Is the economy affecting you?

[geezer]

Enrollment seems to have dropped a bit at one of the gyms I attend. Might just be a seasonal fluctuation. But I wonder, has the economy affected your training or enrollment at your school?

 

[Ninebird8]

I am currently teaching 9-12 students out of my garage, and a group of us get together on Mondays from one of my three schools (about 8-10 of us who were instructors under one of my three teachers) at a Shaolin wushu monk's school who does not use it that night. I am looking for locations, but right now would not open a formal school unless I have 2-3 other partners and would NOT quit my day job to teach the art full time right now! With people struggling, hard to convince them their health is important...LOL!! Although, I believe teaching tai chi and self defense would still sell alot more than kung fu right now. Other than that, still practice and train, just do it cheaply and the old way.

 

[stickarts]

so far so good with us (knock on wood). enrollment is strong.

 

[Cirdan]

More kids, fewer adults.

 

[tshadowchaser]

My training YES because I tend to travel about 140 miles one way to train.
Gas is still expensive, even if it has dropped some.
My students/enrolment NO most are from this town or a few miles away

 

[foggymorning162]

It does not seem to be affecting the school nor is it affecting my training yet but considering I got laid off from a job that I had been at for nearly fifteen years I'd say it is definitely affecting my life.

 

[SA_BJJ]

Not affecting me or my school...we actually have had a HUGE influx of students over the last 4 months. Almost doubled our size. Problem is they are all beginners and the schedule needs to be reconfigured to accomondate more begginers classes as to not have HUGE beginner classes. But overall its good.

 

[KempoGuy06]

its not affecting anything right now as far as I can see.

B

 

[jarrod]

my club has actually benefited. a rival school wasn't able to keep it's doors open & many of their students came over to me. funny thing is that we are primarily a small, word-of-mouth club, & if they hadn't bad mouthed us most of their students wouldn't know we existed. i love karma.

jf

 

[SA_BJJ]

my club has actually benefited. a rival school wasn't able to keep it's doors open & many of their students came over to me. funny thing is that we are primarily a small, word-of-mouth club, & if they hadn't bad mouthed us most of their students wouldn't know we existed. i love karma.

jf

Nice, I love how the world works...

 

[Josh Oakley]

The economy has actually been good for my dojo. We've actually grown quite a bit. People are looking for security, and tend to come to self-defense classes to get it. Or buy a gun. I should really look in to starting a gun store!

It makes sense, though, with less discretionary spending, people want to spend their money on things of higher value, and they want also to feel like they have a modicum of control in their lives, in this turbulent age. Martial arts does exactly that for a lot of people. My fear is actually for the students who joined because of this. Will they stick around when the economy turns around? Will they want to keep growing or tune out again?

This is part of why I tell my students that security is a myth. To quote Patton, there is no such thing as security, only opportunity. I try to change people's whole mindset on safety. I like to think I'm getting through to many of them, but I always have that little nudge in the back of my mind, asking, "do they really understand?"