Transitioning from a kid dojo to an adult dojo

[kempoangel]

Our studio has made an interesting shift in the last 6 months and we are rolling with and loving the change, so thought I'd share it here.

The majority of our student base used to be kids under the age of 15 and we offered extra programs like DEMO team and even had a tumbling/acrobatics instructor. We had a bumping business, but our love of martial arts had us yearning for more adults. Kids are great, but adult students are more rewarding from a martial arts stand point - in my opinion.

Our tumbling/acro teacher left suddenly, shaking up the kids program at our studio. At the same time we happened to be expanding the Eskrima program (and promoting our Kempo, Tai Chi, and Choi Lai Fut programs, each of which is headed up by a master level instructor in the discipline)...our kid enrollments dropped drastically, and our adult enrollments started increasing little by little. Once we realized the shift that was taking place we decided to capitalize on it and updated our website and marketing to reflect the studio as an adult training space - which it actually had been all along. The kids had sort of taken over the place. We even sold our Wavemasters and replaced them with heavy bags and a huge stack of tires that we use for weapons training.

Our studio is bumping once again, but our kids program has shrunken down to only those exceptional kids who truly love martial arts and whose parents understand that we will not be easy on the kids. They are held to very high standards. These kids are a blast to teach and they can do incredible things!

We have been telling people in no uncertain terms that we are NOT a karate day care center, even turning some potential students away because they felt our program was too "hard core". Just yesterday we lost a potential child student because the parent did not agree with us that a 7 year old boy should not be using baby talk voice all the time. I cannot tell you how satisfying it has become to recognize that not every potential student fits our school and that the instructors do not have to bow down to the wishes of parents who dislike their child being disciplined at the studio.

Just thought I would share because this has been an extremely liberating experience and I am proud to say that we are not a karate day care center, a McDojo or a belt factory.

[darksoul]

Good for you! Our dojo doesn't even take kids. Well the affiliate school that is run by a 2nd dan of our main dojo but Master Paquette himself only takes adults.

I'm totally for kids taking martial arts, but I think an adult-centric dojo will have better martial artists.

[Dobbersky]

YOu can have a good mix of Adult and Child classes. I have separate classes and have done for many years, I also run a separate syllabus too.

The Adult class tends to be more hands on teraching full application of the kata where as the Child's class tends to have basic application.

I agree about not having "baby talk" they need to show maturity and unlike school you don't have to teach them if you don't want too.

Good luck in your new adventure

OSU