Running On Faith

            

We are in a poor part of Shropshire and welcome everyone. We have over 200 students visiting us over a multitude of classes and £29k a year overheads to find.

Running a club of this size is not easy, it demands a huge personal sacrifice and dedication and I’m often asked “How do you do it?” “How do you cope?” There isn’t a simple answer; to understand how I cope you have to understand what’s required to keep things ticking over.

When I joined this club as student - I joined a part time club with no overheads, no commitment and no equipment. It was a great little club, four regular people in every class, occasionally after a recruitment drive we pushed six people training, you simply chucked your subs (£5) in an old Tupperware container placed on the middle of the floor and cracked on with training.

It was a constant struggle balancing the books, it was commonplace for instructors to pay the difference if we didn’t make the £24 rent, nothing much has changed. Unlike some of the others training at that time I actually knew what was needed to build and grow the club, I knew what we had was “the best kept secret” in Telford and I quickly got a grasp of the mentality that local people posses, it was “unique” in a non-disrespectful way, it reminded me of the south west with a different language – no urgency mukka!

After moving several times to get a “better deal” or not as it turns out! We had established a good base of committed students, we introduced standing orders to make training cheaper as a reward and to give us stability – there were still occasions where we didn’t make the rent but on a whole it was better, we’d purchased our own training equipment and things were looking up.

We were slowly achieving our dream and managed to find a property in Hadley that was vacant and earmarked for demolition as part of the regeneration programme, the rent was only £100 a month more than we were currently paying so it made perfect sense to move and the dream started to become reality.

In 2008 shortly after setting up our new gym my instructor left the club to focus on family commitments and I took over, I was already the person “named” on all the official documents and was already running the club from a operational point of view, the alternative was to shut down.

What I wasn’t prepared for was all the baggage that comes with running a club. It used to be “turn up” if you wanted to train and occasionally you were nominated custodian of the training equipment and that was the commitment.

The initial plan was to share the classes between senior students so we could equally spend the same time to teaching versus training - but this quickly fell by the wayside. With a volunteer club there is little we can do when people drop you in the brown with an hours notice – its not like we can sack them or beat them to a pulp. The stark realisation was senior students just wouldn’t help. A selfish “take what we can and f’off” attitude was taking over and the club was suffering and more importantly the senior instructors were suffering.

Nothing much has changed to date – its too easy for people just to say “I can’t make it” knowing that I will just cover classes – There are genuine excuses but they are few and far between - then there is the excuse that is my pet hate “family time” – where is my family time? – But hey the alternative is closing the club - we can’t run classes without instructors can we?

If I was to ask you what a Martial Arts Instructor does they just think its turning up and showing some paying customers how to punch, kick & elbow – I wish it was still like this.

Firstly you need students to teach, it’s a full time job on its own just to keep on top of the marketing and publicity to encourage new students to come though the door, managing all the enquiries, comments and likes on every single social media site is relentless.  Communication – nothing but a headache - there simply isn’t a platform where I can contact everyone using one media – some aren’t on facebook, some aren’t on email, some wont provide mobile numbers its crazy trying to remember who to contact on what.

Then we have all the operational needs everything from purchasing toilet rolls and cleaning equipment to comfort items such as heating – then the fuel for heating etc. This extends to every single item you see in the gym, weights, coffee machine, and water in the fridge – the fridge. The shop doesn’t fill itself either uniform orders go in weekly as well as specials like gloves from different suppliers, we have over 15 suppliers all with different discount rates. When placing an order we have to try and get the best deal to pass onto the sometimes ungrateful. Most of the suppliers cost too much to ship, so collection is the only option - at my own expense and time.

The banking itself is a massive burden, I desperately want everyone to pay by standing order – the money would be available to meet the bills rather than me heading to the bank every single day with scraps of coins or screwed up notes – often personally costing me for parking & fuel – if I’m late by as little as a day we bounce bills and then I have that to deal with along with the charges for going overdrawn and the clubs credit rating being affected. All because people won’t pay by standing order – or witchcraft as it’s known locally.

Dealing with business enquiries? Dear god, 10+ phone calls a day, phone suppliers, electricity suppliers, bloody gas suppliers  - we don’t even have gas. Would I like to advertise with this and that – no I wouldn’t… but it’s the sheer inconvenience that’s the problem, I have to answer the phone cause its potentially a new student. I try not to be rude but these animals invariably only understand two words.

I mentioned baggage earlier, we have every walk of life represented at our club, and we never turn people away. Some of the kids have really had a horrendous upbringing; I’m talking the worst physical abuse imaginable. I have to accommodate those responsible for neglect and abuse because I see progression in the kids. We have students in all classes with mobility issues, kids with autism, asperses, dyspraxia, speech impediments, confidence issues, obesity, hepatitis C, we have victims of domestic abuse, victims of awful crimes against the person and all of this and much more is kept confidential  - even from the other instructors. The worst is having to deal with the perpetrators of these despicable crimes – I’ve had parents arrive drunk to collect children and expect me to let them drive away, we’ve had to exclude adults arriving at class under the influence of drugs – it all happens in our wonderful town.

I just keep saying to myself “the kids can’t choose the parents”

Then we have the wishy washy parental approach to tolerate – giving a three year old absolute and final decision making responsibility – cant get my breath! “Little Johnny won’t be training again – it clashes with Mr Blooms Nursery”

Then there is the responsibility of running a large club - I get calls from schools on a weekly basis – so and so has Thai Boxed another pupil – after much digging and grovelling it turns out that the Thai Boxing “used” wasn’t deadly elbows or knees – it was banging heads against a locker! (Not in our syllabus)

Then calls from the police – same scenario plus “Do I know if my students were involved in a disturbance” “because the CCTV showed someone who could handle themselves”

Protection for our students is also a time consuming factor – our students social media exploits are nothing but stupid – from comments to questionable photo’s posted – we’ve even had to report stalkers to the police and provide evidence for prosecuting nonce’s. When will people understand how dangerous social media is? In short a Martial Arts instructor becomes a father figure to some kids, a councillor and confidant.. and people wonder why were always miserable lol.

As a Marital Arts Instructor, (volunteer I’ll add again) the baggage accrued is phenomenal. More pressure and responsibility than running a £10m a month transport department with 200 staff – staff are easy to deal with in comparison – they are there for something (Usually a wage) – our students want an education and pay good money for it – or do they?

To them there is a misconception – “They don’t owe Martial Arts anything” and that’s the first failure – we all have a duty to give back selflessly without smoke screens or financial gain – the rewards are personal gain and that is humbly sufficient. We have made huge strides to avoid organisations that don’t share the same values – we’ve cut out all the associations, greed and selfishness and operate a non-for profit club for our student’s benefits.

The cost to our students is minimal – it covers the basic costs of having a nice gym. The real cost is your time, your sweat and your honesty – your words and intentions are everything.

Your rewards are equally minimal – to be associated with men, women and children with the same goals, mentality and ilk – no exceptions!

Our club agenda is equivalently as simple – to share knowledge and help each and every one of our students irrespective of background / ability or struggles. Doing this we are slowly eradicating the ever-expanding “Selfishness” BS that’s eroding our beloved Martial Arts.

Dedicating our lives to helping others, promoting good values and supporting our Martial Arts values for NO acknowledgement or appreciation is the only way that we can be seen how we are intended to be seen be society.

We all know that money can be made from Martial Arts, but the only option is to do this through honesty and not through smoke or lies, not by milking the vulnerable or those who cant see the real objective, not by pressuring the insecure, not by engraving your thoughts on others and creating clones but by leading from the front and hoping people see the good that you are doing and change there lives to replicate some of what we do.

Honesty, honour need to be restored. “Give me 10 men to dine with over 1000 selfish snakes” – great saying!

So why do I do it? How do I do it? It’s really quite simple – the club IS running on faith and I just point it in the right direction from time to time,  when I have faith in the next generation of Muay Thai Instructors - the club will be handed onto the next person / persons who show the values necessarily to help to change lives positively and without acknowledgment or remuneration and I will move on and start a new chapter.