As a martial arts teacher, should I do more group classes or personal sessions to help students?

I love teaching tai chi chuan, kung fu and karate. I do not run the school from the gym, but from home facilities in West Midlands instead and it works well. However I do think I need more students but my worry is that group classes you have to do much cheaper and cannot give the personal guidance you can in a 1-2-1 session. If I reduce my hour fee (£20) and do group classes is it going to be worth it? I wish I could teach for free but modern teachers of martial arts need to pay bills too! Right now I have two regular students who, because of their hard work and training are improving, and at a rate faster than what they would do in a group session. Ideally, I would like eight students but maybe I have to do group classes - but for that I must rent a hall. I am someone who has trained very hard for over 20 years and have a lot of knowledge to share, so do I do group classes more than 1-2-1 classes, or less?

As a martial arts teacher, should I do more group classes or personal sessions to help students?
Teach group classes to beginners then personal sessions to students that:





1. have high potential to become assistant instructors.


2. are good open minded people that can understand what you trying to share.


3. also open to experiment eg. sparring with TaiJi/Kungfu
Reply:I'm not in any real position to advise you, but...


My son was very interested in attending a local martial arts group class. I've known the teacher for years and trust him and my son got along with him very well and respected and admired him. Unfortunately, when the group classes began the attendees were of such wide-ranging abilities, that those with less experience felt overwhelmed and those with more felt held back. Both groups were quite obviously bored. It will be difficult to get a large enough client base to be able to separate the groups more efficiently, especially at first, but to keep them as clients, I would highly recommend it.
Reply:Teaching small groups of about 10 people always seems to work. Then you can still take time out for a bit of one on one and let the others train amongst themselves. Everybody can input into the group then and you can teach easier and control a small group.
Reply:dotn over expense it otheriwse no 1 will come


its god that u r doing 1-2-1 but ive seen people who do 1-2-1 and get thire but whoped in sparring
Reply:Realistically you should do both. You can develop a larger core-group of students and offer private lessons as a additional benefit that will earn you more profit. And improve the student that much faster that's willing pay a few bucks more for the private time. Some students do better in groups and some better in private. The advantage of group versus private is that the student will have a larger cross section of people to train with and to apply what they have learned under different circumstances.
Reply:I'd go for both - You could always ream off those with a natural aptitude for it, and offer them the 1 2 1 classes.
Reply:I would say group, then once they get better, get more individual.
Reply:£20 an hour is a rip off and you dont deserve to have more students. I pay $3.50 for an hour and a half group kickboxing session with a really good instructor.





And group classes are better because then you have more people to spar against. And if you dont do proper sparring then you really are crap and I spit on you.
Reply:20 pounds an hour? damn.





the thing is that once you have these 2 at good levels, you can open up the group work and while you set the group up with routines, and control the mass, the good 2 float and help with those that are a little slower at getting it. shape them into your future aides. or reverse and set up the routine, have the good 2 out front going through it while you target the lesser mortals.





depends on what your curriculum looks like.





but damn, who would pay 20 an hour for kung fu?