How the UBBT Works

For Kelley, Kelly, Chan, Angelo, all Team 5 members, and to anyone interested…

You seek to be…
· Real / authentic
· Successful
· A good teacher
· A good student
· Effective
· Important
· Enlightened
· Productive
· Esteemed for your work
· Recognized for the value of what you do
· Efficient
· Wise
· A contributor
· A “Master” of your chosen profession/passion
· A mentor / role model
· Respected
· A good human being
· A smart business-person

You may relate to some of the above –and perhaps you could add a few of your own? Let’s just say that if the UBBT interests you enough to even read this, then you are a part of a group that seeks to improve, contribute, evolve, and BE / DO something different (or if not different, then at least “effective”).

I am a consultant to the martial arts industry. I have spent the last 15 years thinking about the “business” of the martial arts –and how to make it better (better for the student/customer, better for those that teach, better for the “industry”, and better for the world). I have produced seminars, reports, audio, and video on almost every aspect of the business of martial arts.

The UBBT has come out of all of my experience and ideas; it is my answer to some of the following questions:

· How do I make more money?
· How do I keep from getting burned out?
· How can I be a better teacher?
· What is a master?
· How do I effectively advertise my business?
· How do I motivate my students?
· How do I test my students?
· How do I produce better black belts?

The UBBT is not THE answer to all the questions a student, teacher, or school owner might ask –as there is no single source for all answers. The UBBT is my statement about how I believe you can make your practice, your business, and your life/motivation/mission/purpose more meaningful, more successful, and more satisfying.

The 28 tasks that make up the UBBT’s curriculum are built out of the raw material I believe a school owner/teacher should teach and promote to his or her students. If your school and/or “public offering” of martial arts lessons were a book, then the UBBT’s curriculum is what resides in-between the cover. The curriculum is the heart and soul of what you SELL. It is what has value. It is what people will pay for. It is what, in the end, lifts you above the status of “vendor” and makes what you teach, what you have spent your life studying, what you know and believe –something wise, of value, something you can give your life to –and not regret it.

The UBBT’s curriculum isn’t something you were given, something you bought, something you saw at a seminar, something you spent a weekend learning. The UBBT’s curriculum is something you live; and there is the key. You live what you teach –and by living it you become authentic, you become the student and the teacher as the same time, you reap the benefits of what you do and know, you teach by example, you learn through your own failure/success.

The UBBT is made up of things that make sense:

· You write your goals because writing your goals has power. You don’t teach your students to write their goals down by giving them long lectures; you write your own down and then show them how they work for you.

· You journal once a week NOT for yourself, but to show your students -in the here and now –what THE JOURNEY is really all about. You journal to show your students the POWER and PURPOSE of journaling. You don’t stand at the front of your class telling them about it; you DO IT –and you show your students what journaling is for.

· You document and seek to achieve 10 PERSONAL VICTORIES to show your students how you apply your training, your experience, and your wisdom to things outside of the realm of kicking and punching. You SAY to them, through your actions, that it is important to BE MORE THAN A FIGHTER or a “martial artist.” You show them the power that declaring goals, publicly, gives to the person doing it.

· You do 10 public performances to show what that kind of action does to the performer. You show your students how to improve, how to present, how to perform, and how to put “it” on the line for the sake of personal improvement and mentoring.

· You attend the UBBT’s events because you want your students to attend your events. You show them how you USE your own activities to evolve, grow, learn…

Are you getting the drift? Do you recognize that you DO what you teach? You DO what you think your students should be doing?

Things like:
· Writing down their goals
· Keeping a journal
· Mending their broken relationships
· Hanging out with people WORTH hanging out with (heroes)
· Exercising more; putting down the car keys and WALKING to see, to slow down, to experience, to put the breaks on the rush, rush, rush…
· Meditating (focusing on the now)
· Reading, seeking out wisdom
· Doing for others
· Caring for the environment
· Supporting teammates

In the UBBT you seek to LIVE the philosophy that you SELL. You say, “Here’s what I think is important –SO IMPORTANT, in fact, that I practice it. You have, effectively, turned the “talk” into action. YOU turn it into action in your own life –because you are going to ask your students to take action in their own lives…

The UBBT asks that you transcend the PACKAGING OF THE MARTIAL ARTS; that you go beyond the established “dialogue” of the martial arts business community; that you stop mindlessly repeating the sales talk that has been passed onto you from people who were trying to sell the martial arts to paying customers –but who didn’t have the resources that YOU have here, today –in the “right now.”

To make your “product” more valuable , more sellable, more appreciated, easier to “market”, better “understood” by the “general public” –then I suggest you try living it like an Olympic athlete prepares for the Olympics, like a triathlete prepares for the Ironman, like an award-winning novelist prepares his or her manuscript for a publisher.

My opinion is that if you actually LIVE the training –the philosophy –of the martial arts, if you put into action ideas that you can then help others put into action…then you are crafting a very, very valuable product/approach.

The UBBT asks you to take a heroic journey –something that makes you disconnect from the trivial, from the tabloid-culture, the media, the feeding frenzy of want, want, want and work just to supply the want. The program asks you to apply yourself at 1000 percent, so that you can talk like an expert to your students about living at 100 percent. It asks you to show your students how you can take the raw material of your life – and turn it into something magic.

· Push-ups and crunches are self-discipline
· Mending wrongs is humility and wisdom
· Reading is mind-exercise and respect for knowledge
· Walking is slowing down in a world of needless rush
· Acts of kindness is awareness and a spiritual practice
· Profiling living heroes is self-improvement
· Declaring that you won’t quit is courage

The UBBT Works by connecting you to a community of people who have grown out (or of the box, out of the history of our industry, out of the less-than-effective and/or useless rituals of MA business and advertising, out of the established “effectiveness” of what has worked, what usually works, and what’s working now . The UBBT works because it connects the participant’s growth to the student’s growth to the school’s growth –as they all co-exist. The UBBT works because it create authentic experience out of ideas. We used to sell ideas –now we sell experience.

The UBBT works because it asks its members to DO –and sometimes it’s DO THE IMPOSSIBLE. In DOING I believe the school owner and/or teacher creates a kind of “business” strategy that is impossible to beat. In DOING the teacher creates all of the raw materials of a magical, moving, authentic, experiential experience.

Beyond making a product to sell is spending time making a difference in the world. Beyond business is passion, purpose, mission, and meaning. The UBBT is built around the expansion of passion, purpose, mission, and meaning for the martial arts teacher/practitioner. The UBBT embraces the idea that there is more to the martial arts –to being a “martial artist” than is currently “celebrated” in the martial arts community.

When you join the UBBT, you seek to make this a reality –and by doing so you CREATE a better, more unique, more valuable, more relevant-to-today PRODUCT; Something really valuable to “sell.”

That’s how the UBBT works.

The Rock, The Pond, The Ripples

The ripples, those expanding circles caused by tossing a rock in a pond of water, represent something about becoming a master teacher of the martial arts.

You are the rock; your education is the pond. The point at which the rock enters the water is when you start learning and teaching –and each expanding circle represents a deeper understanding of the pond, which also represents life.

The first ripple happens at the rock’s entry point and then travels out from it. That’s what happens when you learn something; it starts within you; you immerse yourself in it, and then it moves out from you, expanding to include or affect a wider circle of people.

At first it includes people you know and interact with, but later it expands to include people you don’t know.

Beyond the people you don’t know are the people yet to be born.

POINT: At the highest level of teaching intent that I can conceive, the teacher is aware of herself, her students, and her effect on her community, the world, and the world of the future.

The Native American Indian tribe known as the Iroquois had a law that said, "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations."

This concept, I believe, represents the awareness that a martial arts master teacher —a real, genuine, evolved master –must operates from. He or she may have started training for self-centered reasons, but as the practitioner’s consciousness and awareness expands so does an understanding of what is most important to teach, take action upon, and then leave behind.

At the center of the circle a knife hand block and a vicious counter-punch might be all that is important. The circle that has traveled a foot from the center might represent personal energy, vitality, and stamina –which, in the context of a man or woman’s life, are all key ingredients to a good life. Farther out is the practitioner’s family, and he or she prays that they are gifted with health and happiness; somewhere beyond that comes community, state, nation, world, and all future generations.

Teaching for Seven Generations
When you next walk out on the mat to teach a class, think of what you can impart that will have value for the next seven generations. At the center of your consciousness are the benefits of the physical exercise you’re giving your students. Then, expanding out from those things that directly improve their bodies, think about what they might think –to be equally healthy of mind. Then, think about what you might inspire them to take action on –and how those things might directly improve their relationships. Expand that thinking to include ideas you can teach that reach out and make the world a better place, better for people living in it today –and for those who will occupy it tomorrow.

You might see your own martial arts education in the ripples made by a rock thrown in a pond –but it is not only YOUR education that is important, it is what happens at the farthest reach of your influence that take you from being a martial arts instructor –to a Master Teacher.

Take 5 for Education a product for teachers

Martial Arts Instruction and the Key to Being More Than a Luxury or

I speculate that a lot of current and potential clients of martial
arts schools view martial arts instruction as a luxury and/or
recreational activity paid for with "disposable income."


I propose that by expanding our thinking -and teaching the martial
arts from a broader, holistic, and more, I believe, authentic and
culturally relevant place, we can position ourselves as an
essential part of our individual community's educational services
-as opposed to a recreational, thus non-essential, activity.

The way some martial arts instructors teach their lessons minimize
the value of the martial arts, of the potential for the martial
arts to be meaningful and useful, and for the value of martial arts
instruction to be compared to, oh say, the value (in dollars and
esteem) of a college education.

These teachers don't do this on purpose, as I believe that most
serious, career martial arts teachers believe in the martial arts
-and see the long-term study of the martial arts as a life
changing, life-enhancing undertaking.


Many teachers have simply "grown up" in a martial arts educational
environment that overemphasized the physical aspects of the martial
arts, without an equal emphasis on aspects of "self-defense" that
transcend the physical realm. In addition, most instructors who,
from the mid-1980's to the present, have been involved with the
prominent educational/consulting groups in the martial arts
community, have been immersed in a culture whose primary focus is
to develop athletes into managers and/or business-people. While
business skills are vital to the school owner, the intentionally
myopic focus of the industry has not encouraged, with equal
emphasis, other educational concepts that aren't technique-based or
business or money related, but are just as essential for the
industry's health and future growth.


The problem, reiterated:


Talking the Talk
Martial arts teachers minimize the perceived value of the martial
arts by not knowing how to intelligently and effectively
communicate the core and peripheral benefits derived from the study
and practice of the martial arts.


Note that I write minimize, as I believe most teachers are
imparting valuable skills to their students, but I believe that
there is a sizable gap between the results we are getting -and the
results we could get with a revised approach.


Walking the Talk
In addition, and perhaps most importantly, most teachers are far
better at kicking, punching, and grappling than they are in seeing
the non-physical (philosophical) ideas and concepts practiced on
the mat, put into action in the world.


As an example of this, I site my own training; in the 37 years I
have been a martial artist, I have received a handful of lessons,
out of thousands, from martial arts teachers, that directly
suggested (and offered concrete examples) that behavior off the mat
was as much or more about the martial arts that the training on the
mat. I don't fault my teachers for this, but I am suggesting it is
time for us to take the martial arts out of the dojo -and into the
world.


An Incomplete Definition
Generally speaking, martial arts teachers define their brand of
martial arts and/or self-defense in a way that is limiting and
archaic.


Many teachers draw far too many imaginary lines between "what is
martial arts" and "what is life."


Most teachers can describe, in great detail, the technical
intricacies of their art, but can't offer an equally detailed
description of why the study of the martial arts is an essential
component to life, versus a non-essential one.


Part of the reason for this, is that many martial arts teachers
hold an incomplete -and almost crippling -definition of the martial
arts. They hold this viewpoint about what the martial arts "are" or
"are not" because they haven't, I believe, devised a way to
transcend the boundaries of their schools and the competitive arena
and, literally, take their martial arts training into the world.


The Solution, in part, in my opinion:


Think About Self-Defense from a New Perspective
In today's world, self defense is as much about kicks, punches, and
grappling as windshield wipers are about the performance of your
automobile. Wipers are a part of your car, an essential part in a
rain or snowstorm, but they aren't "the car."


Kicks, punches, grappling, and all the other physical
manifestations of martial arts practice are useful in the right
situation, maybe even essential, but they are not -by any stretch
of the imagination "self-defense" in its entirety.


According to the famous Mayo Clinic, the top killers of adult makes
are heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, stroke, chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia,
suicide, kidney disease, and Alzheimer's disease.


Now let me clarify this: We are (the martial arts industry)
supposed to OWN the "self-defense" market (they're not claiming to
teach self-defense in public schools, dance studios, football or
baseball programs, etc.), but we're not addressing -in our
classrooms, in our writing, in our advertising -the things that
actually hurt and kill people TODAY?


What kind of "self-defense" program is that? I'll answer that
question right here:


Outdated, incomplete, and inadequate.


In addition, while the list above is actually what is killing
people in developed countries, there are other issues that hurt,
maim, and kill; take conspicuous consumption or environmental
degradation or dependence on oil (and what it does to economies and
politics in oil-producing nations) or diet, apathy, ignorance,
indifference, prejudice, and anger.


I suggest that the war we are currently engaged in has already
maimed, killed, and/or physiologically damaged more people in the
last 12 months than any kick, punch, or arm-bar has in the last 100
years.


How we go about addressing any of these issues will be have to be
tackled in other essays -but the OPPORTUNITY for martial arts
teachers to redefine "what is self-defense" and to address subjects
that are relevant to the world today, and in doing so increasing
the relevance and value of the martial arts, is undeniable. The
opportunity to provide education that improves the quality of life
for people on the planet earth -and that actually saves lives -is
here. We simply must grow up and into the idea.


When You Redefine Self Defense, You Redefine the Martial Arts,
Which Means you Redefine the Curriculum, Which Means you Redefine
the Advertising, Which Means You Redefine the VALUE of the Study of
the Martial Arts

Teach trivial pursuits -be treated as a trivial pursuit.

Teach things that are absolutely indispensable for existence, for
happiness, for peace of mind, for a world that is sustainable and
at peace and with less fear -and you acquire a new value. You
also,then, trancend the "subject matter" and teach wisdom.

The good news is that we are, I believe, not incredibly far off the
mark. It's as if we were building a house and we had all the
materials, but had them delivered to the wrong jobsite.

If any of this intrigues you -and you'd like to talk solutions and
discuss how to DO SOMETHING about making your brand of martial arts
instruction more meaningful (you would, I think, have to believe
there is "room for improvement") contact me; I am looking deeply
into the nature of martial arts instruction and self-defense.


Tom Callos; tomcallos@gmail.com; 530-903-0286.