Formosa Fitness

Monday will be the first anniversary of our opening shop so it's time for some reflection on lessons learned.

I taught martial arts the first four months we were open and IMO it was a disaster. I managed to attract about four students in four months and that's not a sustainable path.

Readers from my old Formosa Neijia blog may remember that I argued for professional martial arts instruction in Taiwan and saw no reason it couldn't be done back then. I gave an example of one of my teachers that quit his bank manager job and became a successful full-time MA teacher. He was my model. Well guess what? His website hasn't been updated in three years, his schools are gone, and he apparently fell off the face of the planet. So much for my model of success.

Supporting my family is my main concern now and everything MUST be viewed through that lense. Young guys obsessed with nothing but MA can't understand this but putting the arts first in your life is a recipe for disaster long term. I've seen people that do that and I completely rejected it. The MA teaching either had to support my family or it was out. Devoting my life to "art" at the expense of family was irresponsible and I wasn't gonna do it. So it is out.

Can professional traditional MA teaching be done? I think it's extremely difficult now. CIMA especially doesn't satisfy any basic human need. There's nothing that it does that can't be done better by another type of training. Fighting, relaxation, health, etc. are all attainable by other modalities like MMA, fitness, or meditation CDs. As an art form, CIMA is unique in what it can do but art isn't at the top of most people's expenses every month.

Since art is the main thing, most teachers are teaching for free locally making it extremely hard to compete with them if you charge. I was trying to get people practical benefits but that isn't what most people want.

For example, I got an email from a guy who asked if I was a qigong master. I told him about the qigong systems I taught and what benefits he could get from the practice. He wrote back, "Yeah, but are you a qigong master?" I was a bit perturbed and asked him what it was that he wished to learn. He evaded the question and said that was okay, maybe I'd be a "master" one day and then he'd come study from me. How frustating is it dealing with people like that, hmmm? And he wasn't the only one.

The hardest lesson I learned from the experience is that when something isn't working at all, drop it like a ton of bricks and that's just what I did. Did it hurt? Hell yes. It was excruciating. Most of my identity for about as long as I can remember was wrapped up in that practice and without it, I didn't know who I was. But I had to find out and I have spent the better part of a year doing just that.

Fitness is a very rewarding career and my CIMA background colors everything that I do. I just taught an hour long lesson last week about the connections between kettlebell and MA training. And I could have kept going. That makes us unique here and that's a huge plus. I'm confident that uniqueness will pay off long term.

More to come.