How long are the classes you teach?

[Montana]

Classes, for the most part, vary depending on age and rank and discipline, anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours.

IMO, a 30 min class is a waste of time. You hardly get a chance to warm up, and it's over.

Naw, a MINIMUM of 1.5 hours..2 is better.

[JR 137]

Classes, for the most part, vary depending on age and rank and discipline, anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours.

IMO, a 30 min class is a waste of time. You hardly get a chance to warm up, and it's over.

Naw, a MINIMUM of 1.5 hours..2 is better.

Not a waste of time to a 4 year old.

[Wado Heretic]

Not a waste of time to a 4 year old.

Very true; have to cater appropriately to who is coming through the door.

I only teach adults, or 14+ if they have an adult to acompany them and show appropriate maturity, and so anything less than an hour is indeed insufficient. However, 30 minutes for a child is often more than enough; most children struggle to focus on a task over 20 minutes.

Now, there is the question of the cost; is that 30 minutes worth the money paid by the parents? In that sense, even when I did teach younger children I did teach for an hour; I would focus on 20 minutes or so of Karate, and then fill the rest of the time with aerobic exercise and karate themed games. I did not frustrate myself by trying to get kids to do what they just can't, but they still learnt something and walked away able to say they enjoyed the class.

[JR 137]

Not a waste of time to a 4 year old.

Very true; have to cater appropriately to who is coming through the door.

I only teach adults, or 14+ if they have an adult to acompany them and show appropriate maturity, and so anything less than an hour is indeed insufficient. However, 30 minutes for a child is often more than enough; most children struggle to focus on a task over 20 minutes.

Now, there is the question of the cost; is that 30 minutes worth the money paid by the parents? In that sense, even when I did teach younger children I did teach for an hour; I would focus on 20 minutes or so of Karate, and then fill the rest of the time with aerobic exercise and karate themed games. I did not frustrate myself by trying to get kids to do what they just can't, but they still learnt something and walked away able to say they enjoyed the class.

I checked out a place for my daughter when she was 4. 1/2 hour once per week. The half hour part is fine, but I should be able to bring her more than once a week. The option to go twice would have been so much better.

Cost for 1/2 hour, once a week - $85 per month. Plus a contract. Price and contract aren't anything others aren't doing though. Ridiculous. They have a nonsense justification - more than once a week burns them out, and the contract teaches them commitment. 4 year olds don't get burnt out by playing for a 1/2 hour twice a week, and a contract certainly doesn't teach a 4 year old commitment.

It's not a McDojo, just questionable business practices/costs. The real reason for only going once a week IMO is so they can have more openings. Filling a class with 20 different kids 4 nights a week makes more money than the same 40 kids twice a week.

[Wado Heretic]

I have encountered a few places like that, and to be frank it is plain wrong and exploitative. I have had students come from such places when I was still teaching children, and I let them keep the belts they had achieved at said place (so as not to discourage them) but what they were capable of was below even what I consider my own very reasonable standards when it comes to children for 9th kyu. It was not a good situation, as I ended up having to split the class for my students who were up to standard, and these other kids I had to bring up to standard and teach that I run my class very differently.

It is an exploitative business practice, and does lead to McDojoness, because it puts money before quality of instruction.

Yes, if one is the owner of a dojo, or is renting a space, you have to make enough for the bills and in turn a profit to support yourself, and hopefully invest in improving the business. However, business models which exploit and produce dissatisfaction will sink you faster in the reputation based world of Martial Arts than anything else. Only so much is excusable, and sadly I have seen money affect people I thought would prove above it more often than not.

[IcemanSK]

When I was a gup student in the 80's, class was 2 hours long with a 2 minute break in the middle. That was fine when I was a teen. We did warm-up/stretching, basics, poomsae & sparring every class.

I teach one hour classes & encourage my teens to attend 2 classes back to back. It's a different world today.

[JR 137]

I have encountered a few places like that, and to be frank it is plain wrong and exploitative. I have had students come from such places when I was still teaching children, and I let them keep the belts they had achieved at said place (so as not to discourage them) but what they were capable of was below even what I consider my own very reasonable standards when it comes to children for 9th kyu. It was not a good situation, as I ended up having to split the class for my students who were up to standard, and these other kids I had to bring up to standard and teach that I run my class very differently.

It is an exploitative business practice, and does lead to McDojoness, because it puts money before quality of instruction.

Yes, if one is the owner of a dojo, or is renting a space, you have to make enough for the bills and in turn a profit to support yourself, and hopefully invest in improving the business. However, business models which exploit and produce dissatisfaction will sink you faster in the reputation based world of Martial Arts than anything else. Only so much is excusable, and sadly I have seen money affect people I thought would prove above it more often than not.

I know the quality of instruction there is pretty good, as it's a dojo in the organization I used to be a part of (my former Sensei left the organization and moved his dojo closer to his home). They've calmed down a bit and have distanced themselves from their Kyokushin and Seido (when Seido was bare knuckle) roots, but the quality is still better than most places around. It's just expensive.

Most places around me have gotten rid of the monthly rate with a yearly contract, and have gone to black belt plans. You pay a fixed amount of money, up front or with money down and monthly payments, and you stay until you earn your black belt. Once all the glorified daycare TKD McDojos in the area did it (not all TKD is this, please don't feel like it's a blanket statement), just about everyone else followed suit. It seems like a me all the full time professional dojos do this, while the part time ones that are run by people with day jobs are month to month or even pay per class.

[The Pred]

Not a waste of time to a 4 year old.

Very true; have to cater appropriately to who is coming through the door.

I only teach adults, or 14+ if they have an adult to acompany them and show appropriate maturity, and so anything less than an hour is indeed insufficient. However, 30 minutes for a child is often more than enough; most children struggle to focus on a task over 20 minutes.

Now, there is the question of the cost; is that 30 minutes worth the money paid by the parents? In that sense, even when I did teach younger children I did teach for an hour; I would focus on 20 minutes or so of Karate, and then fill the rest of the time with aerobic exercise and karate themed games. I did not frustrate myself by trying to get kids to do what they just can't, but they still learnt something and walked away able to say they enjoyed the class.

I checked out a place for my daughter when she was 4. 1/2 hour once per week. The half hour part is fine, but I should be able to bring her more than once a week. The option to go twice would have been so much better.

Cost for 1/2 hour, once a week - $85 per month. Plus a contract. Price and contract aren't anything others aren't doing though. Ridiculous. They have a nonsense justification - more than once a week burns them out, and the contract teaches them commitment. 4 year olds don't get burnt out by playing for a 1/2 hour twice a week, and a contract certainly doesn't teach a 4 year old commitment.

It's not a McDojo, just questionable business practices/costs. The real reason for only going once a week IMO is so they can have more openings. Filling a class with 20 different kids 4 nights a week makes more money than the same 40 kids twice a week.

That does kind of blow that you're paying 85 for just once a week. Does your dojo have enough room and or instructors so that you can have a 4 year old class on at the same time as a regular kid class, and just have it end earlier?

[JR 137]

I'm not sending her to that dojo. She comes with me. Where I go, it's $55 for adults, and $45 for kids. There's $10 off for each family member (1 adult pays full price). So it's $90 for both of us ($55 + $35).

She had to wait until she was 5 to get in, and she had to 'audition' so to speak. My dojo doesn't take kids under 6, but if there's an adult who's been training, my CI will let a 5 year old try a few classes to see if they're mature enough. His criteria is if they're focused and can follow directions. He saw all he needed to see in the first 10 minutes to say she can stay. She started at the end of November. She's been going once a week for an hour because she's usually too tired after school or has other activities during the week. I get her in twice some weeks. There's 4 classes she's able to attend, and no limit on which nor how often.

The best day of my karate life was her first day. I was far prouder of her training than anything I've ever accomplished in the dojo. Still am. I have an almost 3 year old that begs to go and is her practice partner at home. I just wish we had a family class where kids line up next to their parents. I talked to my CI about it, but we don't currently have the numbers to do it. It would be me and one other parent. He says he'll let us do it during special workouts down the road, but she's not capable of hanging with us during those yet.

[Nidan Melbourne]

When I was a gup student in the 80's, class was 2 hours long with a 2 minute break in the middle. That was fine when I was a teen. We did warm-up/stretching, basics, poomsae & sparring every class.

I teach one hour classes & encourage my teens to attend 2 classes back to back. It's a different world today.

I can understand that back in the day 2 hour classes would have been the norm because the operating costs would have been low, so the instructors could operate classes for a longer amount of time.

But unfortunately these days locations and the general overhead is quite expensive. Which puts a lot of schools off from operating for longer amounts of time.

All of my clubs classes are 1 hour in length, but we encourage students to attend a minimum of twice per week. For our Juniors they can attend a maximum of 4 classes per week. Our Seniors on the other hand can train 3 x per week.

On Mondays we encourage Green Belts and Above to do a double class for our seniors program as to benefit their training. Especially since we do their curriculum in that class. But Our Wednesday Advanced Class is restricted to 2nd Kyu and Above to due to large amount of curriculum that they need a strong understand of prior to grading.

Personally I train twice a week and for two hours each time (so I do double classes) to get more out of class and for me to travel 15 km i want to make my time worthwhile there.

We don't focus on the full 3 K's every single class as we feel like that isn't a productive class where you will retain all that information. Our approach is do a warm up, then work on some basics then undertake whatever tests that we have to focus on. Usually 1/2 of the class time is for teaching new or reviewing techniques whilst the rest is for testing.