What Is The Salary Of A Martial Arts Instructor?

For many practitioners of martial arts, becoming an instructor is a dream career. However, teaching martial arts is by far the best paid profession in the world, but is both fun and fulfilling.

It should be noted that some instructors also earn more money than others. In the USA, the grappling sports of wrestling and BJJ are by far the best paid. This is because BJJ is a fairly new and in demand sport with not as many elite level coaches. Wrestling is a culturally loved sport with many colleges and high schools interested in hiring the best wrestling coaches and athletes.

On the other hand, sports such as Muay Thai and judo are overlooked a little within America. It is still possible to earn money in these sports, but it will not be anywhere near as much as BJJ or wrestling. If a wrestling coach is earning $55k per year, you would expect a Muay Thai instructor to earn less than $40k.

In other parts of the world, this is the other way around. Muay Thai coaches in Thailand can earn a decent living from training foreign tourists visiting the country, where there is no real demand for wrestlers in this part of the world. In summary, different skills are valued differently depending on which country you are in.

Can You Make A Living Teaching Martial Arts?

Depending on your location, you can definitely make a living teaching martial arts, but it’s going to be very difficult to make a killing. The key takeaway from this feature is that if you want to make the most money then you’re going to have to own the business. If you’re paid by someone else to teach martial arts in their school, do not expect to be well paid. Even full time instructors will struggle to make more than $40k per year if they don’t own the academy. If you live in a small town it is almost impossible to make a living as a martial arts instructor unless you own a school

However, if you do own a martial arts school then you can make significantly more money, as well as scale up. At this point, you aren’t just being paid for your time, which is another key point since martial arts classes do not run from 9-5 each day and are a lot more sporadic.

In short, you can make a living teaching martial arts, but it certainly isn’t well paid. Most people who do this job, do it because they love it, or also have another part time job. To make a good amount of money without your own school is very difficult.

How To Make More Money Teaching Martial Arts

The main source of income in martial arts it one-to-one instruction. The only way to do this efficiently is to become an expert in a particular field and then teach private lessons. This process has been shown to work across several different martial arts including BJJ, Muay Thai and even high level judo.

If you are a well respected coach who has worked with top level athletes, you will likely be able to charge at the very least $50 per hour. If you live in a city like New York or San Francisco, this number can double to $100+. Not only this but having students come and train privately increases the number of hours you can work as a martial arts teacher. You no longer have to rely on the hours of 6-9pm on weekdays and 9am-1pm on weekends – as this is the main drawback of being a martial arts instructor.

The only real other way to make money is to make your own school and expand it around the local area. Many martial arts schools have done this relatively successfully and you will often find schools that have 3 or 4 branches. Whilst it’s unlikely that the 2nd and 3rd schools will earn as much as the 1st, they can still bring in a good income and potentially be sold for even more money in the future.

How Do Martial Artists Make Money?

There are a small variety of ways martial artists can make money, some of which are limited to the first movers within each specific art.

• The first method is to write a book about the martial art which you have expertise in. This is not as lucrative as it once was, as book sales are not anywhere near their peak.
• A more modern way of making money as a martial artist is to release an instructional video. Whilst you cannot compete with free videos on youtube, if you teach something to a high level which has not been shown before, people will pay money to see it. This is a particular trend within the grappling martial arts but has began to spill over in to the striking arts.
• Open an academy
• Private Lessons
• Seminars
• Sponsorships (if you are very famous, companies will sponsor you to use their products)