Several months ago I received an email from an old student who via economic swings and the phases of the moon landed in a mid-size town where about the only Budo is kids karate classes (he is in his forties or so and definitely fails to qualify for the Pooh Bear Medallion for good grades in kindergarten).
He asked the question of “How do I open my own dojo so that I can get back into teaching and training”. After I choked on my coffee, I re-read the email and hammered out a response and forgot about it. I only now found it again while cleaning up the server, so I’d thought I’d share it for anyone who is insane enough to actually want to “step off into it”.
Therefore, for anyone who thinks that they want to open a dojo, or even start a small study group, here is what I learned 20 years ago when we opened for ukemi. I also based my response to him after 20+ years with my former Sensei who had more than a handful of small “country dojo’s” in his organization. He defined Country Dojo as a small study group basically with anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen people more or less that met on a semi-regular basis in a garage or community center with an impermanent (read “folding mats”) training surface; whereas a “serious or professional dojo” was one like his, and like the one we eventually opened, with upwards of 30 to 50 students, full dressing rooms, and a Kodokan-style sprung floor.
When I first resigned from my old dojo I had planned on permanently retiring from Aikido and doing only some occasional Judo with an old friend who had national level competitive experience. I was burned out on teaching and filming and running large groups of players and was only interested in an occasional workout for fun with no attached responsibilities; basically, go when I wanted, if I wanted. That quickly turned into phone calls and email of “You have to start Aikido classes. Build it and they will come.” Even the Judo Sensei I wanted to train under was in on it and emphasized that the YMCA was looking for new programs to add and, the Athletic Director wanted to speak with me about it since he had already spilled the beans.
Since the Judo group was at a YMCA it was easy, at least at first. We pulled together resumes, copies of all our promotional certificates, and a curriculum, applied and were hired by the YMCA because they do not take on sub-contractors nor do they rent out space.
Unless they have changed radically from what I remember they only do programs where the teacher is an actual “Y” employee and fully subject to their personnel policies and insurance coverages. The positive was that they did all the advertising and liability insurance. The negative was that they took most of the money, paid you a salary every two weeks, and dictated what the class fees were. So, a money maker it was not, and we barely made enough to pay for gas.
The only time you got a raise so-to-speak was when the number of students increased. Of course, like all YMCA’s looking to increase program revenue, every time the number of students increased the Y would increase the class fees resulting, no surprise here, in students dropping out due to the increased cost that they had to pay. And, if they were also a member of the Y then their Y membership fees plus the cost of the class certainly didn’t help student retention or class growth.
The second downside was that they dictated your teaching schedule and the facilities you used. We ended up in the children’s gymnastics room on a gymnastics floor with weak springs attached to particle board with floor carpet. The floor always came apart, so we were forever pulling it up and putting it back down since is wasn’t made for heavy adults but only light weight kids. Since the room was multi-use, we had gymnastics bars and racks on one side and a climbing wall on the other and we had to continually yell to stop training when 7-year-old kids rans across the mat in the middle of throwing people around. Ever seen a 50-pound kid impacted by a 200-pound adult? Yeah, me neither and we seemed always able to avoid it somehow. How many times did we ask the parents to not let their kids fun across the mat during class? Too many and of course they always went and complained about those nasty karate people.
The other downside was that initially, they only wanted us to take students who were either already members of the “Y” or who agreed to sign up as “Y” members. No “non-Y” students were allowed so the “Y” used our Aikido program as a tool (read blunt instrument) to build up their own membership. This of course didn’t help us much as we were required to continually market YMCA membership and informational pamphlets. How many times does a new student have to say “no” to you before they get tired of it and leave?
After some conversation they finally allowed us to bring in “non-Y” students but because they were not YMCA members, they couldn’t use the dressing rooms and had to change in the public bathrooms with all the dirt and filth and constant flow of people in and out. We lost several good students over that since it was hard to explain a “Y” program that relegated our students to a public bathroom as opposed to a full dressing room. It was so poorly thought out on their part that even I and the other instructors couldn’t use the dressing rooms because while we were “Y” employees per se, we weren’t “Y” members because of the cost.
After we finally managed to get the Aikido program on an even keel despite all the issues that we had to hurdle, we wanted to expand the program by teaching Seitei Jodo. We had several existing students and people walking in during class asking about Samurai weapons so we viewed it as both an opportunity and a means to solidify our standing with the “Y” by increasing the cash flow we generated with another program offering.
So we had a demo for Amy “No Last Name” who was the Athletic Director. She was quite impressed having never seen Jodo before and very promptly said at the end of the demo, “That’s wonderful but sorry Charlie. Our liability insurance and our program manual prohibit anything that could result in being hit by a weapon (training or otherwise) so we cannot add Jodo to our programs.” Then she told me about the kendo group who had applied to open a class there and a guy who had wanted to teach iaido (dull swords but still made of metal) and they also were turned down flat. So, while they could see their way to doing Judo, Aikido and a kid’s karate program, anything beyond that was just verboten.
Then there was the real kicker. At a “Y” all important decisions are always made by the Board of Directors and, the Board of Directors is generally the patrons with the fattest checkbook and the heftiest donations. So we’re at the “Y” going on two almost three years and thinking that things have finally smoothed out and that we’re good to go for a while only to be told that the wife of a board member has decided that the “Y” needs a Pilates class room and that the gymnastics room where we are set up looks just perfect. We now have a time limit to either move to a different room, day, and time or just shut down the entire program. It didn’t matter that by this time we had over 45 steady players and were a functional profit center for the "Y". It only mattered that somewhere out there was a possibly overweight housewife with a wealthy husband who wanted Pilates.
So we had to look at alternatives and move fast.
Next installment ……….. So Sensei, what about those country dojos?
L.F. Wilkinson Kancho
The Aikibudokan
Houston, TX
September 19, 2019
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