How do martial art schools deal with this?
How do martial art schools deal with new people joining? Say when it first starts there are 5 people in the class paying £50 a month for two lessons a week. Over time that class of people grows from 5-10-20-40 people, arn’t you getting less for your money and not as good training? Schools that have been running for a long time must have a lot of people in one class, this can’t be a good thing for people wanting to train can it?
Thanks for your answer!
Well a friend of mine runs a Jiu Jitsu club as a hobby and over time expansion is inevitable, to cope with this he separated the Kids and Adults in to two different time slots, and he employed the use of several assistant instructors who are also highly ranked, thus the individual can gain a similar amount of martial arts expertise, while training in a larger class.
Another idea is splitting the class is to further categories, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced, however this isn’t beneficial for the lower ranks as they will not be training with those higher ranks who will have more experience and know how, this will be detrimental for their training.
Kind Regards.
I never thought of it like that, but now you’ve said it i agree.
I used to pay £50 a month, then it went down to £40 because we had to move to a smaller place but the numbers stayed the same.
All it’s doing is increasing the instructors profits.
And i agree it is a lot better with less people, you get more attention and are more likely to progress.
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Black belt
Well a friend of mine runs a Jiu Jitsu club as a hobby and over time expansion is inevitable, to cope with this he separated the Kids and Adults in to two different time slots, and he employed the use of several assistant instructors who are also highly ranked, thus the individual can gain a similar amount of martial arts expertise, while training in a larger class.
Another idea is splitting the class is to further categories, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced, however this isn’t beneficial for the lower ranks as they will not be training with those higher ranks who will have more experience and know how, this will be detrimental for their training.
Kind Regards.
References :
Study three different combat forms, have friends who are instructors.
Usually higher level students become teacher assistants for the beginners.
Example:
Class begins with 5 students, brand new Tojo. These 5 students are now 4 levels ahead of any new students. When the Tojo grows and 10 new students enroll.
The Sensei, usually also the Dojo owner, will now assign 3 of his 5 original students to show the beginner how to apply the basics. This process will allow some of the original 5 students (supposing that not all 5 are available) to share their wisdom with their fellow classmates, and at the same time, will show the Sensei how well prepared they are.
Some Dojos may even reduce the monthly fee if you assist the Dojo by teaching those of lower levels.
So to answer your question, you are actually getting more for your money. 2 teachers, a very experienced one, and one who is just more like you, but in a more advanced level. This helps you feel confident when training because you know that your being taught by a more experienced Martial Artist, while supervised by the expert.
Hope this helps.
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I used to take martial arts a couple of years ago and there were only 10 people in the class, with 5 instructors with 2 persons each…they would not allow any new members cuz it would be uneven to the quantity of instructors and the personal touch may get lost.
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You always have a beginners class. You always have the lowest ranking dan teaching the basics or a designated black belt who is not interested in competition to teach the beginners.
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A good instructor will start the class. After warm up and basics the class will be split into two groups (or more) depending on what is best to train each student at their level. If everyone in a large class is kept together it will be a problem if some are new and other advanced. That should be a rare thing. If it becomes normal students will drop out. They simply can’t get the the right training if the class is either to basic or to advanced all the time.
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Over 41 years of martial arts training and research (since 1967)
Over 35 years of teaching martial arts (since 1973)
My school does limit class sizes mostly as a function of how big our training space is. 20 kids gets pretty tight, more than 15 adults and there’s not much room to move at all.
There are many positives to classes growing over time though. Learning martial arts does not have to be a 1 on 1 experience, it can be shared in a group.
- You have people who motivate you on days you’re down
- You have people who can help you remember something you forgot.
- When learning sparring or self-defense, it helps to have partners of various sizes, shapes, and strengths to help you figure out how to adjust for these things.
- More experienced students can give a different perspective on the art
- As you become more experienced, you learn more by teaching new students.
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Some places add more classes, like instead of 1 class a day they will do 2 so that there is room for new students. Some just take your money…
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A lot has to do with the teaching and communication skills of the instructor and their experience. I can teach a class of thirty-five pretty well but not every one can and that is thirty-five teens and adults-not children. You have to be organized and a good communicator and you also have to break the class up in groups sometimes and let them work independent of each other while you go from group to group correcting things and fine tuning them with each group and students in it. You can just keep them all in one group but that does not always work as well either as students will learn skills at a different pace sometimes. At the same time you have to really hustle and keep yourself moving from one group to the next. Having segragated classes will help make this all easier so I have my beginners through orange belt in one class followed by intermediate students (green and blue belts) in the following class and in the last class my advance students. A few classes each week are combined and that is when I have to really break them down into groups sometimes but not so much in classes where it is just one of those three groups. I might add that there are no children in the beginners group as they don’t handle that so well and tend to slow things down to much for older more mature students. Children have their own class until they reach the rank of green belt and then they can come to the intermediate class or the childrens class.
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