Episodes
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After nearly two decades of teaching traditional taekwondo, Guevara realized that what he was teaching was not providing the benefits he wanted for his students.
He replaced his curriculum with Empower Kickboxing™ and did not lose a single student.
Guevara has reduced the number of classes he has to teach by half, and he’s retained all of his students through the transition to Empower Kickboxing and the COVID pandemic.
Bonus: Martial Arts Instructor Teaching Tip: No Rescues
https://martialartsteachers.com/martial-arts-teachers-certification-course/
https://empowerkickboxing.com
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In the ultimate “fake it till you make it” scenario, podcast guest Willie Johnson was so desperate to escape Baltimore’s inner-city that he actually made up his own kung fu techniques to compete against black belts in martial arts tournaments.
His dream was to become a karate champion and get out of his violent, drug-infested neighborhood. That dream eventually became a nightmare.
As a teenager, Willie would climb on a bus to travel for days to compete in major tournaments around the USA.
Then, a strange thing happened. He started to win. In fact, he won the prestigious US Open Karate Championships in 1986.
Podcast host John Graden says, “I was at that event and remember being impressed with Willies’ performance. Like the rest of us, I had no idea what kind of world he lived in. This is a great story I know our listeners will enjoy.”
The newly crowned US Open Champion was not greeted with fanfare after his big win. Instead, he was met with a shower of bullets that left his best friend dead at his feet. His neighborhood crew gave him a dire ultimatum. Continue to do martial arts, or rejoin them and sell drugs to junkies.
Caught up in the emotion of the murder, Willie chose revenge for his friend over another tournament win. It was a fateful decision that sent him spiraling down into the dark world of hustling and muscling drugs. Overnight, he went from karate king to drug lord.
Though he knew it was the wrong decision, Willie spent the next three years as a violent stoned-out drug pusher until he was arrested for fighting with the police and sentenced to a year in the maximum-security prison.
It was in that prison that Willie turned his life around. He kept to himself in his cell rather than mix with the prison population in the day area. He spent his time practicing his martial arts and setting goals for his future as a martial arts school owner and world champion.
Willie “The Bam” Johnson went on to win seven-world championships, author books, and become a highly respected master martial arts teacher to his students, including many from the same inner-city neighborhood that he grew up in.
“The Bam” shares his story in a three-part series on John Graden’s The Truth About the Martial Arts Business Podcast. In addition to his martial arts experience, Johnson describes the harsh truth about martial arts in the inner-city.
He clearly explains the stark difference between what a martial arts black belt may think would happen in a ghetto street fight and what is most likely to go down and it’s not favoring the black belt.
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Missing episodes?
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In the episode, the truth about the martial arts business is that not only is it easy for instructors to fall into these drastic mistakes of the past, but that it’s almost expected. Listen in and I’ll share with you the generational pitfalls that are rarely shared or spoken about because they’ve been repeated for decades and it’s my goal to help you navigate past them.
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This week, the truth about the martial arts business is that in order to grow your school in the season of COVID, you have to learn how to meet students and potential students where they are at rather than leading them down tired, out-dated training methods.
Our guest today is Mark Moore. His martial arts school in South Jersey has continued to grow through the pandemic. He was an original Pro-Star curriculum school that has evolved into Empower Kickboxing.
A certified leadership coach in the John Maxwell system, Mark says the three keys to his success are, the curriculum, the school atmosphere, and a special mindset that any martial arts school owner will appreciate learning.
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This week, The Truth About the Martial Arts Business explores a deadly serious topic that every martial arts school instructor needs to understand and teach.
As a martial artist, you train in self-defense to protect yourself and your loved ones, but what really happens in the court system when a martial artist defends him or herself?
This episode of The Truth About the Martial Arts Business will help you to understand and prepare for the legal battle that happens after an attack. The first fight is for your life – the second for your liberty.
Attorney Andrew F. Branca, a renowned expert in self-defense law and author of The Law of Self-Defense, teaches you how to make quick, effective, legally appropriate decisions in life-and-death situations.
The 5 Elements of Self Defense
2:50 Do I have to wait for the bad guy to hit me first?
3:40 Can I use a weapon in my defense?
4:00 What it cost to defend a self-defense case
4:00 Deadly force and the martial arts
4:25 How is "Deadly Force" defined by law?
4:40 Does the court look at a trained martial artist differently than an untrained defender?
5:30 Prosecutors love to talk about martial arts expertise
5:55 What influences juries in regards to martial arts for self-defense?
6:05 Will your defense attorney use your martial arts training as a defense or suppress it from the jury?
6:15 How can martial arts help your defense?
6:40 The Three Fights
9:00 What we can learn from Tom Hanks
9:30 Use of a force expert
10:15 Can the prosecution include the defender's instructor?
11:00 Can an instructor face criminal charges for the actions of his or her student?
13:00 Applying the five elements of self-defense to a martial artist defending himself.
13:05 Element 1: Innocence
14:27 How a victim loses their claim of innocence
14:45 Element 2: Imminence
15:20 Element 3: Proportionality
15:45 What if you have a gun and he attacks you with his fists?
16:20 The common mistake concealed weapons holders make
16:46 Element 4: Avoidance
17:00 Is Stand Your Ground just in Florida?
18:07 Element 5: Reasonableness
18:33 Is there such a thing as Jury Selection?
19:30 The danger of CCW
20:00 The Law of Self-Defense Workshop info with Andrew Branca
21:00 Why students get so stressed at Andrew's seminars, that they can't remember what they just did.
Map of State Self-Defense Laws
The Law of Self-Defense on Amazon
Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense
The Psychology of Self-Defense
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Joe Robaina is a veteran martial artist with a wide range of skills and talent. But for the last few years, he has excelled in the self-defense business. Joe shares some strategies that have helped him to build a successful self-defense business.
During that process, he has discovered some realities about the martial arts business model and how the COBRA Self-Defense business system operates in order to avoid those pitfalls.
COBRA-Defense Information: SelfDefenseBusiness.com
Empower Kickboxing Information: EmpowerKickboxing.com
Past episodes: MATAPodcast.com -
The Truth About the Martial Arts Business episode 16 guest Sam Horn is the author of Tongue Fu. Like Verbal-Defense, Tongue Fu teaches how to verbally handle, defuse, deflect, disarm, and/or align with someone who is attacking you verbally.
Tongue Fu is IDEAL for martial arts instructors, parents, or teachers of any kind.
These important skills need to be part of every martial arts school curriculum to help students gain control of bullies, insults, false praise and many other anxiety-causing verbal attacks that we all face at school, work, with family, online, and out in public.
This is training that does NOT require any physical contact so it is ideal for martial arts schools in the post-COVID-19 eta.
Sam Horn Tongue Fu Courses
1. Tongue Fu!® Full Course
2. Tongue Fu!® I
3. Tongue Fu!® II
4. Tongue Fu Book on Amazon
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The Trump Tax Act may benefit your martial arts school in several ways. Here are 7 major ways that self-employed martial arts instructors and school owners can slash their taxes and keep more of their hard-earned money to put in the bank each year.
The new act offers more tax deductions for martial arts schools.
You can also download the report the podcast is based on.
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In this 13th episode, The Truth About the Martial Arts Business is that martial arts schools have to be responsible and careful of the intentions of their students.
Hi, I’m John Graden, we are in the middle of a massive disruption of law and order. Gun sales are through the roof, and Google searches for self-defense have spiked off the charts. People want to feel safe and secure.
Now that the pandemic has leveled off, anti-fa has taken over sections of big cities and is wreaking violent havoc on innocent Americans.
Undercover recordings of the terrorist group Anti-fa reveal them teaching their members how to gouge eyes, strike the liver and put innocent people into rear-naked chokes.
These are dangerous techniques taught by unscrupulous martial arts instructors who are teaching how to abuse and misuse these skills. That is in contrast to when Melody Shuman discovered that one of the pilots that flew into the World Trade center on 911 had trained in her school in the months leading up to the attack.
One year after 911, I interviewed new york city police commissioner Bernard Kerik. He was protecting Mayor Rudy Giuliani throughout that fateful day.
Mr Kerik is also a 5th-degree black belt and credits much of his success to his martial arts training. He also has an excellent biography describing his amazing story.
He lays out some guidelines for martial arts schools to look out for students who may be abusing their training. I conducted this interview in a hotel lobby in Orlando about a year after the attack.
Next, we often hear the Japanese word kaizen thrown around as a commitment to continuous improvement. Are we seeing kaizen in traditional schools?
AntiFa video teaching eye gouge to followers.
Books by Bernard Kerik
From Jailer to Jailed The Lost Son The Grave Above the GraveBooks by John Graden
The Truth About the Martial Arts Business Who Killed Walt Bone The Impostor Syndrome -
This week the truth about the martial arts business is that if you advertise and teach self-defense in your martial arts school, you better know what you're talking about.
One steps, basics, and kata are NOT self-defense. They are stylized, formal representations, they are not directly applicable.
If you are trying to pass off traditional martial arts as self-defense, you are deceiving the public and yourself.
People are NOT seeking "secret techniques" buried in the bunkai of kata. Bunkai is bunk.
People need real self-defense from a credible source, not some traditional style that was created in a hut on a mountainside decades ago has never changed. In fact, to change the style is martial arts blasphemy.
According to Google Trends, because of the pandemic and violent riots, searches for self-defense and self-defense training have skyrocketed just like gun sales have soared. That means people are scared and seeking self-defense training.
The single most important skillset you teach are the self-defense skills that may save a student's life. That's why it is so important for you to be able to verify the source and efficacy of the self-defense training that you advertise and teach.
The best source is law enforcement based. Not martial arts. Not military. Law enforcement engages in street fights and confront violent criminals every day. Most military members never engage in a physical fight.
Most martial arts teach outdated skills that were created decades ago without the advantage of video or networking. They had to hide their training, which severely limited any opportunity to collaborate, review, and update the skills.
In fact, most traditional martial arts take pride in NEVER CHANGING. That is brainwashing pure and simple. To resist upgrading your self-defense skills to honor a style or style creator is a self-imposed ceiling to growth and improvement. You just get better at useless skills.
Self-defense can save students' lives. To teach anything but the most current law enforcement skills is professional neglect that could cost your students' life.
In this special episode, you're going to listen in on COBRA-Defense founder Chris Sutton teaching adult students in the COBRA ten-week academy, and then you'll hear him teaching COBRA licensees how to teach Cobra to their students.
I'll pop in on occasion to set the scene. These clips come from a variety of sources, so the audio can be a bit spotty at times, but the content is pure gold.
The audience for the first 15-minutes is a class of adults who paid $399 for a Cobra-Defense academy that meets twice a week for 10 weeks.
Important LinksMartialArtsTeachers.com
JohnGraden.com
MATACertification.com
MATAInsurance.com
SelfDefenseBusiness.com (COBRA-Defense)
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What martial arts schools are going to survive in your area? You can be sure, not all of them.
1. What’s going to drive that? Supply and demand.
2. There will be fewer schools to choose from. Make sure you ARE one of them.
3. There will be less demand for traditional training. Make sure you’re NOT depending on it.
Why? Traditional training simply takes too long and is more difficult than it needs to be.
Most people will no longer want to pay a premium for a traditional curriculum full of out-dated and senseless movements. That doesn’t mean there won’t be interest in martial arts and self-defense, but it needs to be FAT-FREE.
We’re NOT talking MMA. Any school that emphasizes grappling is faced with a massive wall during this hyper-vigilant social distancing season.
The ideal curriculum ONLY teaches the best from martial arts, kickboxing, self-defense, weapons, and grappling (when ready). It is time to eliminate the smoke and mirrors of traditional training.
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How would your martial arts skills work for you as a maximum-security prison guard, street cop, or county sheriff?
Joe Lewis black belt Chris Sutton has trained in nearly a dozen different martial arts styles and he also held each one of those jobs. His first fight with an inmate was over a single Reeses Cup™. Find out if his martial arts training helped or hindered him.
Also, learn how the Police Academy 10-week training program compared to his martial arts training.
Here are more show notes from this fascinating interview with Chris Sutton.
Websites:
SelfDefenseBusiness.com
MartialArtsTeachers.com
EmpowerKickboxing.com
JohnGraden.com
:38 Corrections officer
:40 Care, custody, and control of some of the worst criminals in the world
1:05 Law enforcement boot camp for felons
1:40 Maximum Security Prison Guard
1:43 Street cop
1: 50 Talking to crime victims
2:00 Capturing criminals
2:10 What they will kill you for
2:30 Did martial arts help or hinder your job?
2:40 Gets into a fight over Reeses Cup
3:10 Inmate gets knocked out
3:35 Chris went to 13 different public schools in Tampa Bay as a kid
3:48 Using martial arts against violent criminals
3:58 Feelings during a real fight
4:25 Cobra was developed to be market-friendly, easy to learn with maximum impact
4:40 What you learn in the Police Academy
4:44 Why does it take 4-5 years to earn a black belt yet Police Academy graduates go straight to the streets
4:50 What he created in COBRA
5:30 Why COBRA is designed for everyone to progress together
5:35 How he decides what to teach and include in the course
5:45 What is different about COBRA vs Krav Maga
6:52 If you need help today, who would you call to help market your self-defense program?
7:50 Companies that call COBRA for training
9:00 COBRA in contrast to what's out there
9:15 Living a life of quiet desperation not making money
9:30 How would you teach a real estate safety seminar
9:40 How COBRA tests programs before releasing them to members
10:30 What support COBRA provides for instructors
11:00 What a new member gets when they join COBRA
11:30 Do you need a school to teach COBRA
12:00 How to create income 24 hours a day
12:10 What succeeds at COBRA and who tends to fail
13:30 The income potential for COBRA
14:00 The difference between selling yourself vs selling your program
15:10 Some COBRA success stories
16:00 The house that COBRA built
16:16 You don't need to attend a COBRA certification seminar
17:15 The importance of following the COBRA system
Important LinksMartialArtsTeachers.com
JohnGraden.com
MATACertification.com
MATAInsurance.com
SelfDefenseBusiness.com (COBRA-Defense)
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Mike Anderson is one of the most unheralded pioneers of sport karate and kickboxing around the world.
In 1973, he forever changed the sport of point karate by being the first promoter to require competitors to wear safety gear.
In 1974, he created the professional karate association (PKA) and hosted the first PKA World Championships in Los Angeles. The event was broadcast as an ABC Special and it was one of the highest-rated shows of the year.
The event audience was full of stars from movies and TV. They all saw Joe Lewis, Bill Wallace, Jeff Smith, and Isais Duenas as the first PKA World Champions. That show catapulted them into the sports first superstars.
After the show's huge success, Mike sold his shares in the PKA to his partners Don and Judy Quine for one dollar.
He then traveled to Germany to form the World Association of Kickboxing Organizations or WAKO with his friend and student George Bruckner from Berlin.
Over the course of the next few weeks, you're going to learn the stuff behind the stuff. Not only will you learn what famous black belts were hired by Mike to run secret CIA operations in Iran, why he sold the PKA for a dollar after its highly successful debut.
Mike has a 155 IQ. He speaks five languages and has lived a life straight out of a James Bond book.
He has been one of my best friends since the mid-70s as I described in my book, Who Killed Walt Bone.
After part 1 of my Mike Anderson series, you'll get your Teach Like a Pro teaching tip of the week straight from the MATA Certification program at MATACertification.com.
Quick warning, the audio on this interview with Mike could be better, but it's a question of style vs substance. The substance is so strong, a little warbling in the audio is not an issue.
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If the COVID-19 shut down ends in time for martial arts schools to run summer camps, here is a podcast that will help you to plan, promote, and profit from a successful martial arts summer camp.
This interview was conducted in Jim King's school in Altamonte Springs, FL. There is some background noise because it is a very busy school.
NOTE: This was recorded in 2017.
Summer Camp with Jim King
:15 Three strategies to recover.
1:00 Why summer camp.
1:30 Resources for summer camp info.
1:45 Jim King intro.
1:50 Hardcore traditional karate based.
2:00 Jim has 156 students in his asp.
2:45 Jim shares his numbers.
3:40 How a martial arts summer camp feeds martial arts after school programs.
7:45 Define martial arts summer camp.
8:40 What should martial arts school owners do starting in April?
13:40 Structure of each day.
20:00 Transportation.
24:30 Field Trips.
Live Jim King Info Call
Teach Like a Pro Tip of the Week:
Name, Question or Question, Name?
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Imagine if you are on national TV with millions of people watching. The reporter says, "Our next guest says he is a self-defense expert."
He turns to you and asks, "What qualifies you as a self-defense instructor. I mean, this is a serious subject. Why should we listen to you?"
What would you say?
In this episode, we pose that question to COBRA-Defense founder Chris Sutton and learned his unique analogy and rock-solid advice for anyone in the self-defense or martial arts business.
Learn the difference between a real self-defense lesson and a martial arts self-defense lesson. What is the best way to reduce the learning curve? The time that police officer Sutton shot a guy in the head who then shot a child. Why foul language, embarrassing students, and even hurting them is not necessary for a self-defense class. How an "attention diversion drill" can make a parent cry watching his or her child. How to give students instant value and reprogram their mind before they ever learn a physical move. What is missing from martial arts that COBRA has? How martial arts respond to the question, "Who are you training your students for?" How to describe what you offer to prospects The difference between military and law enforcement training What is Killer School? What three brothers have left footprints on Chris's head? Why would Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines need active shooter training?Links
MartialArtsTeachers.com
SelfDefenseBusiness.com
MATAPodcast.com
MATACertification.com
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Our guest today is one my mentors and the mentor to thousands, Mr Brian Tracy. Brian is not only one of the world's leading motivational speaker and sales coach, he is a black belt and a contributing author to the MATA Instructor Certification program at MATACertification.com
After the interview, our Teach Like a Pro Tip of the Week for martial arts instructors is on How to Correct Skills in the classroom.
Please be sure to subscribe, share with your friends and post a review. You can also submit a comment, request, or suggestion by clicking the Ask Mr Graden Anything button in the show notes below or at MartialArtsTeachers.com
Why curriculum is critical to the sales process Holding on to old methods and old ways that don't get you results Martial arts teachers become convinced that these are the only ways there are because they are the only ways they know. Martial arts instructors rule-Anything Worth Learning Is Worth Doing Poorly at First. The key to successful teaching in a Martial Arts School is that the students must like the instructor The key to running a successful Martial Arts School is referral by happy students -
004: Our guest today is one my mentors and the mentor to thousands, Mr Brian Tracy.
Brian is not only one of the world's leading motivational speaker and sales coach, he is a martial artist and a contributing author to the MATA Instructor Certification program at MATACertification.com
In this episode, he shares the key mental strategies to sell martial arts and the common mistake black belts make in marketing their school. He also tells you how to destroy your credibility and the importance of getting each class right with a mixture of what is taught and how it's taught.
After the interview, our Teach Like a Pro Tip of the Week is on Classroom Pacing.
Please be sure to subscribe, share with your friends and post a review. You can also submit a comment, request, or suggestion by clicking the Ask Mr Graden Anything button in the show notes below
Show Highlights
Why curriculum is critical to the sales process the danger of focusing on self-esteem in the marital arts classroom What adults want in martial arts What adults won't tell you (I need confidence) MATA goals to dramatically increase the number of people learning martial arts Black Belt Eyes How to go from black belt eyes to marketing eyes. How to destroy your credibility The combination of what is taught and how it's taught What adults want in class Intense, vigorous classes are best You have to work students hard to release endomorphines Associate the class with a hit of endomorphine -
#003: In this episode Tony Robbins talks about the importance of gaining control and awareness of your emotions. He describes how most people major in minor things and the five strategies or masters lessons to create a happy and successful life.
Episode Notes
Guest–Tony Robbins
Teach Like a Pro Tip–Avoid Using Tags
Teach Like a Pro Tip from John Graden
These lessons are straight from the MATA Certification Course at MATACertification.com
This week...
The Principles of an Authoritative Martial Arts Instructor-Avoid Using Tags
While we may expect children to add tags to their sentences, we don't expect them from an adult Martial Arts instructor to weaken their delivery by using a speech pattern that includes tags before and after their directions.
Important Links
MartialArtsTeachers.com
JohnGraden.com
MATACertification.com
MATAInsurance.com
TonyRobbins.com
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