How Do I Know If A Martial Arts School is Legit?

Martial arts are a diverse and complicated culture with many different types. Even in Tae kwon do there are a few different styles. So how do you know if a school is “legit”?

Martial arts is complicated and every school is different. The real question you want to ask is “what do I want to learn?” And then find a school that fits your criteria. Want to learn Krav Maga? Sweet, find a school that does that. Interested in learning MMA? There are tons of schools that do that. Want to learn Tae Kwon Do? Read on...

Not only do you want to consider what you want to learn, but also who you want to learn from. In Tae Kwon Do for example, there are schools that focus on sparring. There are schools that focus on forms. You can find this out by watching classes and talking to the staff at the dojang. The question is, how do you know they’re any good?

You know they’re legit if they have a sunset behind them! (Just kidding)

How Do You Know a Tae Kwon Do School is a Good School?

A school is only as good as it's teachers. If you are worried about the qualifications of a school, make sure to look into the instructor. Most schools have a section of their website that is about the instructors. The best instructors often list their qualifications, where they got it from, the awards they have, and their years of experience. In my experience, I've discovered that the best teachers are the ones who have the most experience teaching and the worst ones are the ones that focus solely on their trophies.

Next, the age of their black belts. A good school has the majority of black belts as teenagers and above. In my experience, the best schools don't test most of their students for black belts until they're at least 12, regardless of the starting age. This is even better if they have lots of younger students who are white belts, green belts, red belts etc. This means that the school cares about the metric at which they judge their students and aren't willing to lower the standards.

All that information is best gleaned from going to the school and visiting, but what information can you gain from an internet search? Often times on school websites you will see somewhere on their site what type of Tae Kwon Do that school does. That’s usually a good indication of their legitimacy. Put simply, there are three main types of Tae Kwon Do groups in the USA. There is World Taekwondo (WT), the International Tae Kwon Do Federation (ITF), and the American Taekwondo Association (ATA).

This last quality is probably the hardest to discern off a cursory glance, but probably the most important. Community. The best schools have a supportive community where people are friendly and encouraging of each other. Not only is this a good rule for Tae Kwon Do schools, it's also a good rule for life. The truth is that in training a student will fail. Learning Tae Kwon Do at a good school is hard, but the best schools help you get up, brush you off, and encourage you to keep trying. Your peers at the school have done it before, so they understand the challenge and are excited to see you succeed.

What is the Worst Sign?

I have been at many schools of varying quality throughout my life. The worst ones, however, are the ones that don’t just focus on martial arts. These are the ones that have cafés, bowling alleys, arcades, or anything else that reminds one of a theme park or ubiquitous entertainment center. Often these people are more interested in taking your money as much as possible, more than they are interested in teaching you anything.

In Conclusion...

Tae Kwon Do is one of the most popular martial arts world wide. It's very likely that there are multiple schools in your area. The key is to finding a school that works for you. There are many schools that have many differences among each other. In my opinion, A good martial arts education goes beyond the number of boards you can break; A good martial arts education is about character as much as it is about skills. So find what you like, and enjoy!