9 Ways To Tell If A Martial Arts School Is Good

If you’re entering into martial arts for the first time, or simply moving to another city looking for another school, it can be difficult to find the right place. This is because if anything, there are almost too many options to choose from. With the manipulation of review websites, it is tricky to find out which schools are legitimate and which are McDojos.

However, this does not mean that you can’t do your own research. If you google the name of the lead instructor followed by the location of the gym, you should reveal any past horror stories. Not only this, but you should be able to find the lineage of the instructor to check on their past. Even if the lineage of the martial art is somewhat fragmented such as wing chun, it should still be freely available information of who taught your potential instructor. If you are in any doubt, you can always email the gym.

Signs You Should Look For In A Good Martial Arts Gym

Higher Level Students Are Moving Well With Good Technique

If you aren’t new to the specific martial art, this should be instantly obvious. Even if you’ve never trained before, there should be a clear and distinct difference between yourself and top level students who have trained for years. This difference should become even more apparent when sparring – unless they are taking it easy on you.

For example, a judoka with several years of experience should easily be able to throw a day one white belt around like it’s nothing. Their defense should also be solid so you never really have a chance to take them down.

Whilst this may be a little less obvious in the striking arts as you may land an occasional punch or kick, you still should be getting significantly beaten on your first, day week, and month.

If these criteria are met, you generally have nothing to worry about in terms of gym quality.

If You Are Female – Do Other Women Train Here?

Sadly, not all martial arts gyms are safe environments. They may have predatory coaches behind the scenes, and whilst you can never be too sure exactly what is going on, if women train in the gym it is a good sign.

A lack of women in a martial arts gym is nothing new. Women do not train martial arts anywhere near as much when compared with men. The point being made is that if there are zero women training in a martial arts gym, there could be a good reason for that which isn’t yet obvious to you.

Unfortunately as a female, you have to take extra precautions to make sure your training environment is acceptable. If you think anything is a bit off with another member, the best person to ask is another woman.

Open Minded Instructors

In fairness to martial arts instructors, they do have to listen to a lot of crazy ideas which would never work from lower belts. However, there is a difference between being open minded and dismissive of any other idea.

Typically instructors will not be overly critical of other martial arts styles or schools in the area unless they’re particularly bad.

If a gym owner is overly defensive about his own martial art and never wants to hear about an alternative way of performing a technique (regardless of whether it is bad or not) is likely a bad teacher. Martial arts instructors should be eternal students and always learning, therefore it makes sense to be open to new ideas.

Head Instructor Is Around The Gym A Lot

You would hope that the person who owns the gym teaches classes and has a genuine interest in the day-to-day running of the school. You will find that the more involved an instructor is with his own gym, the better it will run. Much like anything in life, you need to put effort into something to get anything back from it.

From my experience, if an owner does not care about their gym, it will slowly begin to fall apart with other coaches and instructors also beginning not to care anymore. This has a slow, but obvious domino effect on everything about the academy that affects everything from the quality of teaching to the paint on the walls. Inversely, if the owner of the gym cares a lot, this will have a positive effect on staff and all students training to improve.

Each Instructor Teaches Only One Or Two Martial Arts

Other than phenomenal MMA fighters, nobody really knows various martial arts to a very high degree. If someone is teaching wing chun, boxing, taekwondo and judo out of the same gym, they likely do not know most, or possibly any of these forms well.

It is difficult to be an expert in a single discipline, and even more difficult to be an expert in two. However, questions must be asked if you’re teaching several.

The exception to this rule is if you’re training martial arts at an MMA style gym with several instructors. In this scenario it is quite common to have one person teaching wrestling, another teaching striking and one last instructor teaching BJJ and judo. With several martial arts split over several instructors, it becomes easy for each person to have their own specialty.

Coaches & Most Students Are Athletic

The meaning of martial arts is to train both your mind and body, so it would make sense that most of the coaches and students are all physically fit. This does not mean that everyone in the class has to be a supreme athlete, or that there are no overweight people. Some people use martial arts as a way to lose weight, so it can’t be expected everyone is on the same level.

However, martial arts instructors should not be overweight. Any martial art you can think of is a serious physical discipline that can be severely limited by extra weight. It is not acceptable for a personal trainer to be overweight and neither is it acceptable for a martial arts instructor.

No Contracts (Or At Least Not Bad Ones)

Throughout the years, contracts with martial arts gyms have become increasingly popular. What used to be an optional monthly payment may now have you secured in to a 12 month contract.

Ideally, a martial arts gym should not have a contract and should let you leave whenever you want (30 days notice is fine). In reality, you can sign and pay whatever you are happy with, but do not get drawn into a contract that is only beneficial for the gym. An example of this would be if you were asked to sign a 1 year contract whilst having only been at the gym for a week. This is a very big commitment to ask of someone who doesn’t fully know if they want to train for this long.

The Instructor Is Willing To Spar

This is a real dealbreaker unless you are at a martial arts gym which only learns and practices katas. An instructor sparring is good for their own development but also proves that they are competent. If an instructor is injured or has some other problems with their body, they of course should not be expected to spar every class. However, an instructor really should set an example for their students and show everyone why they are paying to learn from them.

Your Own Personal Improvement

Due to not having an objective view of ourselves, personal improvement and development can be difficult to judge.

The best way to measure this is by comparing yourself to a version of yourself 6 months ago. Whilst you can compare yourself to other students, if they are more experienced or athletic than you, this can be an unfair comparison and distorts reality.

If you are seeing good changes in your own progress, this means that the teacher is doing their job well and so are you as a student. If there is not any progress being made, you must first look at your own attitude to training, followed by that of your instructor.