On the cover of Black Belt Magazine —and on so many MMA mags, at the seminars and conventions, and in print and image and video, we see the modern “warriors” of the international martial arts community. They grimace; they hold knives; they take stances; they pose for the cameras, cutting the throat, kicking the groin, punching the face, and choking the bad guy; they wear camo and army boots; and their t-shirts sport skulls, tigers, and often violent iconography. 

These are “our” warriors —in our profession.

But not a one of them is a warrior for anything that comes close to anything that matters, anything that actually makes positive change in the world, anything worth ANYTHING in today’s complex, violent, unjust world. Not one of them —or one of us —holds a candle to the likes of Mother Jones. 

Mother Jones was a warrior, fearless, determined, and she stood up for the rights of others —-and against a world that held women in very low regard —against a world dominated by opportunists —and against a political system that fought her just about every step of the way. 

Worker’s rights? Labor laws? The minimum working age? Mother Jones.

I urge you to read about her —and people like her —and start to rethink what a warrior is, what role a warrior in today’s world might/should play. Laugh at the posing, the militarism, and the hyper-masculinity of today’s martial arts warriors ——-and don’t catch yourself playing that game or role. Stand up for the stuff that really matters. Define the ultimate warrior by his or her compassion, her mission, his purpose. 

Do this and you will be a founding member of a new, enlightened, progressive, relevant kind of martial arts instruction. With one small “turn of your wheel” you could be a part of a new kind of leadership delivered thru the things/education martial arts teachers study —and impart to their students (and live). 

This is the kind of warrior-education that I want the 100. identified with. This is what I’m about. How about you?

I have some business advice for you (so what’s new?). It’s about your life. 

I’ve come to a place where I now say (and practice the idea that), “My life is my dojo.” It’s a simple concept, yes? 

Well, on that note: “My life is my black belt test.” Which is my way of saying, “Your life is your black belt test.”

Now for your next black belt test, if you were testing “under” me, these would be some of your requirements (let’s say this is for 5th dan or higher). 

You would have to be a practicing martial artist —with a high degree of skill. The physical skills you show would be contingent upon your age, your injuries, and what I would see as your potential. In other words, I’d look at you —and trust me, I would know if you were not really training; and of course, I’d expect you to. 

For example, I’m a 51 year old man, with two hip replacements, a repaired torn Achilles tendon, a lower back equal to the aforementioned injuries, and a list of small injuries, aches, and pains that you don’t really care to hear about (we don’t have the time). Nevertheless, if and when required, I still hit the floor at a fairly high level, considering. I expect you to be able to do the same if you’re younger than I am, and to demonstrate the effect of hard training and very disciplined practice if you’re older.

Anyway, If you’re not really training, you where it around like a jacket.

You should come to your test in the best shape of your life (or something close to it). If you come in overweight due to lack of the self-discipline it requires, you should lose one level of rank rather than gain one. Ouch.

That’s my /your business advice. 

And I would like to suggest that if you became a man or woman on a mission, that intensifying your practice and living the black belt testing lifestyle, 24-7, would have a fairly dramatic affect on your school. I think it would light up your school’s energy. Your students would be invigorated by your quest. Your journey could also fuel your marketing and community involvement. 

If you’re not testing, then you are either forcing it upon someone else or your trying to figure out what kind of marketing plan would get you the most bang for your buck. And do you know what else you’d be doing?

You would be letting your life slip away without fulfilling your potential as a master teacher. Days, weeks, months would go by —and you’ wouldn’t be “testing,” and so there’s no reason to skip that sweet or hit that extra workout or read that book or go to that event. Why? 

Making your life your black belt test means you’re planning on being ready, all the time.  This is what I designed The Ultimate Black Belt Test to represent. My test is my life, my life is my dojo —and I am a martial artist seeking to represent the best ideas that stands for. 

In doing this I help myself, as training and conscientious living is good for me. 

I help my family, as I serve as a role model to them —and when I am healthy, a door opens for them to be healthier too. 

I do it for my students, as if I don’t show them the way of martial arts, who will —and what am I passing down to them?

I do it for my community, to show them what a real Sensei is. 

I do it for the international martial arts community, as it need help. I do it out of respect for the men and woman from the past who have stepped up to show me how it might be done. 

I do it for the world, as it is my duty. 

Now THAT, my friends, is what should be driving your “business” machine. 

MMA is Saving the Martial Arts, Not Hurting It
 
By Tom Callos
 
Some, but of course not all, of the “traditional” martial arts world is up in arms about the destructive forces of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts). MMA is characterized, incorrectly I might add, as the tattooed fighter, the guy with more biceps than good manners, and represented by wonderful role models like the clean cut boys from Tapout (I missed meeting Tapout’s part owner “Punkass” at the “Martial Arts Industry’s Supershow,” when I decided I would take at least a 10 year vacation from any event related to “The Martial Arts Industry”).  

Bruce Lee was MMA, as was a lot of the martial arts visionaries that came from Japan, Korea, Okinawa, Malaysia, India, and China. The fact that the UFC is the violent, hyper-masculine, sexist frontman of what works in the “cage,” and what doesn’t —and that its spectacles capture a bigger audience than Obama’s speeches, Al Jazeera, and NPR together, doesn’t mean that MMA isn’t also a healthy wake-up call to the martial arts world.
 
In the 1970’s there were just as many punks, proportionately, in the traditional karate point-fighting world as there are today in MMA. My friends and I had long hair, we cussed like sailors, we drank —and more —when we could get away with it, and we talked smack about almost everything we experienced.

If we had been unfortunate enough to have cameras and microphones shoved into our faces back then, like a lot of the young toughs do today, we’d have said just as many stupid things as they do. Albeit, they would have been stupid 1970 and 1980 things, which were, as I recollect, kinder, gentler stupid things, but they would have been almost exactly as dumb and derelict as what you can hear today on any show where young men who like to fight congregate.
 
What MMA is doing is deeply upsetting the brand names of the traditional martial arts world.

 
Karate? Taekwondo? Hello 8-track tape player and Pong.

MMA takes all the borders and barriers of style and system and blends them, on high speed, into something that the old school knows, on some level, is good for the martial arts, but that really upsets all the work they did to differentiate themselves from the other cans on the shelf.

 
MMA is good because it doesn’t necessarily respect the part of the martial arts world that has grown safe, crusty, and non-threatening. MMA is good because it helps us define the difference between art and function —and for awhile there, we had lost our perspective on it all. And the truth be told, MMA was traditional martial arts before traditional martial arts was traditional.
 
No, what’s REALLY bad for the martial arts world is the blatant commercialization of the martial arts school “industry.”

 
It’s having people prioritize business systems, meant to create maximum profit with the least amount of effort and investment, over genuine education and martial arts ideas.

What’s really bad for the martial arts is that we haven’t in all of these years, created a real, industry-wide, comprehensive self-defense training program for teachers. What’s really bad is that the powers-that-be in the school business industry don’t think very far beyond the bottom line of their profit and loss statement (there are, of course, exceptions).

It’s sad that self-defense has changed so much, but the “industry” is so full of pizza party manuals, birthday party promotions, strategies for selling $10,000 black belt programs to 9-year-olds, and the iconic and telling statements like the one uttered to me at what was probably my last “industry” event: “How do we monetize that?”
 
Of course, all of this could turn on a dime. The martial arts industry could, in a year’s time, embrace education over the marketing of more questionably useful products. The industry could bring self-defense training into the 21st Century and we might develop real training programs that address today’s self-defense issues.

Imagine classes dealing with domestic abuse, self-image issues, teen-dating issues, health concerns, drug abuse, dietary training, and peace education. The billing companies and consulting firms could quit dumping  their toxic waste of cheap and easy tactics for creating “floods of new students,” and we could all learn to sell the martial arts by what we do in our communities, over sending out text-message spam (a recent industry-consultant recommendation).
 
MMA is saving the martial arts as it’s raw and unpolished. It’s not easy to package in a fancy silk uniform. It’s about what works -and not necessarily where it came from. It’s saving the martial arts because its challenging  school owners to get real, to quit hiding behind any artifice or blown up rank. It’s bringing fresh new (old) ideas into the arts. And I know for a fact, as I’m in one of the premier MMA schools in the world, BJ Penn’s Academy in Hilo, Hawaii, there are just as many manners and traditions taught in the school I’m in, as in the strip-mall taekwondo/karate school down the street.

MMA is, for sure, a lot better for the martial arts than an industry that worships the Ferrari, the big cigar, the Armani suit, the Rolex, and a measurement of success contingent upon who has the highest gross —or net —income. Long live MMA —long live the martial arts!

I haven’t given up on respect.

Respect, to me is an intangible; it doesn’t exist until it manifests itself in action. The smile, the handshake, the bow, the nod, the nice words, standing up, listening, showing interest, taking the time, and treating someone else like they are important to you (even if they are not), these are all physical manifestations of the idea of respect. 
 
Respect is also found in “Doing no harm.” Respect is like breathing, it’s not something to do every now and then. It’s best for everyone involved when it’s ongoing. In breathing too, if you stopped what you were doing right now and focused on the quality of your breathing, you could improve it and become more aware of it immediately.

Respect is like that too I think; if you stop and focus on it, you get instant results.

I’d like to suggest that as martial artists, we look deeply at how we use, create, and express respect in our community. Personally, I am looking deeply at respect because I recognize how much respect I have for so many of my peers and heroes, and how little respect I’ve shown to people, for one reason or another (and most of them involve my ego), over the years —and even as recent as this last week. 
 
Let me start with my first real martial arts teacher, Master Lou Grasso. I started taking lessons with him when I was 11 years old. When I was 20 I moved out of state to study with another teacher —and a year later when I returned I opened a school. For years I showed a general lack of respect to Master Grasso, when it wasn’t necessary, constructive, or healthy. Since then I’ve expressed to him on many occasions my regrets for not being smart enough to offer him the credit and respect he was due. 
 
I’ve shown significant amounts of disrespect to my competitors in the martial arts industry, in part because I often genuinely disagree with the approach to business that some of them take, but mostly due to being competitive in a fashion that is, upon closer examination, unhealthy for everyone involved.

I lambasted my friend Stephen Oliver of NAPMA the other day, for no real, solid, healthy reason.

I spoke negatively about past issues and our different approach to business in a way that didn’t offer him any respect for being a hard working, often struggling, father and businessman —just like me. I poke fun all the time at Master Bill Clark of the ATA, almost always indirectly, but people in the know would recognize that I’m throwing barbs his way —and all because of my own perception of who he is and what he stands for. Perception that’s not based on reality, but on my opinions about reality, which are, like almost all of ours, skewed by ego, misperception, and self-delusion.
 
I could add John Graden, Fred Mertens, almost everyone on MAIA’s team, the crew at EFC and just about every billing company out there to the list (go ahead —add your name too). It’s not that some or all of these people and organizations aren’t above scrutiny or even criticism, but what I’m recommitting myself to, beginning with this essay, is to being able to disagree —without being disagreeable or disrespectful.  I’ve taught that very concept to kids for more than 25 years —and of course, it’s an easy and smart thing to teach, but a more difficult thing to put into practice. 
 
This issue, redefining, showing, cultivating, and demonstrating respect is, for me anyway, part of what I would consider my spiritual practice. It’s hard practice. It’s hard to recognize when I’m projecting my own prejudices on others. It’s difficult to catch when I like someone else because they represent a part of myself that I don’t like either. It’s really hard to be aware of the fact that you perceive someone having slighted you —and so like a dog you seek to turn around and bite them back.

Like it is when I’m coming back from some injury or interruption in my training schedule, I have to recommit myself to the effort of training. It requires daily energy and focus. So too am I now recommitting myself to respect —for everyone around me.

It’s about my own thinking and the quality of it, or lack thereof. It’s about my own perspective —and my ability to have compassion and empathy for others. It’s about my own maturity, as well as the example I set for my juniors and students.

Training, when I’m on my game, is a 24 hour-a-day focus. Sleep like you’re training, eat like you’re training, rest like you’re training, and train with intention and purpose. I’m going to commit myself to a more evolved understanding and practice of respect, on an hour-by-hour basis. For my own sake, out of respect for my teachers (all of you), and out of a desire to be the change I would like to see in the martial arts industry —and in the world. 

Tom Callos

If you’re a school owner or plan on being one some day, I pity you, as walking into our rag-tag “industry” cold, without any warning, is like walking into an Amway sales convention.

No, I take that back, it’s far worse than that, as Amway is straight-up, they don’t come in looking like one thing, when in fact they’re something different altogether. 

The martial arts industry (the “business” part of “the industry”), as it is today, is at least partly populated by people who consider Donald Trump some kind of hero. Ugh.

Much of the industry’s teacher education is clumsily gleaned from dance studio and health club sales manuals, motivational books by Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, and Brian Tracy, and its focus is on a lot of sizzle, but very, very little steak. 

Here’s just a sample of some of the popular verbiage used in our industry, which you’ll note is perfectly interchangeable with sales hyperbole used in all heavy-pressure sales institutions, like vacuum cleaner and siding sales operations, multilevel marketing schemes, and get-rich-quick real estate sales programs. It’s is as if they were all attending the same seminars and reading the same books (which they are):

• “Millionaire business visionaries”

• “Visionary leaders”

• “Break into the big leagues” 

• “Vibrant vision of the most successful CEO’s”

• “Insider secrets”

• “Massive success”

• “Fail-Proof systems”

• “Limited offer”

• “Peak Performance Coach”

• “Your maximum potential”

The industry, as it is today, wants to convince you that franchising and embracing “the system,” is the way to success. They cite successful chains, other franchises, that rake in the kind of income that makes these suit and tie wearers dream about sports cars, Bill Gates, owning 1000 stores, being the next franchise of the month in Entrepreneur Magazine, and living “The American Dream.”

Their advertising makes wild claims, like the school that’s gone from making $18,000 a month to $110,000 a month. Well friends, you don’t leap to $110,000 in a martial arts school without a lot of hard, smart work —and, most likely, without taking in a significant amount of cash-up-front sales. For those of you who haven’t been around for very long, let me tell you that the school owner bone-yard is littered with the skeletons of greedy business people who cashed students out and then went belly up due to poor management and dreams that it all would never end. 

The industry is fat with people who developed business models based on high traffic sales counts that, quite literally, took the fun right out of their lovely little martial arts businesses. With dreams of Donald Trump in their heads, men and women who could have —and should have —been well respected master teachers, got turned into sales-people competing for the largest gross, record sales, and appointments to meaningless positions with their billing and collection companies. 

There’s no talk in our industry about enlightenment. We’re not addressing rampant obesity, consumerism, drug abuse, dietary issues, anger, bullying, or education —not really. If it’s not about sales, if it’s not about selling, if it’s not about pointing out how little you have and how much you could/should have, it’s not being discussed. 

We’re full of the secrets of success. There’s hidden information that could bring you floods of new students. All you have to do is buy it —and it’s yours. 

Yes, I feel sorry for the new school owner and the up-and-coming teacher of the martial arts. Correctly and ironically, one of the most offensive industry trade magazines on my desk today points out a fact they subscribe to: “You’ll become the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” 

For the new martial arts teacher or school owner, that’s a rather disconcerting thought —in that the people populating these publications seem to worship the almighty dollar bill —and believe it’s smart to look up to billionaires like Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and Richard Branson as heroes and worthy role models. 

And it’s not even that those people and making money are necessarily bad, it’s just that 99% of  the talk in the industry is about bling and the bling to buy more bling. There’s little or no talk about spirituality, about budo, about improving teacher education, about supporting the public school system, about diabetes, rape, self-image issues, Buddhism (or for that matter, about Christianity), teen suicide, health and fitness education, or much of anything that isn’t meant to up-sell something else.

It’s becoming one big sales convention where everyone conforms to the suit-and-tie mentality; where everyone drives the right car, makes six figures (or more), wears the right watch, buys their vacation homes in the right places, and bands together to make more more sales, increase gross revenues, and realize their maximum potential. 

We’re an industry in dire need of finding its center, as we are currently way, way out in the right field of the convention hall, hawking our “limited time offers” to be a part of the “millionaires inner circle.” Hello cheese, goodbye deep meaning. Hello to the superficial, goodbye to the happiness of being whole and cognizant to the plight of our fellow man. Hello to our $250,000 sports car, goodbye to living simply so others can simply live. Hello to sales hype, information marketing conventions, and franchise employee manuals, goodbye to the genuine, the simple, and the spiritual quest. 

Welcome to the machine, goodbye to the independent small operator, doing good work, and living not for the almighty stinky dollar, but for service to mankind. Hello Amway, goodbye Kano and Ueshiba. 

My opinion is that the martial arts industry is suffering from a staggering loss of focus. 

Tom Callos 

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