Posts Tagged ‘Running’
Author: Knowing and Doing the Basics is the Key to Martial Arts Business Success
Do you have your basics down? Not your martial arts basics, but your business basics. Find out by reading this article.
Do you have your martial arts business basics down?
You know – those top priority concepts, skills, and tasks that are essential to running a successful martial art school?
Maybe you haven’t given much thought to what those are… but if you’ve read Small Dojo Big Profits, you know about the 80/20 rule (Pareto’s Principle).
Pareto believed that eighty percent of your results come from just twenty percent of your efforts, and I’ve found this to be true in my own businesses.
That’s why it’s so important to know what those “20% activities” are. Once you do, you can focus in on those activities, and cut out most of the extraneous stuff. By doing so, not only will you become more productive, but you’ll also have more time away from your school.
So, let’s examine the “basic foundation” of running a successful martial arts school, and then we can look at which daily tasks and goals we need to focus on to leverage our workday and maximize our effectiveness.
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Chances Are It’s What You’re Not Doing That’s Hurting Your Business…
What does this have to do with martial arts business success? Read on to find out...
So, Just What Is “Front-Loading”?
It’s piling on too much curriculum in the beginner and intermediate stages of training. Usually, instructors do this because they want to impress students, keep them around, or even because they want to prove their students are better than everyone else’s, because they “know more.”
“Front-loading” a curriculum is a sure-fire way to frustrate and discourage new students, and can potentially leave you struggling for things to interest and motivate your advanced students later down the road.
The problems with front-loading are that some students will feel overwhelmed with all the information you’re throwing at them. Furthermore, by running through curriculum too fast you can fail to provide the student with enough time to internalize the correct method of performing techniques, which only occurs through repetition and instructor feedback (except in rare cases with students who have near-perfect kinesthetic recall – Bruce Lee was such an individual).
How To Avoid A Front-Loaded Curriculum
So, how do you avoid front-loading your students? Simple – by following an organized and pedagogically correct training progression. You’ll best accomplish this by laying out your curriculum, technique by technique, and organizing it in such a way that:
- It is taught in a logical progression, from (Stage I) gross motor skills (stationary stance training, single technique performance, and solo drills), to (Stage II) fine motor skills (emphasizing the finer points of technique performance, such as body alignment, weight distribution, skeletal alignment, and timing, as well as two-person drills), to (Stage III) complex and compound motor movements (combinations, technique combinations in motion, and sparring);
- Introduction of new techniques and skills are spread out evenly over time;
- And, the assessment of learning and technical progress is limited to skills that are appropriate to the student’s age and experience level, while still allowing for the introduction of techniques, drills, and skill-sets that are slightly beyond the student’s level… thus allowing for the student to experience success in training while still challenging them physically and intellectually.
Example Of A Correct Technique Progression
As an example of how this might be done, let’s take a simple skill – a front kick. Stage I: At the beginner level, emphasis is Read the rest of this entry »
How To Become A Top School By Focusing On The “Big Five” Principles of Martial Arts School Management
Just like learning martial arts, launching and growing a school simply requires focusing on the correct "technique"
Running a martial arts school successfully is really pretty simple – it’s getting your school off the ground that is the hard part. Even so, the same principles that allow you to manage a school effectively are the very same principles needed to get you through your launch period.
Think it’s complicated? It’s really not… launching and growing your school is really just a matter of staying focused on the “Big Five” areas of martial arts school management.
No matter where you are in the business life-cycle, I recommend that every month you should review your current operations as they relate to each of the “Big Five” management principles, then pick one crucial thing to implement/improve upon in each area, and then repeat this process every month thereafter.
By the way, the “Big Five” areas are: Read the rest of this entry »
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You know the type… they are never satisfied with “good enough”, and no matter how hard you work, they always want you to do more. The typical slave driver boss. Man, I’d hate working for a guy like that. But the thing is, I am sort of already working for a slave driver boss… me. Yep, I’m a slave driver when it comes to getting things done. Now, the good news is that I’m my own boss, but that doesn’t mean I get to slack off… heck no! Actually, I work harder for myself than I ever Read the rest of this entry »
"Small Dojo Big Profits" way!
