 So tell me if this story sounds familiar. You decided that you want to join the Martial Arts. You do your research, you find a school that interests you, and you decide to try some classes. You fall in love with it. You enjoy working out, you're learning great material, and you're working out with your new brothers and sisters. Perhaps you go for a year, or two, or five or ten. It's great and it's become a pretty ingrained part of your life. Then one day you get the news. The school is closing. Perhaps the instructor is retiring. Maybe they're moving to a new location. Maybe it's the closing because of a lack of business. Instructor is getting burned out. Partnership splits. If there's more than one instructor, possibly the owner dies. Any number of things can close out of Martial Arts school, and when it happens, it can be devastating. I've been through it, and I know that many of you out there have been through it, and you understand the challenges that follow. If you have not experienced the school closing, then we're also going to talk about a few things that you can do now to make sure that you're getting the most out of your training, just in case you face it in the future. So today we're going to talk about what to do when your school closes. So for many people out there who take the Martial Arts very seriously, the school closing can be a really big deal. If you're just doing it casually as a hobby, this is less likely to impact you as much. But if you're a serious martial artist, and you've dedicated yourself to an art, then this is pretty devastating. So we've talked about the different reasons why a school can't close. So basically, what do you do? First, you have to ask yourself a series of questions. If, what, why, how and who. So if, ask yourself if you want to keep training. If the answer is no and it was just a hobby, well then you're done. You know you're your problem solved. Find another hobby. But if the answer is yes, you want to keep training, then you move on to your next question. What? What do you want to train? Do you want to train where you already were training or do you want to try something new? Either one you choose, then you ask yourself, why? Why do you want to stick with what you're training or why don't you? Why do you want to say you want to try something different? Once you know this, then you approach the who slash how. If your school closed and you want to continue training the material that the school was teaching, you have to figure out how you're going to do it and possibly who you're going to follow along because there's going to be influences out there. Chances are it wasn't the only school in the world, so there might be other schools, there might be other role models, there might be other ideals to follow. So you're now, your quest, the hardest part now is answering this who slash how part of this question. So I'm just going to recap my story real quick because I've been through this quite a few times. I started back in 1993. My school went through a few changes. My original instructor ran the school for about ten years, ran it as a personal problem, sold the school to his assistant instructor, and I trained with him for a few years. But one day in 2005 I came to class and my instructor wasn't there. I'm like okay, he's just not in tonight and other assistant black belts were teaching the class. And I asked him also, you know, when so-and-so coming back and they're like, oh, he's not, he went and joined the army. I went, what? And the school ultimately closed. And I'm not going to lie. I kind of panicked a little bit because at this point in time, I'd been training for ten years. I loved training in the karate and I didn't know what I was going to do from there because this was the first time I kind of felt like out in the middle of the ocean swimming without a life raft. So the first thing I did was I collected all the material I'd had over the years. I got my old journals. I got my old notes. Our system had changed a few times. So I had different curriculums. So I gathered it all together. I went online. I researched other curriculums. I downloaded articles. I printed out articles. Thankfully, my instructor recorded a bunch of DVDs of him training with his instructor that he gave me copies of. So I had a good stack of DVDs to work with. Different instructional DVDs, his own techniques, his instructor's techniques, manuals. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to work with this stuff for a while. I spent two years doing this. I spent two years doing research and working with my own material. So I kind of feel like I've got a little bit of experience here. And I see this happen a lot to people. So I just kind of want to share some things we can do. My first recommendation is preparation. Write notes. Collect videos. Collect your literature. If your school is in session now, if you're currently attending a school, make sure you write detailed notes. If you learn something new in class, go home and write it down. Keep a journal if you have to. If the school offers printed manuals or printed curriculum, get it. Buy it. Copy it. However you can get it. If your instructor's got videos or if there is an affiliated school that's got videos, buy them. It's worth it because you're going to find that valuable later. So collect all the literature and notes and media that you can because you can always refer back to this. This is going to be a record of your training in your school. So if something happens to your school, you at least have somewhat of a foundation to fall back on. The best thing there right now is gather that material we just talked about and just start practicing at home. Maybe take a little bit of time to reorient yourself. Set up an area where you can practice whether it be the backyard, a garage, a living room, wherever you can and just review what you have up to that point. Keep the information fresh. Even if you're going to spend time looking for ideas and looking for schools and researching, don't put your training on the wayside. Keep active. Keep the material fresh in your mind because if you start to forget it and you start to get away from it, it's harder to get back to it. So that's where those journals and those DVDs and all that media comes into play. So just keep practicing as if you were in class. Just do it solo for now. You're going to be doing research. If you've made the decision and dedication that you're going to continue forward with this art, you're going to need to do research. What are your options for other schools? You know, if you were in an art such as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Judo, Taekwondo, Campo, Tongsudo, wrestling, those schools, thankfully, depending on your area, are much more common. And a lot of times you can find comparable schools or other nearby schools that might not be the same but similar. A lot of other arts, though, aren't as common, especially with the Chinese arts. They're spread out wide and far and there's hundreds of different styles of kung fu in Chinese arts or more Okinawan arts. A town might have one Goju Ru school or one Shorin Ru school. They're not likely to have 10. Some places have a Taekwondo school in every corner. Not every place is like that. So if you have an art that is common, start looking at other schools. Look around because you might find someone who will teach you in some fashion or something that you like that you can pick up your training with. If it's a school that you do not have around you, you're right back at that decision. Do you want to continue with this art or not? And if you do, how are you going to do that? Sometimes you can find instructors that will teach private lessons. So if you're in a situation where your instructor may be split up with a partner or the school wasn't doing financially well and it shut down, a lot of times you can reach out to the instructor and talk to them and even just train privately. Pay them for private lessons now then. Work with your own material and go back to them and train with private lessons. If you had a school that had two instructors and they split, you're going to have to make a decision. Sometimes they both open new schools. You're going to have to decide. Sometimes your instructors burn out. If it's a matter of instructor burn out, sometimes it's just a matter of waiting and sometimes they open school again or they just need some time. So if you practice on your own, you can stay fresh so that when they come back, you can often join up with them again. And that's what happened to me when my instructor came back from the military. He kind of taught privately here and there. We got back together. We got some of the group back together. We trained at the school, trained at that school as guests. And then eventually he reopened to school again. I was fortunate enough to have a lot of literature at hand to at least keep fresh so that when the school opened up again, I was able to pick up right where I left off. Sometimes you don't have that option so you have to work with what you have. So I keep saying this, learning from the literature, learning from the media, how do you do that exactly? In my case, 10 years in, I knew the terminology. I knew the principles. I knew the basic root of it. So when I got to material that I wasn't as fresh with or maybe even a few techniques I hadn't learned yet, I was able to pick it up based on the... We have manuals. And most chemical manuals are extremely detailed. And we work off a clock principle. You know, you step the six o'clock with this movement. And you do this. I was able to read it and practice it, learn it by reading it, at least learning the steps and walkthroughs. Then I would watch the videos and see how it was done. I would make my adjustments. Then I would go online to see other YouTube videos to see how other people did it. And then when my instructor came back, of course I went to him and he made whatever corrections needed to be made. But at least I had something. Some people can't read and learn techniques. Some can. Others learn better by visuals. Some can hear a description of it. So everyone's different. So whatever you can get your hands on that works for you, it becomes gold. It's a very valuable resource. Even if your school is open, having that kind of log and material and journal is extremely valuable. You have no idea. One of the hardest things, too, is to stay active. Because now, if the school's not in play and it's up to you, the self-discipline really has to kick in. It is up to you to set your schedule. It is up to you to decide when your classes are. You know, it's no longer up. It's eight o'clock and to say I have to go. It's easy to be like, I don't feel like working out today. I'll work out tomorrow. And tomorrow it's tomorrow. Tomorrow perpetually becomes tomorrow. So you have to make the active choice and action to decide to train when you're going to train. Now, when I was in this situation, something really interesting happened here. I found myself without a school, but I had a wealth of material. But it was from different sources. You know, I found this book, I printed it out from this website. This campus school in California had this references. This school in Connecticut had maybe these techniques. I had this book from over here by this instructor. I had my instructor's videos. I ran into the problem of, crap, they all teach the same technique differently. I learned kind of by observing how diverse and how many different ways there was to do something, which at first was overwhelming and it confused me, and it totally discouraged me. Ultimately, I look back now kind of fondly at this experience because it made me realize it forced me to understand that there's not one way to do something. Yes, this school over here did it this way. This school over here did it this way. So I went from focusing on the differences to trying to see what they did the same. And by doing that, I started to understand, like really concretely understand the underlying principles of the systems. Maybe not every arts like that, but that is something you are likely to encounter. If you start resourcing different materials from different sources, you're going to see differences. Don't be discouraged by those differences. Learn from them. And if you learn something too different ways, there's nothing wrong with that. Just understand why it's done this way versus this way. Because a lot of times there's different options. Another option you can do is once you've kind of got your bearings and maybe you've got your own regimen set and you've got your material gathered, maybe you can reach out to other classmates. You know, likely chances that you weren't the only one who lost a school. So maybe you can reach out to other classmates and get together and do workout sessions. Not working out with a person for a couple years will have a detriment. I mean, yes, it's great. You're going to have the academic side and you're going to be able to work out on your own and stay in shape, but you still want application on the person. You still want a resisting partner. You still want to spar. So sometimes you can do that by getting together with friends. I did not do that for my first time. The two-year gap. When my instructor came back, I was where I wanted to be material-wise, but he had to kind of restructure things because some stuff I was doing a little bit too fast or, you know, I wasn't working with a partner. So I had adjustments to make. So if you have the option to reach out to other classmates or former students and classmates, do so. It's only going to help you both. It's provided they want to continue working too. Also, sometimes it helps to just work slow. Even if it's something that you can run through and you know really, really well, like the back of your hand and maybe it's a cutter that you can fly through or it's a self-defense technique or combination, you can just pop out like that. It pays to just force yourself to slow it down and go through it in slow motion. Work on it. Observe what you're doing. Maybe even do it in reverse if you can. Force yourself to look at the motions because it's really easy to get caught in this repetitive groove when you start losing detail. By forcing yourself to focus on it, you can kind of get that detail back and sometimes even discover new details you didn't know were there. Other options are online training, especially in the day and age we have now. There's YouTube, there's streaming channels. Sometimes you can reach out to an instructor in another part of the country and do remote training. It's not as good as being in the studio itself, but it's at least feedback from live instructor. It's something. It's some meat. It's another resource you can use at least in this point in time. If you're training on your own, that can be invaluable. And I want to stress this too is if you are working on your own, don't worry about rank. It really doesn't matter. If you stop at the white belt or if you stop at the red belt, brown belt, black belt, if you wanted to get your 10th degree black belt, this is not the time to worry about rank because it's all about gathering resources and being resourceful. Because right now, this is a test. This is one of the biggest tests you're going to face in your training if you choose to continue after school clothes. So that's the priority. Is the education embedded in yourself? Who cares about rank? So okay, so let's get down to the inevitable question. What if you've done all this, you've gathered your material, you've worked out at home, you've tried to reach out to instructors, but you can't reach an instructor or you can't get enough material or there's no one you can find to work out with and you're hitting the constant wall and this is the only school and you know 50 mile radius or 100 mile radius and now you're stuck. Honestly, you're at the point now you have to ask yourself the question, is this worth it? Is this still what you want to do? It's kind of like a long distance relationship. You know you make it work for as long as you can but it gets to a point if it's not working, if you're not getting out of it, you need to get out of it you have to reassess the situation. Sometimes taking time off and going to a different art might be an option or even dual training. When my instructor came back, this happened, he came back and I spent another several years training I got right back up to where I wanted to be and we kept going but then 2015 he closed the school and he moved out of the state. I was back in the same boat. My camp with training kind of took a little bit of a back seat for a while. I still kept up with it but not as hardcore as when I had the school in play. I'm much more into it now I've been studying it again I'm finding new resources I'm always reading on it I am fortunate enough to have other colleagues around I go to a bunch of different schools I talk to different friends and other classmates and we do work out together so that's been a very fortunate thing I'm happy to have I've also branched off off to jujitsu slash judo and I'm finding great love in that as well it's a completely different art but I'm loving that as a change of pace and also it's complimenting what I learned before so that goes back to sometimes if you have to try something new that's not necessarily a bad thing it doesn't replace what you've learned it adds to it. So let's answer the question what do you do if your school closes? Well once you've tried all this here's something else you can do come back here to our channel post it in the comments below ask questions we have an awesome group of people we have a great audience people tell me all the time about how surprised they are how constructive our group is and our audience is and I've seen many occasions when people have asked for help the reason I've done this video today is because I have seen this question come up somebody asking that their school close they live in say Ohio and now you should practice this art help me and some other viewer or some audience member will come in and they'll give them suggestions and that inspired me realizing you know we do have this resource here you guys are awesome with this so if you have a question if you need help with art if you need help finding a school right here we are all here to help each other this is supposed to be a resource so be resourceful also look around maybe you can find people who are looking for help and if you have advice for them please share it that's what we're here for it's not an easy thing to deal with when your school closes so it really comes down to how much you want to study the art and how resourceful you can be if you like this video please like and subscribe click on the bell icon and we'll see you next time