Episode 539 - What to Do if Your Martial Arts School Shuts Down
In this episode, Jeremy talks about What to Do if Your Martial Arts School Shuts Down during these hard times.
What to Do if Your Martial Arts School Shuts Down - Episode 539
The COVID-19 Pandemic has closed a lot of establishments both permanently and temporarily, martial arts schools included. So, if this is the unfortunate reality for you, you don't need to give up on your martial arts and see this as an opportunity instead. In this episode, Jeremy talks about What to Do if Your Martial Arts School Shuts Down. Listen in to know some suggestions and advice from a former school owner if ever the situation happens to you.
Show Transcript
Jeremy Lesniak:
How's it going everybody? Welcome. This is whistlekick Martial Arts Radio episode 539. Today we're talking about what to do if your martial arts school shuts down. My name is Jeremy Lesniak, I'm your host for the show. I am the founder here at whistlekick and I love the traditional martial arts. That's why everything we do here at whistlekick is in support of the
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I wish I didn't have to do this episode but I'm getting questions. I'm getting a lot of questions on this subject and I thought “You know what, I think it's time to put together some of this information instead of just copy and pasting it into emails.” What do you do if your martial arts school closes up? If we're talking about some kind of temporary closure, that's one thing. That's different, that's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about permanent and unfortunately we have a lot of people facing this challenge right now. This is not an easy time to be a martial artist.
So what do you do? The first thing you do is you don't give up. Just because your martial arts school is closing, it does not mean your martial arts journey is at an end. It doesn't mean that you have to go find a new hobby or a new pursuit. If you enjoy training, honestly, it's an opportunity. Every time a door closes another one opens. It's a cliche for a reason. It doesn't mean you're going to find a school that is the same. It doesn't mean that everything will be “normal” but it does mean that you have an opportunity to do something a little bit differently or maybe even dramatically differently and that can be better. Remember, you can't have progress without change. Who you are as a martial artist today is different from who you are,
who you were rather, as a martial artist before. I would assume you've gotten better and that betterment required change.
Once you've resolved not to give up, what's the next thing you do? You show support to the instructor. If your school is closing, whether it's by choice or by force, that is going to be difficult on the school owner and they are going to need your support. They've supported you, it's time to turn it around. Now this doesn't mean financial, although there may be some opportunities to support them financially and we'll talk about that as we go further, but emotionally let them know that you're not mad. Send them a card. Thank them for all that they've done for you.
I've shut down a school before. It was my choice and it was still a gut-wrenching decision. I still, 20 years later, 19 years later, feel awful about doing it. It was the right decision but it doesn't mean that it was an easy one.
On the other side of that, connect with the other students. I know some schools where the students who are kind of left out in the cold by a school closing have gotten together to train. Maybe they get together once a week and take turns leading or they're working on the stuff that they know. If for no other reason, then they don't want to lose the community that they've built through that class. There are a lot of specifics on how that could operate but I don't think we have to get there. I don't think we have to unpack that because if you get together with the people you're training with, it's probably just gonna work out, that's okay.
Now that doesn't mean necessarily that that's where you stay. Maybe it's supplemental, maybe it's for fun. There are a lot of reasons you might do that, maybe it's temporary. Maybe someone in that group can step up and lead. Maybe you will form a new school. Maybe you'll have the senior rank who maybe isn't quite ready to lead a school on their own, get some pretty heavy help, maybe from the former instructor or maybe from somebody else.
There are a lot of ways you can do this if the people involved want to remain involved. If you want that school to stick around in some fashion, you can do it. Let's say you really like the instructor you have and you're really sad that you're not going to get to train with him anymore, maybe that person will train with you one-on-one. This is something that I've been doing. To work one-on-one even once a month with your instructor and then train on your own or maybe that instructor, maybe if you've put that group together, maybe they'll come out once a month or every other month. Maybe you can make it worth their while, there are options. And the beauty of that of kind, of kind of keeping your claws in that instructor is maybe once the pain of whatever happened wears off, maybe they'll agree to start teaching again. It can be really hard to let go of your martial arts school and when someone does, it doesn't mean that it's forever. Now let's say you want to remain in the same style. Let's say the other stuff that I've talked about so far hasn't worked out. One of the things i see a lot of people are doing right now and I think this is a pretty good approach, it's not perfect but it checks a lot of boxes, consider a hybrid approach of online pre-recorded sort of training. Self-directed practice coupled with
occasional in-person training and why do I say it this way? Because most of the time if you're going to stay within the same style, you're probably going to need to travel to work with someone who knows all the same forms and does all the same stuff. We've had people on the show who have traveled significant distances to do stuff like this.
Is this a perfect approach? No, of course not but it balances the things that are important and this is really, this is when you're looking to train in a specific style. You could apply this to any style really but I recommend this most for someone who you know, let's say you're training in some kind of a niche thing or some particular variant of Karate or Taekwondo or Kung Fu or whatever and you want to keep doing that same thing - that's totally cool. This is the method that I recommend, assuming you don't have someone locally that teaches the same thing.
Now let's say that sort of setup isn't going to work for you, but maybe there's somebody nearby who is fairly close to what you do - this is a point when I say instead of just defaulting to that school, I want you to go back to the drawing board. It could be a good opportunity to start something completely different. Now why don't I just jump at the chance to say “You know what, it's close, go. Go do that.” Because it can often be really frustrating to make small changes versus big changes. To say, you know, you've trained in a particular system for a decade and then all of a sudden you're trying to make these really small changes to forms that you've been doing for a decade - that can be really frustrating for some people. Some people enjoy the challenge, some people don't. But I think regardless, you should go all the way back and think about “If I was to start training today based on what is important to me, what makes the most sense?” And we actually did an episode way back, episode 105, we talked about how to choose a school so you might want to check out that episode. Bottom line if you're not going to go look at that episode, think about what's important to you, make a list, think about what's available to you. If you want to train in style X and that style's not around you, then maybe that's not the best choice.
No matter what you do, however you approach this problem, because it is a problem. Your martial arts school closes up, that's a problem and of course this episode isn't targeted at the school owners because I don't have a lot to say for them other than to offer my sympathy
and my understanding. But for the students, don't quit. Please don't quit. We need you. The world needs you to keep training. The people around you need you to keep training and whether you realize it or not, you're a better person because of your training so find the way forward. Find where your path takes you. Maybe you started off in one thing and you're going to something dramatically different. You go from BJJ to Kendo, cool. Or maybe you shift from one style of karate to another, that's just. As cool as long as your path doesn't end, I'm supportive.
Maybe you know somebody who should listen to this advice, go ahead, share that episode with them. Post it, link it, email it, tie them to a chair and make them listen to it, whatever. I'm good but you can head over to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com to find all the assets, the resources for this episode, all the other episodes. And if you want to support us, go to whistlekick.com or support the Patreon or buy a book. You know whatever you do, I really do appreciate it. Thank you to everyone out there who does support our work. If you see somebody out there wearing something with whistlekick on it, say “Hello.” And if you've got guest suggestions, email me - jeremy@whistlekick.com. Until next time. Train hard, smile and have a great day.