Finding the Right Martial Arts School
When you meet a martial artist who has stuck with an art for a long time, it’s often a particular instructor or a school that has kept them going week after week, year after year. But sometimes it seems like you meet more people who have shifted from school to school, finding problems with each one, until they finally give up and find another activity they enjoy more.
How do you find a good school, and what things do you need to keep in mind? It turns out, it takes a bit of self-reflection to find a school that matches your particular needs. If you choose a school simply based on cost, schedule, and location, you could find yourself dissatisfied with more fundamental issues. While some of these might stem from unrealistic expectations, there are certain things that are realistic to evaluate when you’re considering a school.
#1 What do you want to learn?
While there is something relatively universal about studying martial arts, the content can wildly vary. Some systems are focused almost strictly on ground fighting, while others focus on joint locks. Still others focus just on strikes and blocks, and only to certain parts of the body. Some include weapons, and some don’t.
For instance, yongmudo is a combination martial art, which includes blocks, strikes, rolls, falls, throws, joint locks, grappling, and self-defense weapons (like canes and short sticks), all with a deep focus on self-defense utility. As a result of this broad range of techniques, yongmudo doesn’t enable you to focus on any one set of techniques and master them separately from any of the others, but does give you experience with techniques that work from afar, from close in, while standing, while on the ground, and perhaps in more realistic situations like against a wall.
In evaluating your own desires, ask yourself: are you looking for something that is defensive or something more combative? Are you looking to learn a lot of techniques or to focus on just a few? These will help narrow down the options for you.
#2 What do you want out of your training experience?
Depending on your personality and your cultural heritage, you may prefer different teaching and training styles. Some schools will tend more toward traditional or more militant methods of instruction, while others may be more laissez-faire about structure, hierarchy, and instructional methodology. Each school will reinforce basic tenets of respecting authority and respecting each other, but the manner in which each school does so might differ.
Some schools may have different class demographics as well, depending on their particular location and the growth of their club. At the Cal Yongmudo Club, based on the UC Berkeley campus, there are equal numbers of male and female instructors. At our Apex, NC club, there’s a strong children’s program, and an adults/teens program as well. By separating the two, this school is able to provide targeted instruction for both. Some of our programs are based on university campuses and don’t take students younger than a certain age.
You can generally stop by to observe or participate in a class or two before starting at a particular school full time. While there, look for how instructors interact with students, how students interact with each other, and how the class is run. Some clubs will line people up in rows and columns to practice individual techniques, while others will lecture and then split the class into pairs to practice. Even others will sometimes split the class up by rank or experience to give focused attention to each experience level.
#3: How do you feel about competition?
While sparring is an important teaching and learning tool, some schools lean more toward training toward competition, while others lean more toward non-competitive training. The philosophy in one direction or another will influence the curriculum and manner of instruction.
Some systems are geared more toward competition, and some will call them “martial sport,” while other systems are geared more toward a traditional philosophy. This divide between martial sport and martial art is not necessarily bad, but their approaches can be different.
Yongmudo has sparring as a part of its curriculum (in fact, there are four distinct styles of sparring called trithalon), but does not strongly emphasize competition. However, it also recognizes that competition enables a student to learn from people outside of their own school, and is a mental and physical challenge that helps the student identify areas of strength and areas for improvement.
Whether you choose martial art or martial sport, a more militant or a more relaxed style of training and instruction, know that these are all valid options, but each will impact your training approach and experience.
#4 What does a particular school offer you?
Finally, there are some pragmatic considerations when selecting a club. First is organization affiliation. If you select a studio with a strong national organization with many schools, it will be easier to transfer from one school to another and maintain your rank. If you’re mobile or expect to move frequently, it will give you options to continue your training wherever you are.
However, smaller associations have their benefits as well; community and relationships tend to be stronger in smaller organizations. Yongmudo, for instance, has a small, but growing number of schools affiliated with the organization. Almost all of the instructors and senior black belts know each other, have served on committees and competed on national teams together. This means that your transition between clubs works on personal reference. We’ve had students transfer from club to club, with their transitions made easier due to personal relationships that they either formed themselves or through their instructors.
While it seems like there are a lot of things to keep in mind, these are merely suggestions. Ultimately, you might want to try out a couple of schools in styles that you think you might not like, because you might be surprised by how much you like the experience.
If you’re interested in trying out yongmudo, here are a list of our schools:
- Apex, North Carolina: Apex Hapkido Club
- Berkeley, California: University of California, Berkeley
- Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Hapkido
- Brattleboro, Vermont — Brattleboro Yongmudo
- Mt. Shasta, California: Mount Shasta Martial Arts Program
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Yongmudo
- San Diego, California: University of California, San Diego
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Photos by Lily Chou; used with permission.
Elaine Chao is a fourth-degree black belt in self-defense yongmudo and a member of the US Yongmudo Association. She’s a senior instructor at the Cal Yongmudo Club, based on the UC Berkeley campus as a part of the University of California Martial Arts Program.
