There is a credit crunch in the UK at the moment, people are tightening their belts and finding the cost of living is getting higher. It's interesting to see how this has a knock on effect on the martial arts we do.
For most people in the UK, martial arts are a luxury. They are a nice hobby that we do in our spare time and we are happy to pay the cost of the classes. For most of us, physical combat is not something that we have to deal with on a daily basis so martial training is not all that important.
When you set yourself up as a teacher in this environment it can be hard. In Wales, the big sport is Rugby. So all the money goes into this. In the wider context of the UK, money is being channelled into Olympic sport. The cost of renting a room once a week can be £25 an hour, if you can even find somewhere with good mats as well.
It's tough, I was talking to a Systema instructor tonight. He said he has had to take a loan of £1000 just to pay for classes, and of course there is no guarantee of numbers. If it was Karate that we were training it would perhaps be another story. There seems to be no limit to the number of people happy to pay for Karate. Indeed many Karate instructors seem to make good money from their classes. Why then is it so difficult to attract the same numbers of people to arts like Cheng Hsin or Systema?
I suspect that part of the reason is that they are a bit more demanding and require a certain amount of insight into self and interaction that perhaps Karate does not. Maybe more promotion of these arts will make a difference. What is clear is that in these harder times financially people will spend less on luxuries.
I would like to argue though, that Cheng Hsin is not a luxury. The art of Cheng Hsin is one which touches all aspects of a student's life. One can't justify not doing it because of the cost unless one didn't really have the commitment in the first place, or didn't really understand what the art was. I recently missed a whole camp because of the cost, so I am lacking a lot. But I can't give up on this practice, to do so would be giving up on myself.
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3 comments:
Actually, I would argue that arts like Cheng Hsin and Systema are obscure. People, in general, have never heard of them and don't even know what they are, so why would they desire to learn them?
I find it difficult to do this too, but sometimes we need to stop being martial arts enthusiasts and look at this stuff from the POV of the general public. What gets us excited about the arts has little to no resonance with them. What they want is stuff that we would usually look down on or frown at.
If you teach a fringe art, then expect fringe results in terms of students and business success.
Why can't Systema instructors offer "Russian Karate" in the manner that TKD teachers have touted their "Korean Karate"?
The unofficial motto of failed martial arts schools seems to be, "The customer is always wrong." :D
I'd agree with both of those comments. Thanks for sharing
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