What does martial arts and self defense training look like after COVID-19?

Insights for teachers, students and school owners. 

A lot of work still needs to be done, and while we’re confident human ingenuity will prevail and we will survive, the way we do certain things, like exercising and learning martial arts and selfdefense is going to change DRAMATICALLY – especially in the coming 12 to 24 months and this is how it’s going to look…

As a student, if you’re in the high risk group or you live with someone who is, you’re going to want to limit physical contact with others outside of your immediate family. Going to a class with people from all walks of life is risk people just won’t take. This means contact activities like martial arts with people outside your inner circle are a thing of the past. Instead you’ll need to seek and online training alternative and/or private or small group training. The days of going down to your local gym are over.

If you’re a martial arts school or gym owner, your life will never be the same and your business model needs to change now. It’s time to adapt or die. In phase 1 of opening up the economy, gyms will be allowed to reopen – however, they will have strict social distancing and hygiene measures in place.

Where does that put martial arts, aerobics, cross-fit and other group activities?

6 feet apart – which means NO CONTACT so all of your combat sports are done for the time being. Add to that, most martial arts schools are limited for space and they depend on filling their classes with as many people as possible. If you can’t do this, you’re going to have to wait for phase 2 or 3 and in the U.S. that won’t happen until August.

I suspect most martial arts schools and gyms will close, unless they have deep pockets and can forbear paying rent, utilities, insurance and all other overhead until the re-open in July or August. Who knows when they will allow competitions and tournaments again. Add to that, high risk people and people living with that group will not be coming back to your business.

Even after you re-open, a large amount of your customer base will not come back because they’re high risk or live with someone who is. 

ADAPT or DIE. In order to survive you need to change your business model and the way you teach. The instructors who will survive are the ones who can teach online and with private or small groups. To scale your business, you will need the ability to promote and develop other instructors on your team as quickly as possible. This is the only model that’s sustainable in the near future and will enable you survive the coming years.

The demand for on-line self defense learning is now. As people start to go back to work and the future still looks unstable (there will still be MANY other people out of work) as a result – crime will go up – it’s just how it is. So now you have a population who is concerned for their safety but still unable to go take a class.

They say a treatment is close and a vaccine is still about 12 to 24 months away at best. I don’t see a world in the near future where people will be willing to have contact with strangers and acquaintances at the risk of infection. Sure, there will always be those dedicated few who will train no matter what, but a business can’t survive on that select few. You need to supplement how and what you teach because most students are changing the way they learn and work out – and you need to be there…NOW.

The Self Defense Company Instructor Program provides the turnkey solution to this issue. As a Self Defense Company Instructor you will have the curriculum to teach online lessons, provide on-demand video training as well as in person sessions. We also have instructors who have developed their own team to go teach under them as well. Some instructors work out of a central location, others go to the client and many do a little of both.

It’s a scalable model with multi-stream and multi-level income. It’s all turnkey and done for you.

Look, how we used to teach and learn self defense is over for now – fortunately we’ve been doing this successfully since 2007.

To learn more about the Self Defense Company Instructor Program visit: https://www.myselfdefensetraining.com/become-an-instructor/