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In today’s commercialized society money seems to underscore everything. Basically, if it exists then it can be monetized. And if it can be monetized then you can guarantee there will people queuing up to do just that and not all of those people will be doing so with the best of intentions.
Money corrupts; it creates a greed in people that allows them to conveniently overlook any notions of integrity or fair play. Hence we have so called charitable organisations that run on a profit and charlatans of all kinds conning people out of their money at every opportunity. It’s the world in which we live and for better or worse, we are stuck with it.
I personally view money as something we have to put up with. Currently it’s the only real means to freedom we have within our current capitalist society. That doesn’t however, mean its existence is absolutely necessary. In fact it’s far from necessary. Check out the latest Zeitgeist movie and discover this for yourself.
I digress however. What I want to talk about here is money and its sometimes uneasy relationship with the martial arts, or if you like, the training dollar.
The Training Dollar
Lots of martial artists around the world make a living from what they do. Some do better than others. I have no problem with someone earning money from doing what they love. Indeed, these days, you have to have some kind of business acumen if your dojo is to remain open and compete with the very many commercial enterprises out there, such as MMA. I spoke about this in my last article and stated that traditional martial arts clubs should not bow to commercial pressure just to attract new members. What I meant by that was you shouldn’t dilute your art to appease certain people. I do think however, that if you wish to run a more commercial class like kickboxing on a different day in order to bring funds into the club, then that’s okay. As long as you’re clear from the start about what type of class it is and the type of people you want to attract. Commercial considerations in this case are fine because the style itself is of a commercial nature, i.e. it isn’t a traditional martial art.
My real problem with money in the martial arts is the charlatans and chancers that open clubs purely because they see it as a way to make money. Profit comes first with these people.
Years ago, when I first began training, we had an instructor who taught us Kempo karate. This guy had black belts in various different styles and he had also done some training in Japan with some of the top masters over there. Once a week he would come to our dojo and show us some techniques (most of them very basic) before heading of again, leaving us to practice what we had learned until he came by again the next week. Each week before he left, this instructor would collect quite a bit of money of us. It was a tidy sum for two hours work, even back then. On top of that, he would charge us hefty fees for gradings, insurance, licences etc. In short, he made sure he made a tidy profit on everything. Eventually he made one too many mark-ups and my father, who was running the club (and still does) decided he had had enough of being fleeced and getting very little in return. We got shot of the guy and began to train in our current style which is Kempo Ju Jitsu.
We still keep tabs on this instructor. He is fond of exaggerating his rank and experiences to the media. The last newspaper article I read about him stated that he used to recover bodies in south-east Asia for the CIA! Blatant lies there, but it added to his mystique for those who didn’t really know the man. No doubt he is fleecing some other club elsewhere today.
That guy was a chancer. Yes he was well trained in the martial arts, he had some pretty impressive skills (he used to break large stones by holding them in one hand and chopping them in half with the other- not an easy feat) but he undermined all of that by being greedy and allowing money to motivate his actions, to the point were he gave up whatever integrity he had as a martial artist. The money became his main reason for training.
In another example of being money motivated, one of my fellow jujitsuka went to train with an MMA club recently because he wanted to work on his fitness for an upcoming sport Ju Jitsu fight. During the class he trained with some of the top members, guys who were supposed to be “semi-pro MMA fighters”. According to my friend, these guys were far from it. There technique was sorely lacking and my friend dominated them all easily while training, so much so that they were all left in a state of shock because of how easily they could be beaten on the ground. My friend was just using simple techniques against them, basic stuff that they apparently were not aware of when they should have been. As my friend later explained, the class consisted of mostly fitness training with just twenty minutes or so of technique work tagged on at the end like an after thought. The guy who runs the class is an experienced and knowledgeable martial artist. He had the means to bring his class on if he wanted to, but he didn’t. Instead, he played on the ignorance of his members and taught them the bare minimum in terms of technique, simply because it was easier for him as an instructor to do so and also because he feared loosing members if he went too deep into things and some of them got bored or left. Basically, he was stringing people along, duping his members into believing that they were fighters when they were far from it. This guy’s main consideration was keeping membership high and the profits rolling in.
Such greedy and under handed behaviour is unforgivable to me and the above examples are a good illustration of what happens when money is allowed to dominate the proceedings. I believe there to be a lot of this type of behaviour around today, especially with the rise in popularity of MMA, an enterprise that just screams money and business to me.
The martial arts, like everything else, are open to manipulation by unscrupulous individuals whose only desire is to make money of people’s ignorance. If you are just starting out in the martial arts I suggest you do your homework before you join any clubs and make sure your instructor is reputable and above board.
Thankfully there are very many good martial arts teachers out there who will put you before your money. My father is one of them. He has never chased the training dollar. In all his years of training he has never taken any kind of profit. Everything goes back into the club. A noble attitude such as this is to be commended, but as I already said, if you can earn a living from doing what you love while still delivering good value to people, so much the better.
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