Martial Arts and False Advertising?

Sensei Ryan Nicholls here, owner of, and head instructor at RKD Martial Arts, welcome to my Blog, Martial Arts Perth.

In this, our first topic, I wanted to look at the claims that martial arts schools often make, and whether some of these can be considered false advertising.

Martial Arts schools tend to fall into 2 broad categories – those that teach self defence and those that train for competition. Some particular styles have a natural emphasis towards one or the other, for example Krav Maga and Jujitsu have a natural focus on self defence, whereas BJJ and Judo tend towards competition. The issue however, is what happens when a school or style that focuses on one advertises that it does the other?

As an example, my school RKD Martial Arts, does some advertising under the term MMA, or Mixed Martial Arts. I use the term on my website to describe what it is we train, as we are a Freestyle system not limited to one style. In the past however, I have had potential members call up saying that they were interested in training MMA. Now MMA these days brings to mind the UFC, and many people who use the term MMA are referring to that cage or ring style of competition. Knowing this, it would be remiss of me to say to these potential clients that my school trains MMA without clarifying this point for them. I could potentially, just get them to come down and check out our school maybe convince them that ultimately what we do is “better”, but that is not what these potential clients were looking for. If I didn't make this clarification, and got these clients to sign up under the belief that they were training in UFC style MMA, is that false advertising?

Lets look at the flipside of this – if I run a school whose martial art is considered a sport, and my focus is on competition, yet I include in my advertising that I teach self defence, is that false advertising?

Competition schools can be further broken down into 2 types – demonstration and one-on-one point scoring. It almost goes without saying that a school that focuses on demonstration style competition is not teaching self defence. A good example of this is the Wikid Weaponz programme run by Jason Lee – Jason is awesome at the tricking and extreme martial arts but he knows it is just for fun and display and not for use in self defence and he tells people as such.

The potential issues usually come about in the second category of competition – the one-on-one point scoring. A lot of martial arts fall into this category – BJJ, Judo, kickboxing, wrestling, western boxing, taekwondo, fencing, and of course MMA. Now while I've never heard of a fencing school claiming they are teaching self defence, a lot of the others do.

Now lets face it – knowing any martial art is going to be an advantage in a fight, and most of these martial arts do teach how to fight, or at least teach some form of fighting skill. So the big question is – is training someone how to fight the same as training someone for self defence? Lets look at it another way - would someone trained in UFC style competition MMA or western boxing know how to deal with a knife or other weapon? Would a practitioner of BJJ or a judoka know how to deal with a multiple attacker situation?

If you're an instructor of one of these styles and you advertise that you teach self defence, do you train with knives and other weapons? Do you look at multiple attacker situations? For the grappling arts such as BJJ, Judo and Greco-Roman wrestling – do you look at striking and kicking? If you are not doing these things but claim that you teach self defence, are you potentially opening yourself up to a lawsuit?

I suppose the point of this article is two-fold. First, as an instructor know what it is that you teach and let that be your focus – don't make claims either in your personal dealings with clients or in your advertising that you are not fulfilling or incapable of fulfilling. At best you may end up with some unhappy clients, at worst you may end up in litigation.

Second, as a potential student, do some research – if you are getting into the martial arts to learn self defence look for a school that teaches actual self defence; if you are getting into the martial arts because you want to enter competitions and win medals etc, ensure that the school you are looking at can fulfil that wish. Basically, you should watch some classes, look at their photos and videos, and understand what it is that that school does. If it doesn't match what you are looking for, find a school that does, there will be one nearby.

Thanks for reading – until next week make sure you subscribe to the blog, and if you have any subjects you would like to see covered, post them in the comments section below.