Warning: You May Have Black Belt Eyes

Has a spouse or significant other made a suggestion about your martial arts school or how you teach? What was your reaction? I know mine was essentially ‘Who the heck are you to tell me, the black belt, about martial arts?’ The key, though, is:

They don’t care about martial arts; they care about you. They usually represent Market Eyes, and they are almost always right.

In a previous article, I introduced the concept of “Black Belt Eyes” and how they are based on false assumptions and often get in the way of our more useful “Market Eyes”. Market Eyes could represent the eyes of a potential student who doesn’t know a black belt from a green belt but has a willingness to learn.

Other examples of Black Belt Eyes include:

1. Using your style name as a headline or, worse, a school name.

This is a huge assumption that the reader or prospect knows how your style or technique translates to benefits for them.

2. Using a logo that looks like martial arts hieroglyphics.

If your logo contains a fist, a yin-yang, a circle, a triangle, Asian lettering, or a bug, you may have Black Belt Eyes.

3. Listing techniques instead of benefits in your black belt marketing.

This may disappoint you, but the odds are miniscule that someone seeing an ad that touts Hun Gar 3 Step Waza will exclaim to his wife, “Honey! Hun Gar 3 Step Waza! Just what I’ve always wanted!” Only your Black Belt Eyes will know what that means. I don’t even know what it means.

4. Confusing your wins as benefits.

Black Belt Eyes assume people want to know that you are an accomplished black belt. It’s not that no one cares, as much as that listing your tournament wins, hall of fame inductions, or that you trained the military police simply don’t translate into benefits for potential students. Mike Tyson is a great boxer, but I don’t want him teaching my kids. Study the ads for private schools. They don’t list the teachers’ résumés. Market Eyes want to know what you can do for them or their children.

5. Having long classes.

The assumption is that more is better. The truth is that better is better. If more were better, a four-hour class would be better than a two-hour class. People are busy, and it’s presumptuous to assume that your class is so important it has to take two hours of their day. Most people have 16 waking hours per day. Two hours is more than 10 percent of that day. Good instructors can teach a great class and produce outstanding black belts using one-hour classes. If your classes are longer than this, reduce them to one hour. Your students will not complain. They will thank you.

6. Keeping archaic exam requirements that are important to you, not the student.

When I was a student, for part of your brown belt exam you had to break two boards with a reverse punch, round kick two boards, and do a running jump side kick over two people to break three boards. This was for the blue belt to fourth degree (kyu or kup) brown belt and usually occurred about a year into training. I opened my school with the same requirements.

When the children’s invasion began in the mid-1980s, those requirements became a real problem. Eight- and 10 year olds have no business doing those types of breaks. So I dropped board breaking as a requirement and added board-breaking seminars that the students could pay to attend. I turned a negative element of the belt exam process into a fun profit center. To accomplish this, I had to overcome my Black Belt Eyes.

7. Conducting marathon exams.

During the days of my marathon Saturday exams, it seemed as though we measured the quality of an exam by the number of ambulance calls. I thought it was important for students to deal with the stress of the high-pressure, marathon exams because it would help them deal with the stress of self defense... which is just dumb. I also waited until enough people were ready before I held the exam. This is classic Black Belt Eyes combined with the Control Factor. In time, I switched to monthly exams (stripes and belts) that were held in class. This greatly increased retention and student progress – and reduced stress.

8. Displaying weapons on the wall or in the office.

You may love weapons but, to the market, a wall full of knives, swords, and spears looks like a weapons cache. Mothers in particular do not respond well to the prospects of their darling child being exposed to these instruments of death.

9. Displaying photos of yourself hitting, getting hit, or breaking.

One school had a photo of the instructor being front kicked, full power, in the groin. His Black Belt Eyes felt that the photo showed he could withstand any blow. My Market Eyes made me wince and turn away. There is nothing interesting, appealing, or tasteful about such a photo. Take down the 1989 photos of you, and replace them with pictures of your happy students. It’s OK to have a shot of yourself; just make sure it’s tasteful and professionally shot. Media coverage, such as magazine covers or newspaper articles, are also fine. Tip: If you are on a TV show, have someone take a photo that includes the cameras. This is a good way to get mileage out of a TV appearance. You can’t post a video on your wall, but this type of photo shows you were on a TV show. Media appearances build confidence in students and prospects. Photos of you breaking flaming bricks don’t.

10. Having a smelly school.

This could be called Black Belt Nose. When prospects walked into my school, their eyes watered and their faces contorted from the sweaty stench soaked into our carpet. I used to tell them with pride, “We earned that smell . . .” Not good.

11. Sparring too soon.

Black Belt Eyes say, “Sparring prepares you for self defense.” Market Eyes say, “That’s scary, and it hurts.” Few things lead to high dropouts faster than sparring. Sparring is important, and I love it. But the smartest curriculum adjustment I ever made was to push back the time when students had to spar. Rather than after three months, which was how I was raised, it became eight months. During those eight months, we work on limited sparring drills and defense and prepare the students how to spar before they are thrown in the ring.

I made the change after years of having the following scenario played out too often. Typically, a female student would enroll and soon become an A student. She was in every class. She was at every function. She volunteered to help. She changed her work hours or made changes in her life to make sure she could do karate.

This lasted for three months until she reached the rank where sparring was required. Then I wouldn’t see her again until I ran into her at the mall or a restaurant. “Sally! Nice to see you. We sure miss you in class.” “Oh, um, hi, Mr. Graden. I’ve been really busy lately. Gotta go.”

If I had a Truth Translator, the real message would be, “I trusted you. I really trusted you and embraced your school into my life. Then you put me up against that guy, and I had no idea what to do. He hit me on my nose, and it hurt. I will not trust you again.” When I tell this story in seminars, the classic Black Belt Eyes vs Market Eyes exchange reveals itself, as the owners’ wives and girlfriends elbow them in the ribs. “I told you!”

Some guys argue that sparring is important. I agree. However, how can you teach sparring to someone who drops out?

Today, people – especially women – are taught never to hit someone. We have to be patient and help them get comfortable with the idea of hitting and getting hit. We have to give them strategies to get out of the way of a bigger, faster opponent and, most of all, we have to drill them over and over so they are ready to spar when they reach that level.

12. Setting heavy traditional requirements in the first year.

If your white belt class consists of traditional stances, blocks, and forms, you are going to have a tough time keeping students. Give your students material they can use right away.

We pushed all of our traditional tae kwon do techniques back to green belt. White, gold, and orange belt were spent on working on pad drills, practical self defense, sparring, and footwork drills. The students loved it. They felt a sense of competence right away. As important as they are, the traditional martial arts are very hard to learn. By front-loading your curriculum with your core traditional material, you put some of the most difficult techniques to learn with your most inexperienced students.

This is especially true for children. Forms were created by highly disciplined adults to be taught to other highly disciplined adults. They were not designed to be taught to eight-year old kids with ADHD.

Teaching a new student a front stance and then trying to layer on a down block-lunge punch is not only hard, but you almost have to apologize for the lack of practicality. We say things like, “You would never really block this way, but this is a block against a kick to the groin.” That, my friend, are Black Belt Eyes in action.

13. Having too many “shoulds” in your curriculum.

It’s natural for a new school owner to have dreams of creating a great martial arts school. He dreams that his black belts will be the best, and people will flock to his school. When this enterprising black belt sits down to design the ultimate curriculum, he thinks to himself, “Hmmm. My students should learn the traditional basics. They should be able to do a form or two each belt. They should know the basic traditional stances and blocks. They should be able to do all the kicks and punches. They should learn some self defense. They should be able to do one-steps and spar as well.”

Do any of these sound like you? Then you may be guilty of black belt eyes.