Fostering an abuse-free environment at your martial arts school
School is meant to be a safe space for students. Your martial arts academy is no different. Your business is where people go to learn self-defense, build friendships, and gain confidence. Parents trust you to keep their children in a secure and protective environment. It goes without saying that it’s a serious responsibility and a huge undertaking. How can you best enforce student safety within your own community? What are you doing to protect your students? Continue reading to see what actions you can take to make your academy a safer place.
Recognize the Power Imbalance in Martial Arts Culture
About 11% of athletes experienced unwanted sexual contact or unwanted sexually explicit behavior during their sports involvement in 2024 (U.S. Center for SafeSport). Unfortunately, these are only the athletes who responded to the survey, meaning there’s more misconduct that goes unreported. In fact, 89% of athletes who experienced sexual misconduct during their sports career did not submit a formal report. You may wonder why martial arts and athletic culture have their own designated systems for student protections and it boils down to a few key factors.
First and foremost, there is a power imbalance between coaches/trainers/instructors and athletes. Martial arts titles can also intensify the feeling of inferiority due to their high prestige. It’s not only the titles either, it’s the expectation of respect and honor that comes with the culture. This results in the authority bias that silences people. Instructors play a role in their student’s development, belt promotions, and possibly scholarships. Furthermore, children may not always understand the difference between practicing and showing discipline vs. being coerced or silenced. Children are taught to listen to their instructors, but unfortunately this trust can be abused. Predators use emotional vulnerability and manipulation to take advantage of students.
That’s what makes your job so important. Students are on the mat to learn life skills and develop a sense of right and wrong so they can protect themselves and those around them. And their instructors shoulder the responsibility of guiding them accordingly and serving as an example of proper behavior and conduct. Unfortunately, the reality is that some adults take advantage of their position of influence and authority.
Give Students A Misconduct Reporting Mechanism
Small businesses like martial arts schools may not have a Human Resources department, but it doesn’t mean you can’t establish a misconduct reporting system. In fact, it’s a crucial aspect of making sure your students (or employees, for that matter) have an avenue for expressing discomfort or relaying problematic behavior that needs to be addressed. Providing an accessible way to report concerns or troubling occurrences builds a bridge to open communication and investigation.
Your reporting mechanism doesn’t need to be high-tech or expensive, but it needs to allow for anonymity, be secure, and provide protection from retaliation. There are many ways you could allow students to submit reports – start a hotline, build an online form, create a dedicated email address, or even set up a physical complaint box at the academy. No matter which route you go, it’s important to be checking it on a consistent basis. Reports should be investigated thoroughly and in cases where actions need to be taken, it should be handled quickly. Multiple staff members should have access to these reports to ensure a lack of bias and keep investigations separated from the persons involved.
Clearly Communicate Your School’s Safety Policies and Standards
When it comes to how you market and promote your school, communicating ethical standards can often fall to the background behind your training expertise, core values and origin story. But ensuring that you have a clear and accessible safety policy is just as important. Being upfront about your standards and dedication to integrity gives parents a peace of mind. It also draws a hard line to make it clear that you have a zero-tolerance policy for misconduct. You can post your policies on a poster in your academy or contact support@kicksite.net to add them to your website.
For example, the US Golf Association outlines one-on-one interactions and examples in their prevention policy. Alternatively, The National Karate Schools’s Two-Adult-Deep policy is a great real martial arts example.
Background Check Your Staff
Much like any other job, a background check is critical to the onboarding process. Martial arts training embodies integrity and responsibility and it’s your duty to ensure your staff and instructors represent the values that they teach. An impressive martial arts instruction or competition resume only goes so far if there are far bigger red flags behind the scenes. After all, the people you choose to represent your academy can and will reflect on your business. You never truly know who you’re letting onto the mat without doing your due diligence. With the convenience of the internet at your fingertips you can easily request background checks through websites such as Background Checks or Checkr.
Train Your Staff
The “Safe Sport Act” is a 2018 federal law protecting athletes from sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. It’s the Safe Sport Act that requires you and your instructors to be mandated reporters of suspected child abuse. The U.S Center for SafeSport is the official hub for policies, training, and mandating reports – but did you know that you could receive a certification for being SafeSport trained? While SafeSport is specifically designed for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic movement, their training and resources are available to everyone. This accessibility provides valuable learning for coaches, mentors, and instructors to minors.
They have a variety of online training courses ranging from 15 to 90 minutes for coaches, families, and even volunteers.Set aside a few hours in your schedule to learn and educate your team on why sports can make athletes more vulnerable to abuse, strategies for protecting athletes, how to report misconduct, why the SafeSport Code helps create a safe environment, and more.
A name you recognize more is Academy Safe, a non-profit organization dedicated especially to protecting martial artists from abuse, assault, and other misconduct. They have training guides, a certification program, and a registry of accredited schools. Academy Safe pairs well with SafeSport to ensure high-quality, safe training environments for the martial arts community.
Similarly to SafeSport, Safe to Compete is a national initiative to prevent abuse, exploitation and trafficking of children competing in sports. They also offer training for instructors and parents that are less than 30 minutes each. This brief time commitment doesn’t just equip everyone with the tools they need for a safe training environment, but it also gives reassurance to parents that you don’t only have a safety policy, you’ve spent the extra time to educate your team on it as well.
We know that the vast majority of individuals who teach martial arts have positive intentions and simply want to spread the joy, knowledge and personal and physical development that comes with martial arts training. But with those intentions comes a responsibility to protect students in the industry we serve. Although we’re a technology company, we consider ourselves deeply rooted in this community and are always seeking ways to help martial arts businesses improve. We offer you these tools and resources with hope that implementing them will help you more easily foster an abuse-free environment and safe culture at your school.