Martial Vitality

Used martial arts gear. Serious person not included. How does your school manage its inventory of used training equipment? In  How Super Was the Martial Arts SuperShow?  I promised to share more martial arts business  tips that I picked up at the SuperShow in July. In this post I will share a brief note on managing used training equipment. When I train, I don't place a lot of emphasis on the condition of the equipment. So long as it still performs its intended function, I am fine with seeing signs of use. Newer students might not think this way. They have not yet developed the cues of quality that a more experienced martial artist might use. For example, I am much more interested in watching how the more senior students move than I am in the condition of a kick shield. Nevertheless, all equipment can degenerate to the point where it's not effective, or potentially even unsafe for use. As an instructor, I believe you have a duty to your students to train them in a safe man...

Have you ever broken a board? If you practice a Karate or Tae Kwon Do-related system, I assume the answer is yes. So what's the point, especially for kids? In this post, part of my series on martial arts business practices, I will share why board breaking might be a tool for attracting and motivating younger martial artists, and perhaps even their families. Several of the  Martial Arts SuperShow (MASS) speakers talked about the power of board breaking, especially for kids. At the time of the show, I had little experience with the kids version of the exercise. I had only broken boards as an adult during my year in military intelligence school, when I studied Tae Kwon Do. I remembered thinking it was a fun exercise, and that I needed to pay close attention to placement and punching or kicking "past the board." So how could this be useful for kids? The MASS business consultants discussed board breaking in several contexts. First, they offered four benefits for kids who bre...

Does your martial arts school run using systems? I was unfamiliar with this approach until I attended the Martial Arts SuperShow earlier this month. I participated in several excellent business-oriented seminars designed to help martial arts school owners and instructors improve the quality of their operation and offerings. I took pages and pages of notes, and here I will begin converting them into coherent posts that I hope you will find valuable, either as a martial arts school owner, instructor, or student. The term "systems" refers to methods of conducting business or offering services to prospects and clients. In my military and corporate lives I've heard the terms "playbooks" or "standard operating procedures" (SOPs) as synonyms. The idea is to define sets of actions that you purposefully implement in order to maximize your chances to accomplishing a desired and explicit goal. For example, your school could establish systems for any or all of th...

Many of us have participated in tournaments, seminars, and workshops, but have you ever attended a martial arts business event? Earlier this month I attended my first Martial Arts SuperShow . I wanted to learn more about the business side of martial arts, and the SuperShow seemed to offer exactly what I wanted. The SuperShow is the annual conference presented by a partnership of the Martial Arts Industry Association and Century Martial Arts . It combines business-themed seminars on attracting, retaining, and developing students and teachers, with physically-oriented training by well-known martial arts and combatives instructors. What really sealed the deal for my attendance, however, was the prospect of two of non-business seminars. The head of Krav Maga Global (KMG), Eyal Yanilov , was scheduled to teach a three hour session on one day, and a separate one hour session on a second day. The chance to train personally with Mr. Yanilov was too good to pass up! My plan for blog posts dur...