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James F Sorrell
11th October 2018, 18:35
I'm not sure if this is the way to start but I'm wondering if other dojos have had an increase or decrease in membership, or is the membership the same. I've noticed over the years membership has been high but has slowed since the advent of personal computer games and nothing on the media to support martial arts--except Chuck Norris, Walker, Texas Ranger. I've notice little or no martial arts magazines in the public book shelves. Our membership at Chito-ryu karate seems to have been slim, except for times when "lost" karateka came back on their own and became spark plugs of interest and determination. We have tried things like tournaments for all styles of karate, invitations during Asian events, demonstrations of self-defense, and personal invitations to friends and family to join. We're continuing our winter and summer training, our seminars, tournaments, and special events with other karate schools. What could encourage the public to look at karate and other martial arts in a new light? A public figure with an interest in martial arts? A President who does kata to relax? What to other karateka think about this?

chunmonchek
11th October 2018, 19:38
I've not had any significant change in my enrollment in the past 10 years, but I'm pretty sure that my group does not reflect the normal dojo... as for the past 15 or so years I've had somewhere between 8-10 students, most of which have 20-30 years of training, mostly with me.

What we do...traditional Okinawan Goju Ryu Karate-do and Matayoshi Kobudo...can't really compete with the media presence and hype of MMA, etc. Somehow, every now and then, serious practitioners as well as "newbies" find there way to my group or my teacher's group.

That said, at my peak I had about 80 active students training...

jasperhowald
14th October 2018, 00:47
My dojo situation is probably not standard since currently I train at my university's Goju Club which, while we do have wonderful Sensei and a great training situation, our membership is always in flux based on new students matriculating and senior students graduating. But I've noticed that its getting harder to keep members.

We usually have anywhere from 5 to 10 students interested at the beginning of a semester, but of those only 2 or 3 stay on past the first month, and none of our students from last school year with the exception of myself and our two officers (which we need since we're organized as a club sport through the university) returned this fall. We're the only fully rounded club on campus, since most of the other clubs focus only on sport aspects and competitions, but we have a mixture of competition and self defense, but we have been having a hard time, as have most of the other martial arts clubs (our boxing club died this last year, really the only clubs with consistent membership are BJJ and Tae Kwon Do).

I do think there's a loss of interest in Karate when compared to more "showy" and "sporty" styles, which makes sense; it's all about public image. I think traditional karateka might have to accept a little bit of that showy aspect into our training to interest newer karateka, and hopefully once they've gotten invested we can build the fundamentals as well. Or maybe get karate or other martial arts into high schools as PE classes?

Gibukai
14th October 2018, 18:48
Hello,

Over the past two decades I heard the same thing times and again, namely that the numbers of members of “established” karate schools and clubs decrease, at least here in Germany, Western Europe and Japan.

However, it would be an oversimplification to say that this trend concerns all activities called “karate”. There are commercially successful schools and franchise schools (aka “McDōjō”), whose owners and instructors obviously make a living of teaching what they call karate. In Germany I know three karate clubs which started as “traditional” karate (belonging to the WKF) and which developed more and more into fitness centres wherein karate is only one of several disciplines respectively activities. So, they have a relatively high number of paying members; however, their karate members are certainly a minority.

The largest of the German governing bodies of karate (belonging to the WKF) has decreasing membership numbers for years. It tries to counter the trend by incorporating all sorts of funny activities like special programs for children or seniors including music, various games and toys, but also fads like “vital point” programs etc.

By the way, this seemingly trend can be seen in other sports, too:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279204649_One_person%27s_reality_is_another_person%27s_illusion_Why_don%27t_people_exercise_even_a_l ittle

Regards,

Henning Wittwer

chunmonchek
23rd October 2018, 16:55
I've been around long enough to have experienced the "flavor of the month" phenomena. While I've trained traditional Karate for decades, I've seen (and have trained in) a number of "fad" martial arts..Ninjitsu, PKA, Arnis, JKD, BJJ; Shuai Zhao and so on. And for the record, when I refer to "Fad" martial arts, I mean no derision...only that for a period of time they become the focus of magazines, internet and other media.