Lots of Martial Arts Schools Are Closing?

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Forum
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Survey Results

Okay, so I raised this topic at lunchtime with my co-workers about what they’re doing with their time, and here were the comments from people.

General consensus is that they’re not doing very many activities and things as they once did.

Common themes:

a) Too much traffic, high property taxes, getting old (health problems), taking care of kids. Their kids are all in activities like sports, martial arts, etc.
b) Several people said they have signed up for video subscription services (video.google.com, for example), so they spend a lot of time watching that.
c) A lot of shows on television (Desperate Housewives, The Shield, etc, etc. etc.).
d) Spare time with home maintenance, fixing up the house, etc.

Basically they don’t have a lot of free time or money and what free time they do have seems to be spent watching their new big-screen TVs.

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Yes it does. How would you say that any particular style of martial art was able to survive for hundreds of years? Do you think a style or martial art survives on individual techniques or is it through the individual interpretation of those techniques through forms?

What I’m getting at is, you and I can interpret different applications from the same techniques in a form.

If you teach me one application, all I have is that one application. If you teach me a form, I can extract many many different applications.

A punch is a punch but a form defines a style. Saying a form is useless is just like throwing away hundreds of years of combat tested information.

I don’t know about you but I would rather learn from history rather than say it is useless and just throw it away. To each his own, I guess.

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Sad but true.

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Some martial arts forms seem to be condensed, such as Xingyi or taiji, but some martial arts forms are not condensed like some forms of Fut Sao, etc.. The main reason I’m against forms is because many teachers these days do not know many or teach many applications of the forms. I personally don’t want to waste my time learning a lot of forms and getting corrected only to find out the teacher doesn’t know the applications. I disagree with you in ‘finding applications’ of the forms. This just seems to mean people make up weird stuff that doesn’t work.

IMHO (and I have a large library of VCDs from China to support this that I went through this weekend and am throwing away), most of the martial arts from China the applications were lost and now people are making up stupid stuff.

But that’s just one person’s opinion, in case Judge Pen is reading this. LOL

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Well I didn’t say “finding applications”. I said “extract” and “interpret”. You may do a technique a certain way because it works with your style and body type. I may do the same technique a different way because it works better with my style and body type. Same technique with two different interpretations.

But who am I to argue with you and your 20 years plus of studying your large VCD collection. :rolleyes:

Good luck finding a new school. :smiley:

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I’m not looking for a new school. LOL I found a couple of leads on places to train, but they’re not schools.

No, I bought those VCDs from China to check on how the martial arts coming out of China are now, if they’re mostly wushu or what, if there’s any use going to China to train. Turns out it’s mostly really weird stuff. I don’t think it’s worthwhile going to china.

If I want to learn a ton of Chinese forms with dubious lineage taught in an acrobatic manner, I don’t have to go to the Shaolin temple, all I have to do is go to Shaolin-Do. :slight_smile:

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hi neil,

i understand it can be frusterating going to a new school and “relearning” ma. even within a single system teachers perform their arts a bit different.

have you thought about opening your own school? i think you said you have 20+ years of practice. if you have your own school you can do and teach what ever you want.

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Seriously, I have considered it many times. But there are a few problems with that, financial, liability and political. I don’t want to teach kids and around here there isn’t a market for non-MMA non health oriented schools that I can tell. Plus, I can’t find a MA liability policy over 2 million, so if somebody gets hurt and sues me for more than that, I’m kindof screwed.

The political problem is the only style I have a senior rank in is basically closed-door and I can’t really teach it out without seriously making my teacher mad. I thought I would teach once my teacher retires in a few years, but he told me he’s planning on teaching for another 10 years until he’s well into his '70s! (ouch!) Maybe he will change his mind. But if he even knew I was talking on forums, he’d be extremely upset.

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i am sure there are many ways to protect yourself from being sued. do more research.

why wont your teacher give you permission to teach? would you be in compitition with him for students?

since you do not want forms it seems, if you were upfront with your students would you need to teach you teachers system?

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I better not say anymore since it’s a highly political situation.

Suffice it to say that there’s no money in this anyway, so it’s pointless to try and teach other styles I don’t want to practice. I don’t think I could convince people to study with a non-ranked (or medium-ranked) person in other styles anyway.

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Never say never…

Suffice it to say that there’s no money in this anyway, so it’s pointless to try and teach other styles I don’t want to practice. I don’t think I could convince people to study with a non-ranked (or medium-ranked) person in other styles anyway.

I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to convince people to study with you whether you are ranked or not. Traditional Kung Fu has no ranks. I have no rank but I have black belts (some from another town) from other arts that come to me. The key is that you need to be exceptionally good at what you are doing (not saying that I am exceptionally good) or that you have a vision and organized materials for the potential student to achieve the goal and their best. The truth is when you have good stuff, people will come to you even if it’s by word of mouth (the best advertising there is).

So worry about polishing and perfecting your program rather than worrying about people are going to come or not.

Mantis108

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I’ve been driving 30 miles each way once a week for the last two years for private lessons, but outside of that I haven’t set foot in the dojo much at all. For me it boils down to spending time with my family or spending time doing the three Ks over and over. I’m also using some of the time I used to spend in the dojo to get to the gym with my wife and get a good workout in. I’m surrounded by so-called affluent neighborhoods, but people have ****ed away alot of money on extra big houses and new cars so I can see why they’ve cut back on activities. It’s funny seeing these 3600 sq foot $600,000 homes devoid of furniture. They’ll cut back even more when they have to heat the **** things.

And now we’re getting into the summer dojo duldrums when attendance always goes down.

Sorry to hear about your school Oso, have you thought of subletting it to other schools to reduce empty floor time? The guy that I know bought some top of the line mats when he opened his school and that made it easy for some Aikidoka and now a BJJ guy to set up shop in his school.

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lion dance

Greetings, any schools here teaches lion dance?
Gd day,
Joshua

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Rogue:

I just had an opportunity to do that. You must have missed my “Ya’ll check me on this” thread.

I met a tai chi lady who seems to know her stuff…cute little chinese lady about 4’11. But…her tan tui style kicks put mine to shame (well, that’s not saying much)…anyway, she seems to know her stuff and is very energetic and obviously excited to teach her tai chi…short version: we worked out a deal where she would start teaching 2 times a week. I was going to let her teach for the month of April for free and then do a 30/70 split with her. Well, they hung a few flyers around town…I got them a demo at the local community college…and they came for the first two days in April and then didn’t show for the 3rd class because ‘no one is coming’. I gave them a short dissertation on the number of times I was sitting in the gym aerobics room by myself the first year I was trying to teach and haven’t called them back. Next time they call me, it’s going to be a flat $25 an hour to rent the space…ya bend over backwards for someone and they just don’t get it…

trying to work a gig with the local Girl Scout chapter to start doing some SD classes. I did one for a troop and the girls dug it and the leader was real happy with the things I said.

not giving up yet…it’s just real low at the moment.

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Hi Oso,

Hang in there, buddy. You can do it. :wink:

Warm regards

Mantis108

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Thanks, Robert. Frankly, I can’t give up…I don’t know what I’d do.

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Oso, you have a school in Asheville … Tong Long Men … sounds like some sort of Mantis. You probably have at least one form you can do nice and slow like they do Yang Tai Chi these days.

Just market the crap out of it. Claim this is the best thing for health, claim Buddhist Taoist influences. (Heck, what Chinese MA can’t claim Buddhist or some Taoist influence), stick up fliers all over UNC and in the cafes and all that.

Or teach women’s rape prevention. That should be a big one. “Get healthy and in shape while you learn how to protect yourself.” Get a lot of padding and have them attack you.

Or teach to seniors …

Start Asheville’s “Little Mantis” kids program. Offer deals for the entire family or something.

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neil: I know we’re going around and round on the forms subject and to be honest I was a little bored at work yesterday. So I apologize for being argumentative.

It sounds like what you really need is just a couple of good training partners that you can hook up with a few times a week.

I go to my sifu’s house twice a month for instruction. The rest of the month I meet up with friends to review the material.

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working on that as well…except it’s “Little Bears”…not really. maybe ‘mantis bears’…yea, just get with Mephesto and…

this is a funky town for MA. very thick with over 20 schools trying to do their thing with a population of 70k or so…and there are another 8 or so schools in the county as well.

but, thanks for the input.

as far as forms and how old they are and what the ‘old masters’ did…what I’m hearing more and more of is that very few forms pre date the mid 1800’s.

Cheif Fox: I totally agree with what you are saying about how you can interpret a move in a form a bunch of different ways. In the karate world, the differentiate between that interpretation, bunkai, and the ‘original’ intent of the form creator…can’t remember what they call it…starts with an ‘o’ I think.

anyway, I find it great fun to figure out different ways to apply the principles or movements in a form. But, under the KISS rule…you don’t really want a bunch of different options floating around in your head. You certainly can’t train them all to a good enough degree to be reflexive.

I think this is where ‘modern traditional’ (post 1900) has maybe made some mistakes in propagating too many forms and the idea that those forms are the be all and end all.

just my thoughts.:slight_smile:

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Oso,
Have you tried referral programs? Things such as having a “bring your friend” day, where all your current students have to bring in at least one person on a designated, and you have a specific, really high energy class for them (and even putting your students in front to lead sometimes), and then give an incentive to your students to have their friends to join, such as, whoever has the most people sign up gets a 3-section staff, for example.

Most of the time, it seems that what is needed is to just get people to the door. If you have good content, and are a great instructor with a great personality, that tends to sell itself. Getting people to the door is the biggest challenge.

As for getting your name out there, have you looked into the idea of doing a fundraiser? Like doing a Punch-A-Thon or a Kick-A-Thon, where each of your students take pledges from their friends, family, coworkers, etc., to sponsor them in an event to throw 1000 punches or 100 kicks. The money all goes to a charity, it’s a special event that’ll get students excited and on top of their game, and best of all, the media loves covering fundraising events, so it’s free publicity. Some successful MMA do a Grapple-A-Thon, and some TKD schools do a Break-A-Thon.

You may want to solicit local publications and tell them that you’re willing to write columns about martial arts. Anytime there’s a story about where martial arts are involved, a lot of times, it’s written by non-martial artists. Offer this service, and I think you’ll be surprised.

Are you friends with other business owners in town? You may want to have a setup with them where they hand out your card/brocuhure to their customers, and for every person that joins, you can give them a percentage of your enrollment fee (like $50 or so). You can do this same method with other martial arts schools who are vastly different from yours, like say, a grappling or throwing school, or even TKD schools.

Marketing is tricky. Demos and flyers can only do so much. They tend to work better when you have other marketing methods (like what I mentioned above) in place simultaneously.

Are you the only Kung-Fu guy in town?

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