae Kwon Do guys offering Tae Kwon Box in their clubs as an aerobics alternative and its basically Billy’s idea rehashed five times and “Made to fit Tae Kwon Do” well that’s just sad. The TKD guys were not the only ones however, we had Karate guys doing “Cardio kick” or “Cardio Karate” and dropping the sparring for reps and Kata as Drills and cardio work…well its equally as sad!

It was also kind of at this time we started seeing blue Gis, red Gis, hell the USA Flag made into a Gi…well it was a bit before this..but the belts also got thicker, more ornate and some morons started wearing red and white belts…when its not part of their tradition!

Through all of that the JKA of Manitoba kept teaching traditional Karate, we did the three K’s, developed tough fighters and some great sports guys, wore white PJ’s only, no flashy patches, and our black belts stayed the same length and width and pretty much only had our name and the JKA in Japanese on them…if anything at all…we looked very dull and we did not put on foam gloves and boots or boxing gloves, we did not nail each other over and over again or do our Kata to disco music. But we taught great Karate.

Now we are a decade into a new century and the JKA of Manitoba has two new trends that have popped up. One is MMA and the other BJJ. First off they are both Great. They are fantastic sports and martial arts and I applauded anyone that has the gumption to compete in a sport like MMA. But first off it’s a young mans sport and secondly those guys that are investing time and energy into its practice wont be doing it in 20 years, hell some wont last 5 years. So, unless the thrill of competition in that sport can help you out for short term training, its not worth investing that kind of training in it.

As a organization we can teach one component of the MMA realm of fighting and we have seen many fighters turn to Karate training for part of their puzzle in that sport….but we know we can not develop a guy that can go in and do it all….we never said we could. So, my question is…if you spend years getting good at a striking sport…why teach grappling. First off both are very difficult to learn and teach, to get really really good at one of them can take a decade of good training with a great instructor. But that instructor needs to know that much more about one than you do as a student. SO, do you really think it was a good idea for some Dojos (Karate and Tae Kwon do) to suddenly start offering BJJ classes…especially when they don’t know BJJ that well. Trust me its dangerous to teach anything if you don’t know the subject matter!

About two years ago an Ex-JKA dojo in the city started teaching BJJ as if it was easy, and then TKD clubs started to do the same. Now we have two very popular clubs teaching BJJ and they really don’t have a clue that it’s a matter of time before someone gets hurt! Its also sad and pathetic that they don’t have enough faith in their own “product” to just focus on that training style. I respect the hell out of good grappling schools and also good striking schools…but in all honesty you can not chase two cats ( a friend told me that) at the same time.

I did Judo coming up and also did some Sambo with family, but to be honest I got hurt a tone more doing those than Karate. They helped me a bit but the gods honest truth…I am not a great grappler. A junior of mine does BJJ and is actually fair at it. I used to grapple a bit with some students of mine when I was teaching a while back and watching him grapple and do a little with me…he is yards ahead of me in ground fighting. And that’s fine with me…I do Karate for the art of it…not to be the toughest guy around. If I get beat in a friendly grappling match up I am happy to have learned a bit out of it.

The point being here people, if you train in a martial art you better enjoy it, if you get to a level where you teach that art you better have some faith in it, and if you own a studio or club…don’t diversify into areas you don’t belong in. Its sad, its pathetic and if I were a student that walked into your club and saw a variety of classes all not related to the base art I am joining for…well I am walking out to a real traditional club.

Their has to be some substance and tradition to a traditional club…the marketing and bells and whistles wont make me any better at doing Karate or Tae Kwon do or whatever marketing ploy added on for “value added service” at the end of the day…