LionsDen

As others have said, as a 3rd dan you should be plenty qualified to open a dojo be teach assuming your sensei did his job right. Two things to think about. Are you actually looking to teach, or are you looking to have a place nearby to train? Do you have any clue about the business side of running a dojo? To help formulate a plan and see how familiar you are with the business side, maybe pretend we’re investors on shark tank and you’re trying to get us to give you money, and tell us about your dojo and what’s so great about it. Reading your later posts now I see you primarily want a local place to train, if that’s your primary motivation for opening a dojo just create a home gym to train in. If you really want to make an attempt at making teaching a career or a side hustle, then go for it.

point sparring was originally intended to be a game or drill done inside the dojo, which is why it has such major and obvious flaws.that being said most of the biggest flaws of today come from the light contact format that dominates, how strictly that light contact is enforced via 'excessive contact' penalties or similarly named penalties. look back to the 70's and 80's and you'll see strikes resulting in knockdowns, being only in my early 30s i can't say for sure what the actual rules were regarding contact back then but based off of several videos i have seen from the time, it seems that excessive contact penalties were rare, if ever called. It honestly looked much more like what we saw in the original karate kid series back during that time, than it does now. i do think there was a good reason for point sparring to be created as it helps to promote a good solid defense when not done in a light contact context, and even in a light contact context is possibly the single best method of learning distance, and timing. even non-karateka MMA fighters have taken seminars/lessons in point fighting to be able to better understand those concepts. I used to hate point fighting when i was younger but now i just accept it for what it is, a fancy game of tag. if people think point fighting will turn you into a real fighter i just ignore them and move on with my life.

yep, what classifies as a bargain, or luxury pricing will vary based on location. $100/month is pretty steep for my area median income being around $28k, but the Hollywood hills might see $100/month as too cheap to convey a sense of quality.

Training bukjinkan is a bad idea no matter what. It’s all a made up modern fraud.

If you’re used to light contact point fighting only, then no, very little point fighting will translate to MT. However kickboxing in Japan and the US does come from karate’s experiences in MT during the early 60s.

I agree, that’s exactly what happened with kickboxing. However if KC sticks around it is very clearly karate, and the modern karateka in MMA are very open about how their karate is applicable to actual fighting. Something that didn’t happen historically.

I hate posts like this. Most TMAs don’t actually train to fight, meaning the practitioners will likely get their butts kicked ‘in da streetz’ As someone who has fought people an average of once per shift for over a year, I can tell you that my experience in combat sports prepared me for real world violence much more than any TMA training I’ve done. I’ve also never had someone try to gouge my eyes, kick my balls, pull my hair. I’ve had people attempt to bite and scratch me both are pretty easily avoidable. On top of all this, all of the ‘street techniques’ that TMAs claim to teach never really get trained by them with any sort of resistance so they’re no more likely to be able to do those sort of technique than a combat sport fighter, nor are they any more likely to be able to defend against such techniques any better. I’ve fought people who were drunk, high on many different substances, and just down right bat poo crazy.

The fantasy scythe isn’t a real weapon. I agree it’s cool but not really a weapon, outside of militias suddenly mustering with farming tools as weapons

Classical- pre export to Japan Traditional- 1930ish-2010s Future-…the future Miyagi once said something along the lines of “we need to open our doors to other styles for critique, and learn from them” Not sure when this was said, but I believe it comes from an old school mind set about being effective and open minded. And imho that mind set of effectiveness and open mindedness has largely been lost during the traditional period. I am currently seeing some movement away from the traditional mindset back towards something a bit more classical, but that won’t likely resemble classical karate in practice. I say this because of the relative successful but ultimately short lived karate culture channel on YT, and karate combat league both seem to have represented a movement away from the more traditional karate. Just curious what the general consensus is around here. Will the traditional era of karate continue, and will the traditional training methods continue to dominate, or is the future of karate something else after roughly 90years?

Unfortunately the area is a very weirdly set up space that minimizes the space available for training One area is like 17x13, and the other is about 8x6 And that 600-800 ft of space also includes the viewing area for parents

If his own business is struggling and would have seriously suffered without your free labor I would honestly not advise you pay any major fee up front, and tell him that my free labor counts as an up front payment as you probably saved him at least $10k in that time just from working for free, not to mention keeping students in the dojo. For my organization I pay $200/year and that gets my students access to several dojos all throughout the US, and a few in other countries. What exactly will you really be gaining from this business relationship? I’d say either no up front fee but give him a small percentage, no more than 5%, or a smaller recurring annual fee. Both ways he’s motivated to keep helping you do better. If you give him 10k up front and a % he may not even care if your dojo goes under in a year or two. Alternative option. Keep teaching under him, but for pay, and make yourself his right hand man and learn what he does right, and what he does wrong and then open your own independent dojo while remaining on friendly terms and you guys can still both provide your students the benefit of training at both dojos.

I get a kick out of the fact they say that and they teach karate…

So an interesting thing I’ve learned in the last month or so, is that middle of the road pricing tends to be bad for business. When people spend money they want to feel good about spending that money. This for many people means feeling like they got a good deal, or feeling like they got something high quality or exclusive. So if you look around and the highest charging schools are $200/month and the lowest are $50/month, trying to split the difference at $125 may actually discourage potential students/customers because theyll see the lower end as a better bargain and the higher end as better quality or more exclusive.

The first 2-3 years may not have generated any profit at all. They had one sponsor per year as far as I ever saw, but now they also have a deal with CBS to be aired on cable tv. How did they pay people if they didn’t generate any profit in the first few years? Investors. They had a handful of wealthy investors who gave them money.

Also I gotta say, I was the martial arts program director for an athletic facility, and it was a mcdojo that they ran with the last guy, but I was lucky enough to have about 80% free reign to do as I pleased. However they wanted testings done for everyone during regular class time, regardless of how long they’ve been training or how well they’re progressing. Luckily they don’t charge extra for testing, but I thought this was a generally poor tactic as it made me feel pressured to pass people regardless, or have to deal with the loss of confidence resulting from the failure. One option is that if you run into such a situation is you could discreetly discuss the issue with the student (if 18+) or their parent and offer to pay that extra $50. Or approach the owner and ask about setting up a jar or something people added a few bucks to here and there that would be used to help pay for the BB program of under privileged students. There’s always options, sometimes you just need to think outside of the box to find them though.

Have you suggested that many students may quit and this policy will likely result in a net loss of income over time?

Over 20 years of goju ryu, 4th dan. Most of that time teaching in some capacity. Very limited semi-formal judo training. Coached an MMA team for about 1.5-2 years. Soon to be opening my own dojo after working as the martial arts program director for a local athletic facility.

I totally understand that, but I’m tired of doing jobs I hate.

I’m going to assume that teaching is not your primary source of income then?

Welcome to KF, LionsDen; glad that you're here!! Thanks, hopefully the pace of discussion will pick up now

God I don’t even want to think about that. I was a total cry baby with no self confidence or self esteem when I started training. I likely never would have felt I’d be a good fit for security work without karate I’d have likely never joined the navy without karate I’d likely be much worse off in life without karate unless I had gotten into a different style.

I am opening dojo in the lower level of my home, after a renovation. Due to the size and layout, I don’t have a lot of working space so I am limiting to 5 students per class. I have about 1200-1800sq ft, but really only about 600-800 of that is usable. Anyone else have to start off like that? What strategies did you find helpful? How much did you charge? Did you charge per class, week, month, etc?

there are a lot of elite level kickboxers in MMA, but i think there needs to be a caveat to that, because modern KB in japan, and the US, comes from karate, and many of those elite level kickboxers are also karateka who spent years training karate, and chose to test that karate via kickboxing.Edit Also to address the sport specific training angle, we’re roughly 30 years into formal MMA’s large scale rise and many MMA gyms are still coaching serious fighters in individual single styles for both striking and grappling, and then combining them, and most fighters still have an individual martial art as a base rather than being ‘pure’ MMA fighters. It’s my opinion that if training ‘pure’ mma were the best method and route to go, we’d see a lot more of that, especially at the higher levels. It doesn’t seem to be the correct approach because it seems to be better to have an area of expertise that’s extremely strong, either in striking or grappling which is kinda hard if you’re training ‘pure’ mma. If you’re a jack of all trades master of bone pure mma type, you might be able to out grapple a high level boxer, kickboxer, nak Muay, etc. but will you be strong enough of a grappler to overcome their striking AND the lie take down defenses? If you’re a jack of all trades you might be able to out strike a high level grappler, but is your striking and takedown defense capable of keeping you on your feet against a high level grappler?

considering some of the biggest names of karate from some of the earliest days of MMA in general and the UFC in particular were karateka, and karateka continue to fill the ranks of MMA fighters at all levels, then i'd say yes. over on sherdog theres a thread dedicated to listing and tracking the professional MMA fighters who are karateka, and i believe the initial list is over 200, with like 10 more pages of discussion and new fighters being brought up. would MMA have grown like it has without karate? yes would MMA have grown like it has without MT? yes would MMA have grown like it has without any specific single martial art? yes i believe so. i think karate deserves to be recognized as an important base martial art for the past and present of MMA.

any school/gym/dojo that has to talk about loyalty to a style or to the school, or to them in particular probably isn't a great place to learn. 1. good instructors will inspire loyal students/customers just by being good at what they do. 2. its often a method to make it seem shameful to look at other schools/gyms/dojos to get a better understanding of yourself, and fighting remember most schools are for profit businesses providing a service. the only thing you owe them is the money you pay for classes. if at any time you feel that service is not worth the money, you have no obligation to stick around. even if you find the service acceptable, you are under no obligation not to simultaneously cross train another style or completely different art some where else if another place/style/art catches your fancy and you can afford. attempting to tell people they have to or need to be loyal to me is a sign that they doubt their own teaching ability, or that they doubt the efficacy of their own style/art.