I saw this question the other day:

How do you retain students without giving out stripes?

Aren’t promotions and belts arbitrary? 

Shouldn’t people just train for the sake of improving and being healthy?

Do you even want the type of students who care about things like promotions? 

There are no belt rankings in boxing, wrestling, or MMA.

We do agree that promotions are somewhat arbitrary. 

Not every school has the same standards.

Not every black belt has the same skills.

But promotions still matter, and they’re important to give out to students who earn them

The people who disagree most likely aren’t running profitable martial arts schools.

The truth is that most schools don’t make any money. Some make a very small amount.

Very few make actual money that can support the school, staff, and owner’s lifestyle.

That’s because many schools subscribe to an old-school, hardcore ideology where the strong survive and the weak fall off.

If this is your mentality and you're not putting out world champions AND you're struggling to make real money with your school–what the hell are you doing?

The biggest problem with the hardcore approach that caters to the toughest students  is that you’re talking about a small percentage of the general population who qualify as “tough.”

There’s not very many of them in any one place, and what are the chances that small population walks into your school?

Even if your school is in a big city, there are only so many people who are mentally strong enough to endure through constant failure and beatdowns with no signs of growth.

You need to widen your net and make your academy environment hospitable for average people. 

These people will learn to be tough if they stick with it. But if you can’t help them get through the first few years of training they’ll never get there. 

Average people are going to need reassurance that they’re improving. A promotion signifies that. 

We don’t mean you should become a belt factory McDojo, handing out promotions to anyone and everyone. 

You still need standards. The things you teach have to hold up to scrutiny. 

But, especially with white belts, you need to promote them regularly.

If your new students don’t think they’re getting better, they’ll quit. 

Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai, and combat sports are hard enough. 

You get beat up, squished, crushed, sweat and bled on, and injured.

You lose every day for a long time. There is very little success when a student first starts.

If you see students that keep coming in regularly month after month despite all this then they already deserve a promotion.

This is true for your blue belts, too. The blue belt blues is real. 

These little victories on the long road filled with beatings can be the difference between keeping a student coming in or losing them.

If they keep coming in day after day, year after year, they will get good at what they’re doing. 

It’s your job to keep them coming back until that day comes. 

Don’t blow it with students who can become very skilled representatives of your school because you're stuck in some out-dated, hardcore macho BS.

Promote them.

We know from experience that you will start seeing students stay with you for longer. That’s called retention, and it’s essential to your school’s financial success.

There’s a lot that goes into increasing retention besides promotions, but there is a popular saying around our academies: 

“No one ever quit because they knew they were getting better.”

Students quit most often because they think they’re not improving, that they’ll never “get it,” the beatings will never end. 

Stop safe-guarding stripes like they’re buried treasure. There is essentially no difference in overall skill between a white belt with one stripe and a white belt with three stripes.

But each stripe a student earns lets them know they are improving and growing. 

It’s a piece of tape. Putting them on your students belts isn’t going to bankrupt you.

Promotion people on a regular basis isn’t going to reduce the overall skill of your academy.

But your hardcore approach will reduce the overall skill by reducing the population. 

After so long your hardcore approach will put your academy out of business.